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Will streamers disappear?

Julf said:
But out of your *non*-hifi friends, how many of them do their music from anything else than a computer or a digital music player/phone?
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Out of my non hifi friends I don't know any who actually listen to music at all. My brother who couldn't give a shit about SQ has a Bose all in one thing and I've never heard it play yet. One of my daughters downloads music and listens on her iPhone but comes to mine to listen to vinyl.
Would a non hifi person have a streamer?
 
Chops54 said:
Out of my non hifi friends I don't know any who actually listen to music at all. My brother who couldn't give a shit about SQ has a Bose all in one thing and I've never heard it play yet. One of my daughters downloads music and listens on her iPhone but comes to mine to listen to vinyl.
Would a non hifi person have a streamer?
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Every last one of them carries one around. It's called a phone.

Chris
 
Mescalito said:
Every last one of them carries one around. It's called a phone.

Chris
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Well that's bollocks Chris. I know at least four people who don't possess a mobile phone. One of them is a very successful businessman and I find it quite funny that I bought my first mobile phone from him.
 
Tony L said:
Such cloud storage solutions exist already, albeit in an expensive form at present...
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The thing about cloud storage for music is that all you need is one copy of the music file, and an index for each user to indicate which they have access to.

You can bet that Google Play and Amazon Cloud Player work exactly like this. I have most of my collection on Google Play (for free - I think the limit is 20,000 tracks for free - I have at least 33% left).

edit - I should add that the "issue" with these services currently is that they're 320Kbps (Google) and 256Kbps (Amazon). This will likely change too - even though most punters don't care that much it will soon be cheap enough in storage terms (one copy of each track) for one of the players in the market (or a new one) to up the ante to CD quality as a differentiator.
 
Vital said:
The thing about cloud storage for music is that all you need is one copy of the music file, and an index for each user to indicate which they have access to.
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But I am sure my copy sounds better than yours! :)
 
Julf said:
But I am sure my copy sounds better than yours! :)
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Interestingly Tony's point about "getting the right mastering version" may be of importance. Assuming they genuinely hold each specific version of all the titles Tony can sleep easy, otherwise...
 
darrenyeats said:
Cloud versus NAS versus whatever is irrelevant as far as I can see, that's just the source of the stream. This thread is more concerned with the kind of device people "want to use in their living room" or, if they're audiophiles, "want to connect to their audio system".

Stand-alone DACs (requiring a streamer transport) are more aimed at the latter market, where buyers prioritise sound quality over everything else. For this to change an industry-standard streaming platform would need to emerge, either open-source or licensed, that all the DAC manufacturers can drop in like S/PDIF or USB. Personally I thought this was a good route for Slim Devices years ago, when they had a head start.
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Absolutely. The coming war is all about compatibility: all these smart devices will have to agree on a lingua franca. Whoever wins that one wins large: bets on Google v Apple?
 
Julf said:
Indeed, and as we can see from the raspberry pi based stuff, we are already at the point where adding network streaming capacity and a DAC to a system/device costs very little space and power, and maybe 25 quid - and it is rapidly getting cheaper and smaller. So any audio device (be it speaker, phone or clock radio) will soon have "network streaming capability".
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Phew! At least us intellectual heavyweights agree about something . . .
 
Chops54 said:
Well that's bollocks Chris. I know at least four people who don't possess a mobile phone. One of them is a very successful businessman and I find it quite funny that I bought my first mobile phone from him.
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The point I am making is that already, the dominant method of listening to music is via a mobile phone, and increasingly, it is via a streaming service.

Chris
 
Vital said:
Interestingly Tony's point about "getting the right mastering version" may be of importance. Assuming they genuinely hold each specific version of all the titles Tony can sleep easy, otherwise...
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Exactly, with many titles there is a heck of a difference between that elusive 1st issue I scoured second hand shops or eBay for and the horrible hyped-up and brick-walled current remaster. You'd feel somewhat annoyed if you'd uploaded an expensive and out of print Japanese XRCD, Analogue Productions or even 1st issue Ron McMaster Blue Note and got back a current RVG Edition when you hit play! This is why the likes of iTunes Match currently have no appeal to me. Once I can define cloud storage on my terms and also have adequate upload speed to make use of it (unlikely in the UK for a very long time, see infrastructure comments earlier) I'll be sticking with a local music library (my laptop HD).
 
I like having a separate dac.

Into my Young dac I run the pc via usb also my Sony Blu-ray player also Cyrus stream and the cyrus cdxtse transport so I can play a cd or plug a usb hd into the Sony and listen from that or I can listen to flac files from the pc or flac files from the nas fed to the Cyrus StreamX.

I have compared the same files playing at the same time from the pc and the Cyrus streamer also my SBT and you would have to be golden eared to hear a difference between them so I guess it all comes down to which you prefer to use as theres very little in it SQ wise.

