Streaming: Qobuz, DLNA, UPnP etc

[Tony L]

I’m kind of thinking (though I have very little knowledge of it) that Hi-Fi streamers do very little, if not no buffering to keep the signal as pure as possible, thus reducing noise etc from whatever does the buffering, I’m most likely wrong but that’s my theory and I will stand corrected if anyone shoots me down.

There’s a link to the Chord site in the opening post explaining what the DSX is. Quite a limited description, but it does re-clock the data (as one would expect from a Rob Watts design).

Any QoS settings on the router?

No. The Smart Hubs really are targeted at lowest common denominator users, next to nothing to configure. It is one reason why I want to swap it out for something a bit more geeky/capable. I want to replace it regardless of the DSX, I just don’t think it is a very good router. Fine for a backup/spare, but I want something better.

 

[paulc]

I’m certainly be interested in router recommendations. Draytek would instinctively be top of my list, e.g. this Vigor2866. I don’t really want one of current fad of shiny black alarmingly pointy the ‘gaming’ types that look like something from Darth Vader’s private bathroom cabinet, there have to be sensible looking ones with similarly low-latency.

Any recommendations for a good solid and reliable low-latency WiFi router with a nice selection of ports and configuration options would be welcome. I suspect I’ll be shopping within the month as I’m very far from impressed with either Smart Hub. Budget up to say £300. I don’t want to pay more than that without very good reason.

Hi Tony, when I looked at upgrading recently (from google / nest Wi-Fi), many were recommending the Eero kit that Amazon do as an replacement and the consensus was it was solid and stable in comparison to Google. The ones I looked at had dual gigabit ports, but that may be ok if you’re using your own switch and they would allow Mesh / mesh with Ethernet back haul if required down the line. Draytek def good kit but you may be spending a bit more than you need to.

 

[Tony L]

I’ll have a good look later. I assume I just need something with a WAN port as they are drilling a box into the wall, i.e. no ‘modem’ as such. Whilst I’d like to go router shopping fairly soon I’ll wait until I see exactly what monstrosity they’ve screwed to my back room wall. I think I just need something of a decent enough quality to have low latency, a good firewall, good dual band Wi-Fi (the Poly can’t see 5gHz), and at least one ethernet port (ideally four as I think it probably makes sense to keep the DSX on its own switch). The more I can future-proof this the better as I’d always prefer to pay more for something that lasts.

 

[Robert]

As to the DSX itself; it is stunning! The best sound I have personally heard from a streaming solution. It has all the clarity, weight and scale of a really good DAC (it is basically QBD76 technology with a clock and DLNA player added) and it lacks that ’dead in the water’ thing so many streaming solutions have to my old-school flat-earth ears! It grooves! It is now very, very close to working. I suspect a couple more small incremental network upgrades will bring the stability it needs. Everything I did during the last lost thread moved it closer (figuring it hated the GigE port, adding a 100MBs switch/removing an Airport Express as substitute, and realising the Smart Hub Two was very poor under load). It is getting there…

Count me as another convert to Chord dacs and for much the same reason.
While the Chord power amp is back at the company having its PSU fans fettled, I tried Rob Watts advice to drive 'speakers direct from the TT2 dac.
Best digital I've ever heard into the Tannoys (18w into 90dbw sensitivity is plenty loud!). Roon Nucleus clone (usb) - Mscaler - TT2 - Speakers. Local files (CD rips to FLAC) + Tidal.
The Roon Nucleus server runs from a TrendNet TEG S82g switch which lives somewhere behind the equipment cabinet (I just dropped it down the back).

TV 48kHz sound upsampled to 768kHz sounds rather nice

This thing: https://www.trendnet.com/products/product-detail?prod=600_TEG-S82g

 

[Tony L]

It is amazing the TT2 has so much output! I don’t quite understand why, are some headphones really that insensitive? That would be more than enough to fry any power amp if unleashed accidentally! Makes for a very minimalist system though! Does it run hot when asked to do that? All Chord stuff seems to kick out a lot, I’m using the variable outs on the DSX as the fixed are too much for the gain of my system (about 3V unbalanced I think). Interestingly the variable outs on max are a fair bit quieter than the fixed ones. Don’t quite understand that, but Chord do a lot of stuff I don’t understand!

