Chromecast vs Mac

inbox4

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I currently listen to Tidal and my ripped CD collection via Audirvana on a headless Mac Mini.

I find controlling the Mac a pain and I’m wondering about swapping it for a chromecast.

I believe the chromecast is meant to be lossless. Is there any reason a chromecast (perhaps through an optical switch) wouldn’t sound as good as a Mac running Audirvana connected via USB?

Thanks for any comments.
 

newlash09

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The chromecast is great. And provided you stream from your mac in the same resolution as supported by the chromecast, there should be no difference.

There are folks using chromecast to stream to devialet amps via optical, and claim it to be sounding superior to AIR. That's a pretty tall claim, as the devialet AIR tech as per reviews , sounds at par with some top disc transports.

All said, there is a hell lot of tech crammed into the chromecast. And apple could have sold the same for a few hundred pounds without raising any eye brows.

Now to be more specific, I use CCA to stream into a chord2qute ( older gen of your qutest) , and find the results to be great.
 

Infiniteloop

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I wouldn’t underestimate how good Audirvana is at improving the sound from standard iTunes. It’s also great for upsampling and handles DSD and MOQ.

Why not use the remote App for your phone to control your Mac?

You can also stream from your Mac to another in a different room over Wi-fi and again use the remote App. It’s easy and seamless.
 

Strictly Stereo

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inbox4 said:
I currently listen to Tidal and my ripped CD collection via Audirvana on a headless Mac Mini.

I find controlling the Mac a pain and I’m wondering about swapping it for a chromecast.

I believe the chromecast is meant to be lossless. Is there any reason a chromecast (perhaps through an optical switch) wouldn’t sound as good as a Mac running Audirvana connected via USB?

Thanks for any comments.

For £30 I'd say that the Chromecast Audio is worth a punt, but my money would be on Audirvana, assuming that you have a decent DAC with asynchronous USB or some other jitter mitigation tech onboard. When I last tried the Chromecast Audio, there were some pretty serious stability issues using Apple products, but that was a while back and I gather that those have mostly been resolved now.
 

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