The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.
- Thread starter Ed Selley
- Start date
MikeH
Well-Known Member
My buddy is a huge fan of the Chromecast 2 audio. I snagged one for $15 right before they got discontinued. I have a mostly Mac setup across my whole apartment but I have messed with the chromecast a bit. There’s actually an app for Mac that tricks your computer and other devices into thinking chromecast devices are AirPlay devices so I messed with that and Roon a bit together when I had a free Roon trial.
From what I understand, you’ll want to use the optical output into a DAC into your receiver for the best quality audio. The optical output is digital and bypasses the DAC in the chromecast, so you will need a DAC to convert it. If you don’t have a separate DAC, your receiver might convert the signal on that end but it won’t sound as good as a separate DAC most likely.
I believe you are right about streaming direct. It’s streaming from the server, not your phone or other device, so with Tidal or Spotify it will use the higher quality stream. I believe there is a HDR option in the chromecast app too which you should experiment with.
My buddy swears that chromecast is one of the nicer options for the price for streaming. And if you get a few, the multi room option can be really nice since you can group speakers. We have a few google homes and they are useful as we have a lot of smart devices. I want to mess with the chromecast audio more but having mostly iOS devices as well as an Auralic Mini for streaming my FLAC files, I haven’t had much of a need lately to test it more.
Joe Mac got me on the Raspberry Pi with the Hifi hat and I love it. I'm shocked how good it sounds. Mine goes straight into a Marantz PM8006. I got the steel box from hifiberry too, and it looks nice splitting the Vincent Pho8.
Do you have a solid price on the Marantz streamer? I have looked at it but hard for me to justify over the Raspberry Pi. Although the ND8006 is tempting from Safe Sound refurbished on ebay.
If looking purely headphone amp check out Emotiv A-100.
Do you have a solid price on the Marantz streamer? I have looked at it but hard for me to justify over the Raspberry Pi. Although the ND8006 is tempting from Safe Sound refurbished on ebay.
If looking purely headphone amp check out Emotiv A-100.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
they’re great little machines. I’m a huge fan of them, for me it’s €500 and the Aurelic Aries mini and blue sound node 2i before you are bettering them. and they are Roon compatible too if you switch software from volumio to diet pi. If they had supported DSD I’d still be using mine now!
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
I think I'm overthinking this a bit, after reading up a little more and whatnot, I think streaming my digital files from my PC trumps streaming Spotify. In which case an under $200 option is pretty good utilizing Volumio. Here's a question for you @Joe Mac , looking at this I can see there are USB and Ethernet inputs, couldn't really find out if the ports by the RCAs were inputs or outputs.....still thinking ahead for possible Spotify/Chromecast streaming. I use Spotify for sampling new music, so it's not a dealbreaker.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
so the raspberry pi is the computer. It talks to your network and processes the files. The hifiberry boards clips on top and is a reclocker and a DAC (DAC+ pro) that attaches to your amp by RCA or just a reclocker (DIGI + pro) that attaches to a DAC by either optical or digital coaxial. These ones just have audio out analogue/digital.
For file music on a computer you can either mount a usb hard drive, a NAS or a network enabled file on a PC (the PC has to be switched on to access in this scenario) containing your music to it. You can then control this through the volumio interface. If the device you use to store the files is airplay compatible you can also pass them direct to the volumio using it and bypass their interface.
For Spotify you enable the Spotify connect plug in and the device will appear as volumio on your Spotify app and you can pick it as your output and work from there managing the playback and song selection in the Spotify app.
AnthonyI
Well-Known Member
I might send you a diagram over the weekend just to make sure I got this right in my head lol
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
no worries! Here’s a few pictures of my first one of them with the dac +. the digi + looks almost identical but instead of R&L RCA ports it has an optical and a coaxial port.
You can see the pi on the bottom as the computer and the DAC board sitting on top having clipped into the pins on the pi.
Slimwhit33
Well-Known Member
I have recently paid off the CC that I use for my audio purchases, and would like to up my digital game.
I currently play Tidal through my iPhone 10 into a USB converter to my Marantz Dac1 which is connected to my Luxman L550axII. I also have an Onkyo CD player attached to the DAC. That is the extent of what I listen to on digital.
By doing research on my own, all I have really gotten myself is a headache. I have looked at DACS (Luxman DA-06 and DA250, Chord Hugo TT2, Mytek Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge among them), and SACD Player/DAC's (Yamaha CD-S3000 and 2100, Marantz SA10 and SA-KI Ruby, Luxman D-05u).
I currently own no SACD's, but have wanted to try them.
What I envision using the digital for more however is listening to Tidal Masters. I could burn the few hundred CD's onto a laptop, which I would need to get, but not critical.
