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Allaboutmusic

pfm Member
Hi, I am looking to buy a new streamer for my setup. I have a rega brio 2017 and a rega dac-r, so the internal dac in the streamer will not be needed. At some point I will probably upgrade my amplifier to elicit - r level so I am thinking the budget for the streamer should be upto 1k, although I could go higher. Most important features to me would be a decent app, bit perfect streams, tidal and good timing although I think the timing will come via my dac instead?

Can anyone recommend ? Thanks
 
nope.
If you are on pc download a great app called etcher, all you do is plug in the sd card to your pc, also download say Volumio (Other pi players are available).

Using etcher, select the downloaded Volumio ZIP as source, it will have picked up you have plugged in an sd card and hit go, it really is that simple.

Once done put the sd card into your pi, turn the pi on with an ethernet cable plugged in and it will be accessible from any browser on your network. from here you can add music.

Volumio sounds really rather good for the cost of circa 60 quid, if your dac has USB input even better.

Of course, if you are set on spending a grand then you wont be happy with this, but there it is. Bit perfect audio delivered to your dac for 60 odd quid.

I literally did just that this weekend. Went to the car bootie and picked up a pair of small active speakers for a fiver. Dug out a pi from my cupboard and threw volumio on it. Volumio has airplay built in. Within half an hour I had created a wifi speaker set up for my son to play tunes from his iPhone.
 
If you are using an external DAC theres no reason to spend 1k on a streamer! Unless you want Roon.

A Bluesound Node 2i would be perfect. Or a Cambridge Audio CXN or 851N.
 
If you just want plug and play, get the Bluesound Node 2i or the Auralic Mini. Both are under £500.

I had a Pi + Allo Digione and LDA linear power supply. It may have been cheaper than above but I think it performed better.

Volumio have recently released the Primo which seems to be getting good reviews.

You really don’t need to spend more than £500 on a streamer.
 
Allo Digione Signature running Volumio or Moode, superb piece of kit, use the Bubble UPnP app & you can stream gapless from Tidal or Qobuz, no programming or faff involved.
 
I own a Raspberry Pi model 3 B, and it's quite a fun little box. But a couple of things to note about performance: a slow SD card and the built-in wifi made it slow and glitchy. Moving over to the fastest SD card I could get, and an ethernet connection made it much better. It even worked nicely with my Audioquest Dragonfly. However, the last time I checked out AirPlay software for it, there was some problem with the mixing / signal processing, and I wound up with some digital clipping. Unfortunately, when you're relying on volunteer-based free open-source software, it can be slow and difficult to get bugs fixed. I kept it on Raspbian, not being a fan of OSMC. If you're going that route, make sure to get a package that includes heatsinks.

For what it's worth, I've been considering going to a Bluesound Node 2i. It does what I want, without being fussy, and you can hook it into whatever DAC you like. With the Raspberry Pi route, you do need to ensure the proper drivers exist if you're using a USB DAC. It looks like you can get a SPDIF out board for the GPIO connector on the Pi, but at that point, I'd start considering the time and effort you're putting into it along with the fact that you're half-way to the cost of a more purpose-built streamer.
 
Second hand or new Linn Sneaky DS.
Great streamer, excellent app, Tidal not a problem.
No need for the DAC, the one in the Sneaky is excellent.
Linn started over 10 years ago so are way ahead of the curve.
All you need is interconnects to your pre/amp and you are ready to go.,
Updates on a regular basis.
One box does it all.
 
I use a Pi with PiCoreplayer software. It also has a screen attached. I run it wirelessly using a dongle mostly as a headphone listening point. It’s been very reliable.
 
I dare say other options are as good and cheaper, but I am very happy with my Aries Mini and can't think of any good reason to spend more on a streamer.

My download/ripped files library is on an SSD attached to it, so it is a server too. The Auralic iPad app makes selection between (Qobuz) streams, stored files and 320kbps Radio 3 simple.
 
If reliance on open software is an issue, I would check out SOTM's SMS 200 Neo. I haven't tried this one, but it is incredibly well reviewed (most recently in Hifi Choice by Ed Shelley).
 
+1 for a Raspberry Pi based solution. Personally, I think Allo's DigiOne is a rather great piece of kit to "feed" a DAC...

It is a killer piece of kit, measurements are world-class too. What OS are you using yours with? I recently switched to the Allo GUI and DietPi, which I have found more stable than Moode.
 
Aries Mini. Great app, very flexible and also sounds great.

Advice needed sorry for sidetracking.

I hadn't used my mini for a couple of months and on turning on it had upgraded the app, I had to rescan my library before I could use it, no probs. It did suggest that I could intigrate my internal and external drives into one library if I have both. It recognised the USB but asked for a path to the internal drive. Anyone know what the path is? Since it's not a PC I can't see it being C/: , or anything along those lines but?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
If reliance on open software is an issue, I would check out SOTM's SMS 200 Neo. I haven't tried this one, but it is incredibly well reviewed (most recently in Hifi Choice by Ed Shelley).

I had an SOTM SMS200 Neo before the Mini. It is a superb bit of kit - with the right DAC sounds better than the Mini. You do need a DAC though which, I suspect, would put the overall cost above the OP's budget.

Another option would be a s/h Innuos Zen Mini - again fed into a decent DAC sounds superb.
 
It is a killer piece of kit, measurements are world-class too. What OS are you using yours with? I recently switched to the Allo GUI and DietPi, which I have found more stable than Moode.

I experimented a lot with different OS, and in the end I sort of settled for piCore Player with iPeng as app on the iPad. It's a great combination, in principle. But I don't like iPeng's Qobuz integration. I also squeezed in a Roon trial, which was a great experience. But this was before Roon's Qobuz integration. When I am less busy I shall have another go with Roon to see what job they did with Qobuz.
 


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