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Streamers for audition

raysablade

raysablade

pfm Member
I'm enjoying my Volmio based Raspberry PI PiFi DAC combination but am curious as to what improvement a relatively modest cash injection of less than £1000 could bring to my system. I'm reluctant to upgrade the Pi; it makes sense as a sub £100 package, spending more than that I'd like the reassurance of manufacturer and dealer support.

I'm using a NAC102, NAP110 based monoblocs, Avondale power supplies and PMC GB1i speakers. I use Volumio for Spotify, connecting to my ripped CD collection on a NAS and web radio.

My local dealers are Lintone and Peter Tyson and from their web sites I've assembled


for potential auditions later this week. Does anyone have a suggestion for an addition to this list?

There's clearly a limited local market between £500 and £1000;)

I could travel from Newcastle to dealers with a wider selection so other ideas are welcome. The Pi and a battery fits in my pocket so i can take it with me for comparison. The local dealers are however Naim specialists so it will be easy to get an impression of my complete home setup.

The Auralic is my initial favourite, i'm trying to convince myself that this is not due to its relatively modest price.
 
The Auralic Mini is superb in every way. The App is restricted to Apple only though.

The app for the Marantz is awful!
 
Simaudio mind180, I believe the original is not available new, so look for used.
Does Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz but not Spotify.
 
radamel said:
I'd also consider the Bluesound Node 2.

Great value for money IMO.
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I’d second that. I’m using one myself, and whilst I can’t claim to have auditioned the others you mention, it is a distinct improvement from a Mac mini I used as a streamer previously. If you use the internal DAC, it is MQA compatible, or it has coax and optical sp-dif outputs to your own dac. The BluOS app is good.
 
A s/h Linn Sneaky DS might be in your budget. Linn were into streaming well ahead of the game, and are now offering room correction as well as Qobuz, Tidal and Roon integration. But I would agree that a Blusound Node or Auralic are contenders too. The quality of the software and UI is really important.
 
AndyU said:
A s/h Linn Sneaky DS might be in your budget. Linn were into streaming well ahead of the game, and are now offering room correction as well as Qobuz, Tidal and Roon integration. But I would agree that a Blusound Node or Auralic are contenders too. The quality of the software and UI is really important.
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The Linn does look something of a bargain S/H and Peter Tyson are a Linn dealer so I could compare. I'd feel guilty though if i wasn't planning to buy new.

Robby said:
The Auralic Mini is superb in every way. The App is restricted to Apple only though.

The app for the Marantz is awful!
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I'm an Apple user so the Auralic scores points there, Marantz is off the list if the UI is in any way challenging.
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
AndyU said:
A s/h Linn Sneaky DS might be in your budget. Linn were into streaming well ahead of the game, and are now offering room correction as well as Qobuz, Tidal and Roon integration. But I would agree that a Blusound Node or Auralic are contenders too. The quality of the software and UI is really important.
Click to expand...

IME the Linn Sneaky is dreadful as digital transport. The effects of its high levels of jitter were clearly audible when using it to feed a Lyngdorf TDAI 2200.
 
radamel said:
IME the Linn Sneaky is dreadful as digital transport. The effects of its high levels of jitter were clearly audible when using it to feed a Lyngdorf TDAI 2200.
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I haven’t got any Linn kit, so I’ve no dog in the fight - was just adding the Sneaky to a hypothetical shortlist out of interest. Can you point me to a review where high levels of jitter were measured?
 
IME the Linn Sneaky is dreadful as digital transport. The effects of its high levels of jitter were clearly audible when using it to feed a Lyngdorf TDAI 2200.
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From trying to whitewashing a cable company to slagging a decent product - not many agenda’s with you, is there?
 
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AndyU said:
I haven’t got any Linn kit, so I’ve no dog in the fight - was just adding the Sneaky to a hypothetical shortlist out of interest. Can you point me to a review where high levels of jitter were measured?
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Sorry, I remember reading about it but can't find the numbers now.
 
abbydog said:
From trying to whitewashing a cable company to slagging a decent product - not many agenda’s with you, is there?
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Have you ever tried/ compared the Sneaky to a decent transport feeding an external DAC?

I have and the Sneaky is not even half decent IMO.
Even the owner of the Sneaky thought as much and sold his.

PS Abbydog, I have no agenda. I simply gave my opinion about a streamer that I heard and compared directly. What about you?
 
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The Sneaky is off the list;)

I'm only going to audition something I can afford, only going to buy something i've heard and at dealer prices it's too dear.
 
I would personally look at upgrading the dac before the streamer.
So 3rd option for me ie chord mojo with current streamer or poly add on.
 
Also the mojo has volume control so you could go direct to the power amps and if you like the sound ditch the pre amp!
 
radamel said:
Sorry, I remember reading about it but can't find the numbers now.
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Just found a link in German that also refers to the Sneaky jitter levels:

https://www.aktives-hoeren.de/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2549

Here's an excerpt automatically translated:

Hello friends of the groomed digital signal,

so running Reclocker Art Work. But not quite as desired (how could it have been different). For that I want to show briefly, how the signal, which is to be re-clocked, looks like:

jitterg-sneakyvorrecleyudm.png


The digital memory Oszi is set to 10ns per unit time and the so-called "afterglow" is activated with a storage period of 5s. This means that every time a trigger is triggered, the voltage curve is drawn here on each positive edge of the clock signal of the master clock. The voltage history that was recorded before 5s will be deleted. So there are 5 times 12,288,000 lines on top of each other. The fact that this is not exactly a thin line is clear: Not only the jitter of the signal thickens the line, but also the jitter of the measuring system.

The blue upper curve is the direct clock signal of the 12.288MHz Tentclock, while a 192kHz / 24Bit file is played. The positive edge is triggered. You can see a blue arrow in the top center (at t = 0) and a right arrow at the edge (at a voltage of about 4.8V). If you think the arrows continue in a line, you will find the trigger point exactly at the intersection of the two lines.

The thickness of the blue line is almost exclusively due to the jitter in the Digitaloszi, the Tentclock is much better.This thickness thus represents, so to speak, the measurement inaccuracy.

The yellow line underneath on channel 2 is the S / PDIF signal provided by the Sneaky to the source network, exactly where I am disconnecting for reclocking. You can see that the data bits are about 40ns long, sometimes there is a transition from 0 to 1, vice versa, also about 60 million lines on top of each other. You can see that in relation to the very pure master clock, the digital signal does not always jump at exactly the same time - that's the jitter. It is from peak to peak (ie the total visible width at the 0-1 transition) about 5ns. That's pretty much. This does not say anything about the spectral distribution, but it is a clue.

The jitter is so massive that arrives in front of the Reclocker that firstly, I'm not surprised that the Akurate DS 1 sounds so much better on the digital output than the Sneaky, and secondly, I had enormous difficulty to get away with the Reclocker flip-flop (cue word) , It worked, but the jitter was still much higher on the digital output compared to the G-Sonos.
 
@ the Op try and borrow something before committing ,compare it next to your set-up you may find there is no improvement whatsoever.
Keith
 
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