Jan,
I have no first hand experience (no desire for a streamer), but a friend has a Linn Sneaky for MANY years.
I have only heard good things.
Selekt DSM | Network Music Players | Linn USA
Patrick
I have no first hand experience (no desire for a streamer), but a friend has a Linn Sneaky for MANY years.
I have only heard good things.
Selekt DSM | Network Music Players | Linn USA
Patrick
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Sneaky is not produced anymore and current models start at 4.760 €, This seems not to fit the bill of "good not expensive".
I say SB Touch again. Rock solid - measures well. Wired and WiFi. Check used as out of production.
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Marvelous device introduced in 2011 so true guerrilla hardware. LMS has been EOL'ed on Synology NAS devices because of Perl blah blah (this is a serious drawback)... Devices start to go defective, plastic parts deteriorate. Mediocre built in DAC so only usable via coax SPDIF.
No comparison to recent/modern streamers. I compared, still like the Touch but its days seem over.
Till approx. 1000 Euro: what about Bluesound Node (2021), new Primary NP5 V2, Lindemann Limetree? Since the AKM disaster many designs have been changed not coincidentally including MQA playback (FWIW).
No comparison to recent/modern streamers. I compared, still like the Touch but its days seem over.
Till approx. 1000 Euro: what about Bluesound Node (2021), new Primary NP5 V2, Lindemann Limetree? Since the AKM disaster many designs have been changed not coincidentally including MQA playback (FWIW).
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The Limetree... You could say you built it yourself... and people would believe you 😀 Don't underestimate Herr Lindemann however. Not Chinese but German design so tüchtig. Outperforms the outdated Auralic Aries Mini.
The NP5 MK1 is not bad either as it has the AKM chips.
The NP5 MK1 is not bad either as it has the AKM chips.
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I'm a little late to the discussion but I thought I'd drop a few recommendations. When I think of "good and not expensive streamers" Allo bubbles to the top.
If you already have a USB DAC that you'd like to use the USB Bridge Signature is a great option. It provides a clean USB connection to a Raspberry Pi compute board.
USBridge Sig - Ultra low noise RPI
If you prefer using a SPDIF input on your DAC then the DigiOne or DigiOne Signature is a good choice.
DigiOne SPDIF Output
DigiOne Signature Clean Power SPDIF Out
If you need a DAC and you are looking for what I consider the best "bang for the buck" have a look at the BOSS. If your system is a little light in the bass regions the BOSS may correct that for you with it's super cap technology.
BOSS I2S DAC v 1.2
From there you can get creative with power supplies and other tweaks.
Finally, my OS of choice for the RPI is MoOde. It's super easy to set up, sounds great and it's FREE. (They take donations if you in a position to do so.)
If you already have a USB DAC that you'd like to use the USB Bridge Signature is a great option. It provides a clean USB connection to a Raspberry Pi compute board.
USBridge Sig - Ultra low noise RPI
If you prefer using a SPDIF input on your DAC then the DigiOne or DigiOne Signature is a good choice.
DigiOne SPDIF Output
DigiOne Signature Clean Power SPDIF Out
If you need a DAC and you are looking for what I consider the best "bang for the buck" have a look at the BOSS. If your system is a little light in the bass regions the BOSS may correct that for you with it's super cap technology.
BOSS I2S DAC v 1.2
From there you can get creative with power supplies and other tweaks.
Finally, my OS of choice for the RPI is MoOde. It's super easy to set up, sounds great and it's FREE. (They take donations if you in a position to do so.)
OK - an other one: get a used Mac Mini from say 2014-15 (1-300€?) with a SSD disk in it. Wonderful, sleek, small, silent HW. It has a good s/pdif output and it can run a plethora of software to your taste. It can also host CamillaDSP which will give you all that you want in terms of EQ, delay and what not.
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It does have optical SPDIF AFAIK which barely counts as "good". In most devices Toslink is the weakest link. Now one can try to solve that later on but it seems more effective not to tolerate it at the source. Thankfully it has USB to compensate.
All the goodness of cheap/recycling aside, IMO it can be rewarding to have focus on audio specific developed hardware with careful design on low jitter, low noise, separate LDO regulators for sections, quality internal DAC (or is an internal DAC not a goal?), Tidal/Spotify/Deezer etc. for those that like subscription models, Roon capable etc. Still the older Mac Mini can be a good device to fiddle around with. It has the looks.
The audio specific Primare NP5 can be found for 300 Euro....
All the goodness of cheap/recycling aside, IMO it can be rewarding to have focus on audio specific developed hardware with careful design on low jitter, low noise, separate LDO regulators for sections, quality internal DAC (or is an internal DAC not a goal?), Tidal/Spotify/Deezer etc. for those that like subscription models, Roon capable etc. Still the older Mac Mini can be a good device to fiddle around with. It has the looks.
The audio specific Primare NP5 can be found for 300 Euro....
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You can get a brand new Raspberry Pi Zero of $5 or a Raspberry Pi Zero with wifi for $10. A second hand Raspberry Pi 1B is about $10.
Everyone has a spare PSU and SD card lying around.
These make "good" streamers.
Everyone has a spare PSU and SD card lying around.
These make "good" streamers.
Maybe high res/DSD playback is one of the demands. And fast response to commands. Low jitter? Given all the drawbacks indicated earlier in this thread it seems things start to become interesting at RPi 3B.
The original question was about a ready made good but not expensive streamer to a maximum of 1000 Euro too. I am wishing for RPi free threads so let's hope an RPi subforum will happen anytime soon where RPi owners can advise to other RPi owners to buy more RPi 🙂 You never have enough RPi, you never can force others enough to use RPi and you should take any opportunity to speak of RPi regardless of the subject and this repeatedly. Ah the RPi, a rubber boat that with all added bells and whistles sails the oceans like a Titanic when seen through the eyes of RPi owners. Then the iceberg...of true audio devices.
The original question was about a ready made good but not expensive streamer to a maximum of 1000 Euro too. I am wishing for RPi free threads so let's hope an RPi subforum will happen anytime soon where RPi owners can advise to other RPi owners to buy more RPi 🙂 You never have enough RPi, you never can force others enough to use RPi and you should take any opportunity to speak of RPi regardless of the subject and this repeatedly. Ah the RPi, a rubber boat that with all added bells and whistles sails the oceans like a Titanic when seen through the eyes of RPi owners. Then the iceberg...of true audio devices.
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As far as I know, if corruption is detected, the USB controller will drop the packet and the host will have to re-send it - unless it is an isochronous type endpoint. For isochronous endpoints, corrupt packets are just dropped and not re-sent.
Jan, CRC can be in principle used for error correction, but it would be a pretty inefficient method. Should error correction be in scope, a much better algorithm would be used (like Forward Error Correction (FEC) with Reed Solomon and Viterbi as examples). CDs implement FEC.
That's my understanding and experience as well. The most important thing here is that a DAC can mute the output properly with no pops and clicks if this occurs, and then smoothly resume playback once (if) the stream recovers.
This is why I chose NUC11 with the fastest CPU I could get. Plus, I built a nice linear power supply for it. This was a huge improvement. Laptops, with their charger protection IC's forcing the use of a dedicated charger, are a pain in the bum. However, they (laptops) do sound nice battery powered.
I remote desktop into NUC from all my phones/tablets.