A $15k music streamer reviewed on stereophile

[ahofer]

Functionally this appears to do everything my Bluesound Node does, at only 30 times the price.

It appears to do only a subset of the things I can do with a Pi 4 at 150 times the price.

Imagine how little it could do for more? Like, it could be a high end cable.

 

[audio2design]

It appears to do only a subset of the things I can do with a Pi 4 at 150 times the price.

Imagine how little it could do for more? Like, it could be a high end cable.

Imagine on the slight chance, the very slight chance, that power supplies, etc. mattered. Add isolated USB or SPDIF and you still are at only 50x the price . Of course, Pi does not work with a lot of streaming services unfortunately.

 

[cany89]

It is a given and its mostly total bullshit. Use the right dac with impeccable numbers and input isolation and you can throw almost any old shit at it. I have a pi server, a mbp as dedicated server and a 30 year old cd player, they all sound identical into my dac

Local Hifi store insisted mid/high-end CD player with proper cables would be a huge upgrade and much better than my humble MBP + Audirvana with a basic USB cable... I connected the CD player with coax. There was either no difference or just wasn't noticeable. He told me the coax and power cables are sub-par and sent me expensive cables. Hooked them up the veil lifted and the CD player was miles ahead of my streaming system...

P.S. just kidding. There was no difference, I'm going to return all and continue to Rip CDs into FLAC for local storage.

 

[ahofer]

Pi does not work with a lot of streaming services unfortunately.

RopieeXL will solve that problem. Or Volumio. I use Roon (to Ropiee), but my guests can use the Airplay availability of the Pi. If it only had Google Chromecast emulation all would be good with the world.

 

[PierreV]

JVS is the ideal reviewer for expensive pointless devices. You can always rely on him to come up with enthusiastic flowery praise.
We should be happy that the rational stereophile reviewer was spared the inconvenient review this time.

 

[mhardy6647]

Functionally this appears to do everything my Bluesound Node does, at only 30 times the price.

One could identify numerous pairings of automobiles like this, as well.

 

[mhardy6647]

Hooked them up the veil lifted and the CD player was miles ahead of my streaming system...

Jaws were dropped.

 

[Andretti60]

As a sane, objective Kiwi, I would like to apologize to the Fora on this board for my country foisting this over priced device on the world.

hi Peter, you don’t have to apologize. Who should apologize in this thread are the people who made fun of New Zealand.

 

[PierreV]

One could identify numerous pairings of automobiles like this, as well.

Well, not too many pairings at USD/EUR 15000 vs USD/EUR 450000.
Plus, arguably, at least a few significant measurements will differ between those cars.

 

[egellings]

Whew!

 

[ad_fletch]

hi Peter, you don’t have to apologize. Who should apologize in this thread are the people who made fun of New Zealand.

Nah it’s fine, we Kiwis have heard every permutation of sheep joke there is, doesn’t faze us.

It’s a shame this product isn’t priced sensibly though, could give NZ hifi industry a nice boost.

 

[Killingbeans]

Somehow that made me remember that Footroot Flats was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid

 

[Firefly00]

Made in New Zealand, that's the ticket.

Thanks for pointing that out, I’m now embarrassed by my country

 

[Ron Texas]

Thanks for pointing that out, I’m now embarrassed by my country

It's a beautiful country. I was there at the end of 2017.

 

[dlaloum]

Wait, if it's made in New Zealand, wouldn't the Coriolis force have spun all the cable electrons in the wrong direction phase alignment causing an inverse circular polarization? No wonder it takes them 200 hours to get things sorted out again. I bet if they reviewed it in the southern hemisphere with similar planetary alignments, the burn in time would be much less.

What you seem to fail to understand is that Coriolis forces on the cables inside components have an ongoing effect on the sound... this is why Audio components always sound better when listened to in the Antipodes....

The standard audiophile upgrade is to move south....

 

[JSmith]

Footroot Flats was one of my favorite comics when I was a kid

I'm glad some picked up on what I posted, yep, old fan here. Did you ever see the movie length cartoon in 1986?

RIP Murray Ball 1939 - 2017.



JSmith

 

[fragzone]

I thought this might be a good opportunity to ask some basic questions concerning network streamers over DLNA.

Do network streamers that operate on your typical DLNA tech, ever compress the data coming through? I know Apple airplay probably does this.

Are they even capable of dynamically compressing the signal when bandwidth is low, or is it simply a binary outcome, as in, data coming in adequately (and thus bit-perfect) or not (simply nothing plays)?

I remember reading the review for my Yamaha nx-n500 which has network streaming capabilities over both WiFi and Ethernet. The reviewer (6moons) claimed the Ethernet connection was more transparent with better technicalities than the WiFi connection despite ultimately going through identical pathways in the speaker.

 

[JSmith]

The reviewer (6moons) claimed the Ethernet connection was more transparent with better technicalities than the WiFi connection

That doesn't make any sense for numerous reasons... where does the review say this btw?

6moons audioreviews: Yamaha NX-N500

JSmith

 

[001]

This will probably highlight my networking ignorance, but I thought that the TCP/IP stack takes care of ensuring packets arrive 'bit perfect' at their destination. So it should not make a difference. There may be buffering given a high enough load but that is not a feature of data integrity but an inability to transmit data across a given network topology fast enough to cope with transient traffic loads. I don't think I have ever experienced this with audio, only with video streaming.

 

[dougi]

I thought this might be a good opportunity to ask some basic questions concerning network streamers over DLNA.

Do network streamers that operate on your typical DLNA tech, ever compress the data coming through? I know Apple airplay probably does this.

Are they even capable of dynamically compressing the signal when bandwidth is low, or is it simply a binary outcome, as in, data coming in adequately (and thus bit-perfect) or not (simply nothing plays)?

I remember reading the review for my Yamaha nx-n500 which has network streaming capabilities over both WiFi and Ethernet. The reviewer (6moons) claimed the Ethernet connection was more transparent with better technicalities than the WiFi connection despite ultimately going through identical pathways in the speaker.

Sometimes, but it is usually via a DLNA control point/server such as the popular Bubble UPNP. Only generally to convert to a format that the target DLNA renderer will support though if it can't support the source.