Educate me on music streamers, please.


I just recently started a trial of Roon, Audirvana, Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz and Spotify.  In the past, I just played FLACs on Foobar or streamed on Google Play.  

Roon and Audirvana are pretty cool and I like that you can add Tidal and Qobuz but you can't add Deezer (I really like Deezer's Flow).   I don't like that I can't stream Deezer to my Raspberry Pi with RopieeeXL.  

So, I was thinking that maybe a music streamer that has all of these services would be a good idea.  Anyone have one they like?  Do they have their own "sound"?  I have a DAC  - so would the DAC sound change whatever comes out of the streamer?

Sorry for the basic questions.  I appreciate any help.


soundchasr

Showing 3 responses by edicionretro

@soundchasr congrats on your Node purchase. Looking forward to hearing about it.

I don't if my experience will be helpful to you, but here goes...

I used Audirvana for a while. Tried Roon and found myself going back to Audirvana a bunch. Roon's interface was more friendly than Audirvana at the time, but the latter sounded better. 

Anyway, I ended up getting a Moon ACE and found the MiND2 to be really convenient and user friendly. After a few months of breaking in the ACE, I did some A/B tests with Audirvana and found streaming with the ACE/MiND2 much more lively and enthralling. I've been a subscriber to Tidal for a while. I've tried Qobuz a bunch of times, but always end up cancelling and sticking with Tidal. The sound difference to me is negligible. The main reason I've kept Tidal is for the catalog (sometimes I find some really out of left field 90's indie releases on it). If I was into classical, I'd have stuck with Qobuz. 

I do have a bunch of hi-res audio files on an external. When I want to listen I just plug it into my MacBook and connect to the amp via UPnP. It works great and sounds great. 

Hope this was helpful.
@soundchasr I agree with you. That was a nice feature with Deezer. Tidal does a thing called "Mixes for You". It automatically generates them based on what you're listening to. Unfortunately, you can't make one yourself.

That's the big thing with the digital side. There's no one solution that will grant you everything. Roon came close for me, but it just didn't sound right.  
@soundchasr   I have the Moon ACE with MiND2. It does not support Deezer, but it does support Roon. Good luck with your search for a perfect streamer!