I am looking for the best way to do that for around $5k and whatever I buy has to be available at Music Direct, Crutchfield or Upscale Audio.. or anywhere else that takes Sony Cards if you know somewhere that I don't.
I'm not locked into anything that I have mentioned previously, so please, tell me what you would do to get the best sound!
I currently play Tidal through my iPhone 10 into a USB converter to my Marantz Dac1 which is connected to my Luxman L550axII. I also have an Onkyo CD player attached to the DAC. That is the extent of what I listen to on digital.
By doing research on my own, all I have really gotten myself is a headache. I have looked at DACS (Luxman DA-06 and DA250, Chord Hugo TT2, Mytek Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge among them), and SACD Player/DAC's (Yamaha CD-S3000 and 2100, Marantz SA10 and SA-KI Ruby, Luxman D-05u).
I currently own no SACD's, but have wanted to try them.
What I envision using the digital for more however is listening to Tidal Masters. I could burn the few hundred CD's onto a laptop, which I would need to get, but not critical.
I am looking for the best way to do that for around $5k and whatever I buy has to be available at Music Direct, Crutchfield or Upscale Audio.. or anywhere else that takes Sony Cards if you know somewhere that I don't.
I'm not locked into anything that I have mentioned previously, so please, tell me what you would do to get the best sound!
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displayname
Well-Known Member
I'll leave the actual setup to the Pi folks, but I did want to possibly help clarify some of the digital stuff (maybe I'll just make it worse, who knows).
So you know in the vinyl chain, in order, you have...
1 - the record
2 - the turntable
3 - the phonostage
4 - the amp
To make the digital chain a little less confusing, I'll compare it to the vinyl chain.
1 - the file (it can come from a computer, server, streaming service, USB, CD, SACD etc)
2 - The transport (this isn't like the turntable in any sense from an engineering standpoint, but it works for this analogy. This is how you get your files to a place where you can get them ready for actual audio. This can be a computer plugged into a DAC, a streamer, a CD player, etc. Many many many "transports" also have DACs built in, and just like turntables, those DACs are of varying quality.)
3 - the DAC (again, terrible engineering analogy, but run with me. The DAC is kind of like the phonostage because even if you have the best files and the best transport - aka best turntable and cart - they do nothing without a DAC -aka phono- to "process" the sound. You also have to consider your DAC for your file types. You certainly aren't there yet, but it's good to know.)
4 - the amp - this is where everything else is the same.
So back to your original statement about digital files on a PC vs Spotify. It all depends.
Spotify at it's best is 320k. Consider this a pressing from United. It gets the job done, usually it doesn't sound too bad, but you know that 9.9 times out of 10 that a MoFi pressing is going to be better.
Now files on your computer are going to be all over the place depending on where they come from. CD rips will be higher than 320k. But do you remember the Napster/LimeWire days? Most of that stuff was 320 AT BEST. A lot of those might have been 160k or lower. 160k is also the audio used by most video streaming services - FYI. But there's the thing, if you're downloading lossless or high res, they should be way better.
Lossless "starts" at 1411K, which is CD quality. Consider this a regular MoFi release. (again, terrible analogies if you're looking at it from engineering). But there are even higher res options, like PCM and DSD. Those are like MoFi Onestep, or actually more often considered equal to a reel to reel. (People will argue about that forever, stick with my analogies here as a concept).
So again, back to your original statement. If your computer has MP3s which are also 320, then Spotify will be basically the same, and a CD or lossless file will be better.
But if you start streaming Tidal which is 1411 and comparing it to MP3 on your computer, Tidal should be better.
So it all comes back to the source. You have to know what file types you're working with. But also, don't get too hung up on file type in my opinion. DSD kind of becomes it's own hobby like vinyl. And I've heard some tracks on Spotify sound great. That comes from having a good DAC with a good analog stage. To an extent, the DAC is like the cartridge and the phonostage. If you have a United Pressing on a nice turntable with a nice cart and nice phonostage, it will certainly sound better than an LP60 with a stock cart and built in phono. (this is what the Google home internal DAC could be compared to). And a MoFi one-step can be played via an LP60, and that would be like running a lossless file through the Google home using it's internal DAC. It might sound better than an MP3, but it won't ever sound as good as it could.
Was that helpful, or did I make it worse?
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
so sacds are a pig. The propriety encoding means that most players will only output the CD layer digitally through coax, they force you to use the in built dac for them and output analogue. The few exceptions to this (from the super high end likes of ps audio and emotiva) tend to use their own i2s over hdmi standards so you need a compatible dac.
what might be the case if you are going that high end is that the DAC built into, say the luxman is better than the marantz one you have and so connecting directly to your amp fully balanced may sound better anyway.
From what I remember of both that marantz and luxman you’ve mentioned they allow external devices to use their dac so you could connect a network streamer like the ares mini, node 2i or even one of those pi with a digi + pro hat homebrew jobs to it using a coax cable.
