nerwork player or laptop for streaming?

[Gok]

Hello guys,

I need an opinion from the community about whether there is something to be gained on sound quality or ease of use if I stream music from dedicsted music streamer instead of laptop.

My current setup:
Old laptop - usb cable - active speakers

External HDD is connected to the laptop for playback of the locally stored music with foobar. Foobar is controlled with foobar controller app from my smartphone.

For deezer, tunein radio etc, I use chrome remote desktop app on my smartphone.

Speakers are Nubert Nupro A-200 with built-in asynchronous dac for the usb input, plus they have optical, coaxial and analog input.

Am I missing anything for not using a dedicated streamer?

 

[Gok]

Anyone with some practical experience on this subject?

 

[iQ Speakers]

Comes down to convenience and personel preferances. I use a streamer beacuse its neat and easy, the CXN has upsampling on board which works very well and improves sound. Im sure the DAC in your speakers is very good. One simple way would be to get a Sonos Connect you could do away with the laptop and its instant a breeze to use, far more elagent. As for sound i dont think you will hear much differance as you will be using the speakers internal DAC,

 

[Gok]

Thanks for the reply!

Does anyone here made any practical comparisions with laptop vs hifi streamer?

 

[cheeseboy]

in answer to your original question, no you wouldn't be missing out on anything from using a dedicated streamer. Thing is, a dedicated streamer is just a cut down pc anyways, so unless you need/want a single headless box, then to be honest, I wouldn't bother.

 

[Gok]

Thanks for the reply.
I think I will save a few bucks for music, since I also belive that asynchronous USB (where the clock in the active speakers is in charge of timing) will always have the same properties no matter the input (pc, streamer, cd player).