Already have a good external dac. So what streamer to stram music from my library

[kingsap]

Just read alot of thread about streaming and wants to learn more. Now i have a mac mini connecting to a dac ( nad m51). I loved the sound of the dac and most streamers have already have an internal dac. So i would not need a stramer with a good internal dac as it would be connected to the m51.

Sso what streamers would be recommended? Budget is below 1000 if possible and how much benefit would it have over a mac directly to my dac?

ill use the streamer just to stream from my music library, so no online radio and spotify and so on. Purely to stream musci from my harddisk. Also needsto be connected to an external dac nad m51 and to another amp

needs to play flac and wav files

thanks all and all advices will be much appreciated

 

[Ajani]

IMO, there would be no sonic advantage to using a streamer instead of the MAC. The reason to use one would be because you find a streamer more convenient or you just don't want your computer in the same room as your HiFi...

 

[matt49]

IMO, there would be no sonic advantage to using a streamer instead of the MAC. The reason to use one would be because you find a streamer more convenient or you just don't want your computer in the same room as your HiFi...

+1

 

[Scissor_digits]

If you're storing all of your music on your Mac then it in effect is your streamer and as already stated there would be no real benefit in buying a separate streamer as you would still have to leave to Mac switched on to access the music.

 

[Ajpmuk]

So you're saying that a Mac hard disk connected directly to an external DAC would have no sonice advantage over high end streaming device such as Linn or Naim? Surely there is more to a streaming device than a DAC?

 

[ifor]

You might find this interesting.

http://www.sonicstudio.com/amarra/howtobuildaserver.php

 

[tino]

Have you listened to the audio quality through the Nad M51's HDMI input? If it's any good, you can use all sorts of devices with HDMI and media streaming capability e.g. PCs, Playstations, set-top media streaming boxes etc.

 

[BigH]

So you're saying that a Mac hard disk connected directly to an external DAC would have no sonice advantage over high end streaming device such as Linn or Naim? Surely there is more to a streaming device than a DAC?

Yes I don't get why people buy streamers apart from looks and convenience.

 

[matt49]

So you're saying that a Mac hard disk connected directly to an external DAC would have no sonice advantage over high end streaming device such as Linn or Naim? Surely there is more to a streaming device than a DAC?

There is more to a streamer than just a DAC (assuming the streamer has a DAC in the first place), but arguably not much more, or at least not much if you're talking about hardware.

A streamer needs a power supply, like any other device, though its power draw should be pretty low. It needs a clock (assuming it's not asynchronous). It needs the circuit boards on which the streaming software sits. It needs casework. It needs terminals for its connection to the media storage and the DAC.

All of this can be put together fairly cheaply. A dedicated Mac or PC or NAS drive can in theory perform just as well as a high-end Naim or Linn streamer, and for a fraction of the price.

Streaming software is another matter altogether. Most software has all the basic functions you could want, though some functions, such as multi-room streaming, work better on some steamers than others. And IMO streamers do differ quite a lot in terms their user interface. IME the best streamer interface is Sonos.

Matt

 

[Hi-FiOutlaw]

Do you have a ipad, or android equivalent?