Streaming

[chris_bates1974]

I'm not sure whether I fully understand the whole streaming thing. At the moment, I'm using Apple Music through iPhone and iPad, and the hifi as in my signature, just connected with a jack to phono cable.

what I'd like to know is how does this tie in with a streamer and NAS drive set-up, and what would I need to get? not even a little bit interested in multi room capability. I keep changing my mind about how stuff would connect up as am just not sure - would it just utilise my current amp, for example?

cheers!

 

[splasher]

Streaming is the term used when music is sent in real time over a network. So you may be streaming when you use Apple Music (if you need to be online to play a song then the song is not downloaded to your device and hence you're streaming it from the apple server when you play it).

The two quality issues you have with your setup is the fact that you're using Apple music which is a compressed format to make the streaming demand smaller, and your sending the music from you idevice from the headphone jack. If you only ever plan to get your music from a streaming source, the first issue can be improved by going to someone like Tidal that stream at full CD quality. I think Apple have plans for this in the future but I'm not sure. If you wanted to use a NAS to improve quality, you'd have to think about buying the music, either as CD and ripping it in a lossless format (FLAC and ALAC being the most popular and ALAC being compatible with your idevices) or as a high res download which allows you to go even better quality than CD.

Your second quality issue is that you're using your idevice to run the music from digital to analogue and then using your hifi just to make it louder. By buying a hifi box with a Digital to analogue converter in in (DAC) you get hifi quality conversion as well. This can be in the form of just a DAC that you push your music through from a digital source like your idevices or a laptop, or it can be a Network Player that looks at your Network for sources of music, like a NAS, and pulls the track you select down. In most cases you can download an app to your idevice and use it as a graphical remote control for the player. Most players can also act as a DAC if you want to push your music to it and some have AirPlay to allow your idevice to connect wirelessly (I use this for iplayer radio catchup).

Take a look at the Cambridge Audio CXN. I'm not recommending it per se but it has a decent set of features and understanding it will give you and idea of what you want. I guess the next thing, in you case, would be to look at the Cirrus range, as they do DACs and Network Players.

 

[iMark]

About 6 years ago we decided to rip all our CDs and music DVDs to a hard drive and manage our music collection from iTunes on my Mac. We first had the Mac connected directly to the stereo about 10 meters from the stereo with RCA cable but we had all sorts of trouble with groundloop hum. This is a common problem in NL when a (stereo) receiver is connected to both a computer and FM cable. We had already been looking into buying an Airport Express for holiday travel (to set up a WiFi network when only ethernet was available) so we decided to buy one. Streaming from the computer to the stereo now worked without hum. A year later we bought a Cambridge Audio DACMagic to get better sound from the DAC.

An Airport Express would be really useful in your setup because you can stream directly from an iPhone or iPad to the stereo. You could even put your entire music collection on a hard drive connected and use the iPhone or iPad as a remote control for the iTunes collection. We find it really comfortable to sit on the couch with the iPad and control the music. You can also stream Spotify or other services from the iPhone or iPad. The DAC in the Airport Express is not top notch but you could always buy a seperate DAC (with optical Toslink) and connect the Airport Express with mini-Toslink to Toslink cable to the DAC.

 

[kmlav]

I have a Cyrus set up with a streamer but to be honest I mostly use spotify premium sent to a pre DAC QX via USB which is great for every day use. Tidal is better sq however I prefer the spotify selections.

Doing it this way will be loads better than your current set up and won't break the bank.

There are loads of very nice DAC units out there for not much cash , in the office I use one of the little arcam units which I have tested in the main set up and tbh there is not much in it. They are also very small so won't add much more hifi clutter.

 

[tino]

I'm not sure whether I fully understand the whole streaming thing. At the moment, I'm using Apple Music through iPhone and iPad, and the hifi as in my signature, just connected with a jack to phono cable.

what I'd like to know is how does this tie in with a streamer and NAS drive set-up, and what would I need to get? not even a little bit interested in multi room capability. I keep changing my mind about how stuff would connect up as am just not sure - would it just utilise my current amp, for example?

cheers!

You are already using your phone/tablet as a streamer and the music is being streamed from Apple Music from an external network (the internet). You could also use a PC or dedicated streaming device to do this but currently there are no dedicated streamers that can access Apple Music directly, unlike competitor services like Spotify, Deezer, Tidal etc. which are included into some standalone streamers.

To connect a streamer to your hifi with analogue inputs, you can use a bit or wire (as you have done), use a DAC to convert digital output into an analogue output, or stream the music indirectly from your phone across a local network e.g. using Apple AirPlay and convert to analogue using a DAC. You can sometimes bypass the DAC completely if you hifi accepts a digital input.

If you want to stream your own digital music files in addition to using Apple Music you can do this using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) which stores your music files and connects to a local network in your house (wired or wireless). These files can be accessed by any streamer (phone, tablet, PC, dedicated device) on the same network , and in some cases the NAS itself can also act as a streamer.

The are a million and one ways to create a streaming setup, the choice is yours in terms of where the components all live i.e. digital music source (files or music service), a network, some form of digital to analogue conversion, amplification, speaker. You can put all of these in one box, or scatter them around in several different boxes. There are many pros and cons to each approach.

 

[chris_bates1974]

Thanks everyone, I get it now.... Looks like my best first option is going to be to stick a DAC in there, judging what everyone has said against what I want to do long-term with the set-up.... May even look at a DAC-pre arrangement.

Although, I think more spending on the HIFI may be a little further down the list of prioritites than I would like it to be!!!

Cheers...