PS Couple of hours in and no drops.

 

[Robert]

It is amazing the TT2 has so much output! I don’t quite understand why, are some headphones really that insensitive? That would be more than enough to fry any power amp if unleashed accidentally! Makes for a very minimalist system though! Does it run hot when asked to do that? All Chord stuff seems to kick out a lot, I’m using the variable outs on the DSX as the fixed are too much for the gain of my system (about 3V unbalanced I think). Interestingly the variable outs on max are a fair bit quieter than the fixed ones. Don’t quite understand that, but Chord do a lot of stuff I don’t understand!

PS Couple of hours in and no drops.

I think the idea was to engineer enough power to drive any headphone including some very inefficient and low impedance planar types.
Peering into the little window on top I can see what looks likes 8 miniature smd mosfets with a hex bolt through their tab into the bottom half of case acting as heatsink.
It runs warm even when idling but I doubt I get it past a couple of watts per side and that's really loud, so it isn't stressed.

You can try driving the Lockwoods from the Mojo

Explained here:

 

[Tony L]

You can try driving the Lockwoods from the Mojo

That would be so funny on a size basis alone! I bet it would work, they are about 94db and an easy 8 Ohm load.

PS There is a very nice headphone socket on the DSX. No idea about specs (I have very little real info on this thing), but it certainly sounds great into HD-600s and with bucket-loads of power in reserve.

 

[Robert]

That would be so funny on a size basis alone! I bet it would work, they are about 94db and an easy 8 Ohm load.

PS There is a very nice headphone socket on the DSX. No idea about specs (I have very little real info on this thing), but it certainly sounds great into HD-600s and with bucket-loads of power in reserve.

Try it - according to Watts in the video some people use a Mojo with sensitive speakers.

 

[TheFlash]

There’s a link to the Chord site in the opening post explaining what the DSX is. Quite a limited description, but it does re-clock the data (as one would expect from a Rob Watts design).



No. The Smart Hubs really are targeted at lowest common denominator users, next to nothing to configure. It is one reason why I want to swap it out for something a bit more geeky/capable. I want to replace it regardless of the DSX, I just don’t think it is a very good router. Fine for a backup/spare, but I want something better.

Not sure if you’re overthinking this or whether I need to re-read from post #1 but I use a BT Smart Hub 2 with my full fibre service. It’s impeccable: reliable, fast etc. Zero dropouts. Routers should be plug, play and perform unless people start messing with the configuration… geeky is rarely a good thing with either routers or switches.

 

[Tony L]

Try running the bufferbloat test I linked to in the opening post! The performance from my Hub Two was very poor. Latency clearly increases under load. Some of this will be poor broadband performance, but it is being compounded by a poor router.

PS I didn’t have a single drop in over 4 hours of high-res today with the earlier (less stressed under load) Hub One and cheapo switch today. I’m positive I’m on the right path with this. What I’m chipping away at is working. I’m still limiting to 24/96 or less, but that’s fine, I’m not going to chase 192 until I’ve got the other parts of the picture in place. This will all be solid as a rock by the end of the month. I do kind of understand what I’m doing as I used to build and maintain corporate networks!

 

[jay]

As an example I just bought the new English Teacher album as the DSX is playing it now and it really is rather good (there is some rather decent indie up in that Yorkshire at present)

Any song about broken biscuits has me hooked!

 

[paulc]

Not sure if you’re overthinking this or whether I need to re-read from post #1 but I use a BT Smart Hub 2 with my full fibre service. It’s impeccable: reliable, fast etc. Zero dropouts. Routers should be plug, play and perform unless people start messing with the configuration… geeky is rarely a good thing with either routers or switches.

