Streamer for my system

[Jelle]

Hi all,

I'm in the market for a streamer. I ripped my cd's to a external hard disk (ALAC), i have a tidal HiFi subscription and i want to be able to control the streamer with my phone/tablet. Should have WiFi on board since the router is on the other side of the room and i don't want to mess with a long cable.
The bluesound Node looks like a good candidate, any users here that are satisfied with the SC? Are there other brands with a similar product the you recommend?

Budget: under 1000€
system: Yamaha A-S2000/CD-S2000 - Dali Rubicon 2

Jelle

 

[gowiththeflow]

Auralic, the makers of the high end Aries streamers, have just released the Aries Mini at a very affordable £375. It handles every format, including quad rate dsd & dsx.

The mini sized unit is quite small, but has internal space for the optional fitting of an on-board 2.5" HDD or SSD drive, so your stored music can be stored right there.

The more expensive Aries have a very good reputation for being at the leading edge in streaming technology and also in excellent sound quality. The Aries Mini is therefore creating quite a lot of interest at the moment, especially at such an affordable price.

http://www.audioemotion.co.uk/auralic-aries-mini-wireless-streaming-node-5371-p.asp

http://www.iglooaudio.co.uk/product/auralic-aries-mini/?gclid=CJDtmp3OwMgCFckSwwodYC8Oxg

zzz

 

[Jelle]

That Auralic mini looks promissing, great bang for the buck. I will demo this next week in Oslo.

 

[CnoEvil]

I'm going to put forward the Linn Sneaky, which may not fit your brief.

First of all, it's over budget at £1k.

Secondly, it is not wireless....but you can use one of those jobbies that plugs into a socket and uses the mains wiring of your house. This works, provided you have spare sockets beside your NAS and your streamer.

I love the way it sounds and if you can stretch your budget, it is certainly worth hearing.

 

[Al ears]

That Auralic mini looks promissing, great bang for the buck. I will demo this next week in Oslo.

Sure does, I am seriously looking at one in place of a NAS that I had intended for Christmas.

 

[SteveR750]

How does it compare to the Cambridge audio cxn? I've heard the latter and was very impressed with it sonically and ease of use.

 

[Al ears]

How does it compare to the Cambridge audio cxn? I've heard the latter and was very impressed with it sonically and ease of use.

No idea as its only just come on the market and it's aimed at a completely different audience. There's no inbuilt display for a start.... but it's a fair bit cheaper. Auralic are not reknown for making duff products.

 

[p_m_brown]

I am also looking at streamers at the moment to see if I can beat the SQ from my Sonos connect and dac and will be demoing an Auralic Aries at home in a couple of weeks. I will also see if I can bag the little one too!

 

[Jelle]

I have the aries mini now a week or so and i couldn't be more satisfied.

I compared the bluesound Node 2, the Aries Mini and since i was very concernded about the software on a streamer i also included the Sonos.

The Sonos did a good job and the app is a joy to use but it missed some detail and lacked bass compared to the node. The bluesound is a nice little box (much better shaped then the first version) and altough the software looked a bit old-fashioned it worked flawless.
In came the aurilac and the sound difference was immense. Even blind i had no problems to take out the aries mini. A very well controlled bass, trebles were much more fluent and it had a more 'natural' sound to it, compared to the node2.
The ipad app works very good, the tidal interface is actually better then tidal's own and the Linn-songcast functionality is brilliant. The android app is basic and lacks tidal and internetradio functionality.
I hope they come with a desktop app soon.

I wanted to compare the aries mini with the aries+vega, just for the fun of it but it became rather busy in the shop and they knew i wasn't going to spend that much money so they kindly asked if they could do that on a later date.

A week after my purchase the price went up with 1000nok (75GBP) so i got a pretty good deal.

Highly recommended.

 

[barneybear]

google chromecast audio and add a DAC? the google device is 30 quid.