My experience is that I can't tell the difference between my streamer and a cd stored in memory. I think you are correct, your streamer isn't performing as well as it should.
Streamer vs Directstream Memory Player
Interesting discovery this weekend, we built a new home close to 8 years ago and within the home is a dedicated listening room/theater. I had the assistance of Bob Hodas and Bob Cardas designing the room, all electrical was done to audiophile standards as was treatment and equipment placement.
I’ve been at this for the better part of 40 years but had never set up a space such as this before.
I open with this preamble as I’d like to try to avoid some of the comments that are not relevant to what this post is about.
Recently, or about the past 18 months, I have felt that my streamer is not sounding as good as I would like it to. I use Tidal and Roon into a Directstream DAC and Bridge II. One of my local dealers has loaned me some state of the art components to help my journey of finding what I believe to be best in class streaming sound.
Now to where I am going with this, I bought a Directstream Memory Player 3 years ago but I never got around to unboxing my CD’s. Well, I bought some CD racking and organized them all on Friday night and Saturday AM. I warmed up my system for 2 hours Saturday afternoon and all I can tell you is that in every case, over 20 CD’s listened to, the Memory Player blew away anything that was streamed, wasn’t even a close fight. Still not as good as my analog setup but better than any streamer used in my home including separate DAC’s.
I can assure you that there is no puffery in my findings, simply the best digital I have ever heard. My system has a retail value of close to $200k USD and one of the streamers that was loaned to me was close to $50k CDN (I live in Vancouver).
I would encourage any of you to hear these two matched components together, it was one of those positive startling situations I have experienced in our hobby.
Good listening all.
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There are many aspects to building an excellent streaming setup, and if yours is that bad relative to stored CDs I’d submit somewhere in your streaming chain there are glaring deficiencies. Not knowing any of the components in your streaming chain it’s impossible to suggest anything further, but I’d channel @ghdprentice as he also has an excellent system and has put together a streaming setup that is on par with his accomplished analog source so he in particular may have some very valuable thoughts/experience that apply to your situation. In any event, rather than dealing in uncertainties I’d encourage you to share specifically all the equipment in your system otherwise all this is fairly nebulous and opaque. |
@gnaudio my experience exactly. Except I was running Roon streaming Tidal, Qobuz and Local library into Bricasti M3 using its network card. Dull, not engaging, rounded off leading edges, robbed off energy. I got Audio Lab 6000cdt transport as a test and CDs just simply blew away streaming…using network card that is…just to be clear. After researching I picked up Aurender N200 streamer and I literally couldn’t believe the improvement. Running N200 into Bricasti via USB. No need for CDs. It is at least as good as physical media and in some cases exceeds sound quality of CDs. |
@audphile1 I completely understand your post as i've just experienced it myself. @soix thankyou for your message but I am one of those audiophiles that don't believe any digital source can match the same caliber analog source, I've never heard it before. My streaming equipment are all Stereophile Class A rated components. My initial post discusses my equipment. I didn't post to create a challenge or argument but just to tell you what I heard. Read the professional and user reviews of the Directstream Memory Player, they all heard what I heard. It's not that often in my experience that this much of a transformation happens. |
Keep in mind the DSD DAC is praised for its qualities as a DAC but its network bridge is known to be subpar. A high quality dedicated streamer will always beat any DAC’s inbuilt network renderer. If you want to level the playing field (streaming vs cd) you need a good streamer. If you want to continue using Roon one streamer you can try is PS Audio’s own airlens. |
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