Provider supplied routers, hubs etc are anything but reliable in my experience. I’ve had BT, plusnet, Now broadband supplied devices and all have been the bottleneck. They are made to a price and may deliver an adequate service in small low use set up, but that’s rarely the case these days. There’s a lot going on and those little boxes get easily overwhelmed. It may be worse in non fibre situations as a bit of latency upstream can then really cause the other services to play catch up.

I’ve Virgin full fibre at the top of my drive and a BT exchange at the back of my house, but am stuck with FTTC….so you learn how to try maximise that 70 Mb connection.

 

[TheFlash]

Provider supplied routers, hubs etc are anything but reliable in my experience. I’ve had BT, plusnet, Now broadband supplied devices and all have been the bottleneck. They are made to a price and may deliver an adequate service in small low use set up, but that’s rarely the case these days. There’s a lot going on and those little boxes get easily overwhelmed. It may be worse in non fibre situations as a bit of latency upstream can then really cause the other services to play catch up.

I’ve Virgin full fibre at the top of my drive and a BT exchange at the back of my house, but am stuck with FTTC….so you learn how to try maximise that 70 Mb connection.

Thanks for this. Clearly we have different experiences of the same kit! My Smart Hub 2 used to occasionally drop the broadband connection entirely but (a) when up and running it never ever presented any latency issues, far from it and (b) now I've gone to full fibre, it has yet to miss a beat. For music streeaming purposes (into Innuos into dCS) it's proven itself here in spades.

We use smart TV plus other laptops/tablets etc simultaneously but we're not gamers... so maybe a hifi system counts as a "small low use setup".

My suggestion stands: if anyone is experiencing latency/dropout issues (basically digital network issues) then they should look at the entire chain including the router, but the last item I'd suspect as the cause would be a decent modern router like the BT Smart Hub 2.

All the best.

 

[TheFlash]

Try running the bufferbloat test I linked to in the opening post! The performance from my Hub Two was very poor. Latency clearly increases under load. Some of this will be poor broadband performance, but it is being compounded by a poor router.

PS I didn’t have a single drop in over 4 hours of high-res today with the earlier (less stressed under load) Hub One and cheapo switch today. I’m positive I’m on the right path with this. What I’m chipping away at is working. I’m still limiting to 24/96 or less, but that’s fine, I’m not going to chase 192 until I’ve got the other parts of the picture in place. This will all be solid as a rock by the end of the month. I do kind of understand what I’m doing as I used to build and maintain corporate networks!

I hear you, Tony, I'm just questioning whether/how the Hub 2 could possibly cause any dropouts given my very different experience of, and complete satisfaction to date with, exactly the same piece of kit whether on copper or full fibre. Latency may well measurably increase under load but to the point of dropouts during music streaming? That's just plain weird!

Anyway, pleased you appear to be on the right path and able to enjoy over 4 hours of streamed music at a sitting!

 

[Tony L]

I hear you, Tony, I'm just questioning whether/how the Hub 2 could possibly cause any dropouts given my very different experience of, and complete satisfaction to date with, exactly the same piece of kit whether on copper or full fibre. Latency may well measurably increase under load but to the point of dropouts during music streaming? That's just plain weird!

The whole thing with networks IME is everything is cumulative and there are many, many variables that can be holding things below the expected or desired performance level. It is clear with my current broadband connection and the Smart Hub Two I’m right on the borderline threshold for high-res streaming via Qobuz and the DSX. Just right on the very edge. Were I to hook my Smart Hub Two and the DSX to your broadband connection the results may well be different. The Smart Hub Two would still have considerable buffer bloat, it just has it, easily provably so, but in your case it clearly isn’t enough to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back or whatever. Every network scenario is different. All one can do is to gently chip away at all the things that can be improved regarding bandwidth and latency until there is enough available headroom for long-term reliability.

 

[AndyU]

The whole thing with networks IME is everything is cumulative and there are many, many variables that can be holding things below the expected or desired performance level. It is clear with my current broadband connection and the Smart Hub Two I’m right on the borderline threshold for high-res streaming via Qobuz and the DSX. Just right on the very edge. Were I to hook my Smart Hub Two and the DSX to your broadband connection the results may well be different. The Smart Hub Two would still have considerable buffer bloat, it just has it, easily provably so, but in your case it clearly isn’t enough to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back or whatever. Every network scenario is different. All one can do is to gently chip away at all the things that can be improved regarding bandwidth and latency until there is enough available headroom for long-term reliability.

