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Best low-cost streamer?

bmalec

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Quick background: a few months ago I figured it would be nice to have music in my home office, so I bought a bunch of cheap stuff and pieced together a 2 channel stereo:

Elac Debut B6.2
Fosi TDA7498E desktop amp
Arylic S10 streamer/preamp

I plugged everything in and... I was absolutely blow away by how incredible it sounded for a $400 outlay.

Now I've fallen into the "this is great, but how can I make it better?" rabbit hole. For speakers, I'll eventually upgrade to Elac Uni-Fis, I'm really a fan of the Andrew Jones voicing. I want to replace the amp with a Aiyima A07, but my gut feeling is that I probably won't be able to hear a difference between the Fosi amp and the Aiyima.

That leaves the streamer: the Arylic stream has pretty bad numbers so my first though was to upgrade that with a Bluesound Node 2i. But after reading the reviews here--I'm glad I didn't fork out the money for the Node 2i, which would have costed more than the rest of my stereo combined.

If you were in my position: what would be the most logical upgrade?
 

Chrispy

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Streaming from the internet or your own content? I doubt the electronics change would yield much except in perhaps different connectivity/options along those lines. Not expecting a difference except for amp capabilities (rather than some vague signature some users may assign) is a good start. Generally when I want an increase in audio quality I look to speakers/room.
 
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bmalec

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Mainly rips of my CDs, using AirPlay because it's convenient for me.
 

Beershaun

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Since it's your home office, if you have a mac or PC, you could run a USB cable from your computer to a topping e30 and use your computer as the streamer. It's the most powerful option that doesn't require more money and plenty of options to play with. Like setting up equalization and room correction on your computer. Plus you can use the native apps for your music services directly on your computer. Which generally have the best user interface.
 
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Ralph_Cramden

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Replace the Arylic with a Raspberry Pi Zero running piCorePlayer (which supports AirPlay), with a Topping D10s DAC (which can be directly powered by the Zero).

Use this cable to power the D10s from the Pi Zero.

Later, add a Pi 4 with piCorePlayer running LMS to access a NAS and multiple online services like Qobuz.
 

Shives

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Is there something that’s all built ready to go with the Pi route? To get roon, and my own music plus.. and hook to a dac of my choice? Thanks
 

Shives

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Actually looking at doing the pi with the 7” screen. I watched a couple of the build videos. Not bad at all.
8mb pi 7” lcd with pro cases. And then software and SD card. Not bad! Thanks!! And that site looks like it has some nice products!! Thanks very much!
 
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