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displayname
Well-Known Member
This is a fun budget!
Ok, so I'm going to say let's start with your primary source stuff, the streaming end. I would focus on a streaming transport (no internal DAC) and then get an external DAC. There are killer DAC/Streamer combos, but this limits your future upgrade path, which I never like to do. What if someday you want to further up the DAC game you know? lol
I'd plan $4k for this section.
Streamer - I'd go with a Lumin U1 Mini ($2k)
DAC - Pick your flavor of choice in the $2k range. I'd look at Mytek Brooklyn, Bechmark DA3, Luxman has one in this range, Chord options. I haven't heard the PrimaLuna
If you really want a one box streamer/DAC, I personally would only strongly consider Lumin or Auralic, and I'd likely favor Auralic. Saves on budget, limits on future upgrades.
That leaves you a grand to figure out an SACD player. Music Direct has a few options in this price range right now as open box. Personally I have been curious about SACD, but I always hold off because the barrier to entry to fairly high. The players are expensive, and so are the discs. It's enough of an expense where I kind of say I can only support vinyl OR SACD. Which is why I opted to stick with regular CDs on my digital end.
Now, let's throw out the Sony Card restriction just for fun. Only doing this because China-fi brands are actually KILLING it in DAC space right now. Denafrips and Holo get a ton of press. I've also heard the LKS MH-DA004 and it sounds killer for under 2K. These also bring the HDMI IS2 inputs, which have been pretty consistently praised as a superior connection. All of these have great options in your price range. I also really have enjoyed every North Star DAC that I've heard.
Slimwhit33
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the reply!
So with a streamer like the Node 2i, if I hooked that up to say one of the Luxman DACS, should I expect the sound quality with Tidal to be similar/better than if I connected a laptop to the same DAC and played Tidal through that? And I notice there is no screen on it, I assume there is a mobile App of some kind to control Tidal?
Sorry if these are dumb questions...
Slimwhit33
Well-Known Member
Thanks so much! I'll take a look at these combos.. I'm thinking that I'll probably skip the SACD for now.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
not necessarily actually. If you are happy to immobilise the laptop by permanently having a usb cable attached to it while streaming then technically there shouldn’t be an issue. Laptops are actually excellent streaming devices because most have solid state hard drives and are fanless so they are actually very quiet.
the reason such streamer box devices are so popular is that they make things that bit more free. You’re not tied to the laptop that’s tied to the usb cable. that box is tied to the stereo and you can be anywhere on network and control it. They get better again if you are minded go multizone and start to add smart speakers etc from the same ecosystem into other rooms.
displayname
Well-Known Member
I'm in no rush, speakers are next on the list. But if I was doing digital right now, I would get the Cambridge CXC Series 1 on closeout pricing (which I actually have coming) and then the Lumin U1 Mini probably paired with a Denafrips Pontus or used North Star. I know I like the North Star sound, but I'm vary curious about Denafrips and I know they hold their value like crazy for now if I wanted to move it.
CXC closeout - $400
U1 Mini - $2K
DAC - $2Kish.
It hits everything you want expect SACD. And from there, you'd really only need to upgrade the DAC in the future unless you wanted to make a BIG jump on the CD player.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
I’m guessing you’ll have to connect any sacds direct to the amp analogue and miss out the DAC for them? I can’t remember a Cambridge Audio player that passed out the sacd digitally?
i would really like the ps audio direct steam sacd before they run out (they were using oppo drives and have run out of stock. Once they’re sold that’s it for sacd, they’ll be replacing it with a new cd only player) but it’s just so much money. It’s a pity seeing as I have the i2s via hdmi port on my dac/preamp.
displayname
Well-Known Member
The CXC is a pure CD transport, nothing else. So my system is not cable of SACD currently. That's why I was talking about the barrier of entry. I have one or two SACD hybrid discs, but the cost of SACD players (even used) just pushed me away from really giving them a fair shake. If I really want to try DSD, I'd likely do it via download/streaming. But it's not a priority for me at the moment. The wallet has limits, lol.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
haha yeah sorry I misunderstood you! I’ve kinda always had an sacd player (by coincidence rather than design) and digital was my first collection. I actually have some single layer sacds as well as hybrids and they sound great so it’s something that I think i will always want in my system. For now I’m making do with analogue from the Sony for them (and digital from normal cds) but I would love a player with a ps audio spec i2s over hdmi just to finish off my system. I don’t want it £6000 bad though!
who knows maybe In the future I’ll pick up a direct steam sacd second hand for a more reasonable price! If I was buying one with the dac built in and had a big budget the luxman ds6-u would probably be where I’d be going, I’d say it’d make toast of my dac, and it wasn’t cheap!