You might also want to check out the Qobuz feature that lets you store files locally for playback offline. This is useful for your phone when you are travelling, or for home if you have a flakey network. Probably also worth knowing that once you have played something, Qobuz will in any case cache it locally so that a subsequent playback happens from the local cache rather than streaming from the cloud. There are settings for the size of cache.

 

[simon g]

I'm also a user of Smart Hub 2. Plug 'n' play and rock solid. Just done a speed test; 20ms ping, 70mbps down, 15mbps up. Very rural location on east coast of Lincs. FTTC only. Fibre to premises in this part of the world will come after I've tottered off!

Music and video streaming, plus 2 ipads and iMac. No drop outs or indeed any problems. Streamer very responsive, whether Roon or otherwise. I have a direct ethernet connection from my router, via cheap as chips very thin flexible cable, which is unobtrusively wired around various skirting boards, through doors. You have to know its there to notice. Most people would easily be able to accomodate. Hard wired eliminates many of the problems of wi-fi and generally leads to improved functionaility. Once at switch then what others would call foo comes in to play and that is far OT.

Music streaming is trivial in terms of required speed. 100mbps is more than adequate. Many manufacturers maintain 100mbps suits music streaming best, 1gbps is not required, but having said that I've read that the Innuos sense app lkes a 1gbps connection (no idea why)

Back to Tony. I can certainly understand tne curiousity and desire to get the Chord working as well as possible, especially given tne network background. The limiting factor here will be the card in tne Chord. It's quite possible that optimising tne network will allow the card to work as well as it can. However, others reading this shouldn't stress about changing routers, etc, unless they have a very demanding home network. The vast majority of today's streamers will work perfectly, as they were designed to stream from external web based servers, rather than be a LAN player.

 

[Tony L]

You might also want to check out the Qobuz feature that lets you store files locally for playback offline. This is useful for your phone when you are travelling, or for home if you have a flakey network. Probably also worth knowing that once you have played something, Qobuz will in any case cache it locally so that a subsequent playback happens from the local cache rather than streaming from the cloud. There are settings for the size of cache.

I’ll certainly be doing that for iPhone listening on the bus etc, but my aim at present is to fix the network. As I say I’ll be beyond astonished if this isn’t reliable by the end of the month after the broadband upgrade, new router etc. I need to move it a tiny, tiny bit forward from where it is right now. It is pretty much fit for purpose as-is. What I’ve got coming should literally double the network performance, or better!

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

A few additional thoughts;
- I’m personally cautious about relying on streaming services in the long term. Within video streaming, we’ve seen two rather concerning issue. The most obvious being the fracturing of the market, such that if you want to watch anything and everything, you now need to subscribe to multiple services. The 2nd being the example of some movies being deliberately pulled from ALL streaming services such that they can be written off as an asset loss, for accounting purposes. If you lookup “cocoon”, apparently that’s an example. I’m not saying it will happen to music services, but it might
- I tend to buy the new albums that I really want in 24bit, from HDtracks. I believe that they’re a similar cost to downloads from Quboz. I know there’s an argument that it’s not possible for them to sound better than 16 bit, but I believe that they sound better in my system
- your point about the SB Touch not being a great networking source reflects some of my own experiences. My personal belief is now that avoiding all types of interface between streamer and DAC is a good thing, whether that’s SPDIF, USB etc. Having both the streamer and DAC nicely sidesteps that potential issue, and is the only solution that I’d now use.

 

[johnhunt]

I’ve roon running of a little NUC streamed from minidsp SHD . Content Is mostly Qobuz . I have fibre into my gaff so something like 800mb in . music set up doesn’t perform any differently to when it was 70mb. loads of things connected both WiFi and cat5. Even the dishwasher sends me messages