I don't need the Cyrus streamer at all and it sounds no better than usb out from the pc but its the way I listen to music most of the time because I don't really want a pc in the same room when I listen so prefer to stream from the nas that's in another room and control it with the Cyrus N-remote.
 
Tony L said:
Exactly, with many titles there is a heck of a difference between that elusive 1st issue I scoured second hand shops or eBay for and the horrible hyped-up and brick-walled remaster. You'd feel somewhat annoyed if you'd uploaded an expensive Japanese XRCD, Analogue Productions or even 1st issue Ron McMaster Blue Note and got back a current RVG Edition when you hit play! This is why the likes of iTunes Match currently have no appeal to me. Once I can define cloud storage on my terms and also have adequate upload speed to make use of it (unlikely in the UK for a very long time) I'll be sticking with a local music library (my laptop HD).
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This is the main reason why I still collect records and CDs. Different versions sound very different.

I still enjoy the physical interaction with records, from hunting and buying to cleaning to playing and selling. I remain fascinated by the gear, and am encouraged by the amount of new thought going into turntable, arm, cart, phono stage and accessory item development.

I still buy CDs only to ensure I have the best sounding versions. They are immediately ripped and stored away. If something like Qobuz comes to the US, and if the library expands to the point where I can tell I am streaming the best sounding versions of my favorite music, then I'll stop buying CDs.

I use Spotify mainly to surf for new tunes, but it has become Mrs. Hook's main way of listening. She also has access via UPnP to our library. I like having the music in one place, on a NAS, and being able to access it wherever I happen to be and whatever I happen to be doing. I wonder if a lot of the [PC|Mac]/Dac folks only listen to music in one place, or aren't concerned with sharing their music easily with other family members? IME, streaming offers this as a primary advantage.

Hook
 
It is a shame none of this has a standard.
LPs and CDs have a lot going for them in that respect.
I have tried streamer and iMac into DAC and the biggest PITA, for me, is the multiplicity of different file types, the paucity of players which easily play all of them, and the monumental PITA it is to tag classical music tracks in a way convenient to me such that I can search effectively and read what track I've got on a screen the size of my iPod (this last less important to me now I don't travel much).
 
F1eng said:
It is a shame none of this has a standard.
LPs and CDs have a lot going for them in that respect.
I have tried streamer and iMac into DAC and the biggest PITA, for me, is the multiplicity of different file types, the paucity of players which easily play all of them, and the monumental PITA it is to tag classical music tracks in a way convenient to me such that I can search effectively and read what track I've got on a screen the size of my iPod (this last less important to me now I don't travel much).
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Mind you, converting between one lossless format and another is a very trivial task. A cd's worth takes less than 10 seconds.

I bought a shed load of Diesel Park West CD's as downloads, & for whatever reason they were a mixturre. of .flac & Apple lossless. Converted them all to .flac in a couple of minutes.

Chris
 
Weiss MAN301 plays everything, the tagging, is completely configurable , Internet radio ,podcasts etc active room EQ is on the way, and most importantly a joy to use.
Keith.
 
Purite Audio said:
Weiss MAN301 plays everything, the tagging, is completely configurable , Internet radio ,podcasts etc active room EQ is on the way, and most importantly a joy to use.
Keith.
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V702 actually does play everything, configurable tagging, internet radio, podcasts - and most importantly a joy to use. The visual interface is quite a step up - with its integrated 7-inch screen. The V702 also plays Spotify, Qobuz and iPlayer - which the MAN301 doesn't.

http://www.dealsmachine.com/best_100418.html

And apparently Daniel Weiss says a device like the V702 sounds just as good as the MAN301 when used with a 'half-decent' DAC. So I guess it just comes down to money and upgrade-ability . . . 169x V702s or 1x MAN301? In the end the upgrade path of the V702 swings it for me.
 
Vital said:
edit - I should add that the "issue" with these services currently is that they're 320Kbps (Google) and 256Kbps (Amazon). This will likely change too - even though most punters don't care that much it will soon be cheap enough in storage terms (one copy of each track) for one of the players in the market (or a new one) to up the ante to CD quality as a differentiator.
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The last mile is the problem. A 4G cell shares about 100 Mbps among all of the subscribers. Even going to 4G has shrunk the useful cell size to the point it will never be available anything like nationwide.
Cloud streaming eats bandwidth as you listen for hours. Even 320 kbps eats 144MB/hr, streaming HD over cellular is impractical
 
Robert said:
I think we'll see the outboard dac disappear, definitely not the streamer though this will become more integrated.
They (dacs) are largely a waste of time and just an unnecessary extra box and set of connections.

We'll likely see streaming become increasingly integrated into other products, i.e. we'll see a move back to one box does all.

There will always be fringe products of course, but the market will go from tiny to vanishing.
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There have been streamers with but in DACs for as long as there have been streamers, at the entry level we have products like the airport express, at the high end we have the Naim and Linn streamers, I have been using a Linn DS for over five years now and it's her to stay for the long term. Standalone DACs are and always have been niche products and I think the will be around for a good while yet.
 
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