Importance of equipment in a streaming setup?

[plastic penguin]

751BD. Can you see a pattern developing?

You're moving to Cambridge?

Nah, he's staying put in Teddington... :wave:

 

[moon]

Whilst we are on Cambridge Audio, when did they slip a USB B input on there 651A amplifier! how sneaky. Is that the new version.

 

[John Duncan]

751BD. Can you see a pattern developing?

You're moving to Cambridge?

Or Southwark, which is where they're based :-D

 

[John Duncan]

[UNPUBLISHED]

751BD. Can you see a pattern developing?

You're moving to Cambridge?

Or Southwark, which is where they're based :-D

 

[byakuya83]

I hadn't appreciated that these streamers had a DAC built-in, I figured that was handled externally or by the amplifier. I thought they were merely moving a digital file from one location to another.

Essentially it's the DAC and the quality of the outputs that has the greatest impact on price then - as feature-wise most streamers seem to offer the same functions...am I close?

I'm trying to figure this out because when looking at brands such as Linn, Cyrus and Naim you could be paying anywhere from 2 to 8 times as much when compared with other 5 start products from the likes of Marantz, Cambridge Audio and Logitech.

 

[byakuya83]

Clearly everybody needs to read this month's big question! I'll say no more....

Are you referring to the January issue? If so, which page?

 

[AnotherJoe]

If you push music from one device to another (eg Apple Airplay or Microsoft PlayTo) then over wireless you will almost certainly lose quality as the protocol used is based on RTSP/UDP which does not recover errors (it assumes successful delivery and no errors)

The better method is for a streamer to pull the files from a NAS or HD using TCP/IP (which has full error recovery/resend) and play them locally . This is the way most other streamers work using DLNA. The downside is the streamer needs to have the correct codec support.

 

[spockfish]

Your pretty close. As I stated in my first post, it's albout the digital-to-analog conversion. Future wise a Squeezebox can easily keep up with the most expensives ones out there, with maybe one exception: the Squeezebox goes 'only' up until 96/24, where a Naim for example can handle 192/24.

But again: with respect to usability the Squeezebox can have all DLNA-based streamers out there. And if you're combining it with a proper DAC you have one hell of a streaming solution!

Regards H

 

[amcluesent]

>as feature-wise most streamers seem to offer the same functions<

Hmm, I'd say they're actually different in what they offer but often reviewers are missing these distinctions as they are just copying from the vendors' electronic press pack (EPP).