Chromecast and external DAC

I followed @willemj advice and for a month now stream "90 days free" Tidal thru Chromecast into Wadia 781i DAC. Sounds very good! Upgraded $5 generic mini-Toslink to WireWorld Supernova-6 glass mini and the sound got "snappier", the way Naim-head like me likes it! No double-blind testing here, so maybe its just in my head... Again, the only reason for Toslink upgrade was because I misread Wadia manual that it sounds its best with "glass optical" not realizing that its a separate proprietary input, not just plastic vs glass Toslink. Stupid me! But used $40 WireWorld off eBay does seem to sound better. Not as good as CD/SACD replay, but those who actually know what they r talking about say that Wadia is at its best as a transport-DAC, not just DAC

The only reason for my future upgrade from Chromecast would be because Chromecast won’t stream gigabytes of tunes off my laptop, but I can live with that: gives me an excuse to use my dozen modded iPods and Pono player ;-)

at the end of the day I cannot say if it was @willemj or Tidal’s free trial that pushed me into streaming, considering dozens of CDs in my collection still unopened I am glad that I fell for it!

P.S. Tidal gave me an excuse to fire up (the first time in 20 years in my case!) Nakamichi cassette deck! As long as I keep my Tidal subscription (and I will) I can listen to the tunes "softened up" by cassette replay!! Long live Perfect Sound Forever dumbed down to analog ;-)

@kalali you just opened a can of "upgraditis" for me, I do not care much about price, Tidal and CC is just a legit substitute for bittorents to know which CDs/LPs to buy. Now I have to actually look into this new (for me) streaming thing, shoot!!! ;-(