Re: streaming recommendations for newbie

To throw out another consideration: My CD player is a Simaudio 340D. One reason I considered a separate DAC is to use it as an external DAC for the CD player as well. But I don’t really know just how good the internal DAC is in the Simaudio or

@tlh28 uh in think the Simaudio 340 is a integrated amp? Do you mean your CD player is the 260D? If so that is a well regarded DAC implementation and it has spidf and optical inputs. I would just get a streamer and run it through that DAC first. Do the Blue Sound with external Power supply and I bet you be happy camper until the upgrade virus takes holt again.

I recently found a new in box Bluesound Vault 2i for $700. It’s amazing to me. Not only does it stream anything through a respectable DAC, it has a CD slot and it rips CD’s in 12 minutes each and has a hard drive large enough to store my rack of 1600 CD onboard.

Now I just need two full weeks of time to save my collection. I know, why save them when I can stream them? Well, just to have them in case the internet goes down for a long time.

Happy hunting.

andym23456

11 posts

04-18-2024 at 07:22am

I know, why save them when I can stream them? Well, just to have them in case the internet goes down for a long time.

@andym23456 it seems streaming services can and do sometimes pull albums / artists off their catalogues without warning. Kind of like Netflix dropping movies or series with little or no notice.

That’s an even better reason to save your disc collection files.

To OP and anyone else on the learning curve, some of the claims made of streamers in this thread have no evidence, just subjective conjecture, nor basis in current (pun!) electrical knowledge, so self-educate before getting carried away is a fair plan.

Chasing “better” streamers relies on factors that don’t make much sense if you will be streaming via Bluetooth. That should perhaps be first thing out of the chain if one hopes for improvement, lest you constrain your streamed files from the get-go.

I’m going to try to eliminate the Onkyo & see if my phone & the Oppo shake hands.

@danmar123 Great that you’re getting the AVR outta your 2-channel signal path as that’s a huge bottleneck to performance. I started streaming from my iPhone using the Apple Camera Adapter to run USB into my DAC with Qobuz, and it sounded good until I realized CDs sounded significantly better, which was very disappointing. Following advice from people here I got a streamer (an inexpensive iFi Zen Stream) and my streaming immediately sounded as good or better than CDs — literally a night and day difference. So while the iPhone is certainly a cheap and easy way to get started, if you’re concerned with sound quality you should plan on getting a streamer down the road. Just my experience FWIW.

@soix , yesterday I tried to handshake my phone to the Oppo, no dice. Did a google search & came up with an Oppo app for my droid. No dice there too. I can connect my Comp. via Cat 6 wire. I have an Creative sound card there. I'll give that a try. I also tried the Comp. via bluetooth & didn't like the SQ. I have to say that, using my phone to steam Tidal was better than the Comp via bluetooth.