I recommend (and own) the Ayre QB-9 DSD. Best I have heard except for Wavelength gear for DACs. Only drawback is USB input only. Streaming sound quality is suspect (imo) but have not tried Tidal. Easier to build a digital music library with external hard drivers and running via MAC/PC (using a macbook pro late 2008 model). Switched from ITunes to Decibel as software a while ago, but looking into Audio Nirvana as upgrade in future.
Computer Audio..Stream or download?
Fellow Audiophiles,
Until now, i never cared for music streaming or downloads, simply because of compression. I owned fairly large selection of CD's, SACD's, DTS and DVD audio discs. DTS and DVD audio are long gone and SACD's are now pretty much limited to classical titles. I have been watching the digital trend pretty closely..it seems that we have evolved from digital downloads to now streaming. For sake of convenience, i have installed Sonos in couple of rooms. In my HT setup, Sonos just couldn't live up to high standards set by Krell and Raysonic. The streaming from Spotify, Amazon and Rhapsody is just average (flat and dull most times).
I am looking for ideas and feedback based on your experiences with high-res downloads. I am only interested in listening to high-rez / DSD64 or DSD128 files.
Please respond with your recommendations on DSD software and DAC's/Players.
MY Equipments:
Classe SSP-800 / CA-2200 / CA-5200
Krell Cipher
Raysonic CD-128
B&W 803s/804s/HTM2s/SCMS
Audience Au24 SE - IC's, Speaker, Power and Digital Cables
Audience AR6-TSSD/AR2-TSSD
Until now, i never cared for music streaming or downloads, simply because of compression. I owned fairly large selection of CD's, SACD's, DTS and DVD audio discs. DTS and DVD audio are long gone and SACD's are now pretty much limited to classical titles. I have been watching the digital trend pretty closely..it seems that we have evolved from digital downloads to now streaming. For sake of convenience, i have installed Sonos in couple of rooms. In my HT setup, Sonos just couldn't live up to high standards set by Krell and Raysonic. The streaming from Spotify, Amazon and Rhapsody is just average (flat and dull most times).
I am looking for ideas and feedback based on your experiences with high-res downloads. I am only interested in listening to high-rez / DSD64 or DSD128 files.
Please respond with your recommendations on DSD software and DAC's/Players.
MY Equipments:
Classe SSP-800 / CA-2200 / CA-5200
Krell Cipher
Raysonic CD-128
B&W 803s/804s/HTM2s/SCMS
Audience Au24 SE - IC's, Speaker, Power and Digital Cables
Audience AR6-TSSD/AR2-TSSD