arafiq the answer is NO! It's not in your head and the improvement in sound quality is real. And more to the point what does sound quality matter if you’re dealing with dropouts right? I was happy with my Sonos Connect running Tidal out to my dac but was becoming increasingly frustrated with outages. I just replaced it with an Auralic Aries Mini, which runs on the much less congested 5ghz band and voila zero dropouts, even better sound and a more feature laden interface. I’ve not heard the Bluesound but I’m guessing it will be a solid improvement over your current setup. Happy listening!
Is it in my head only?
For the last few months, most of my listening is done via streaming with Tidal. I have not bought a CD since last year. One problem I had was that the sound was never as good as a rebook CD, it came close but no cigar. I was sure that Tidal's HiFi subscription was overkill and I was better off switching to a cheaper alternative like Spotify.
Besides the quality of sound (or the lack thereof), there was too much buffering and drops ruining the whole experience. I was quite ready to ditch Tidal, or even streaming altogether and go back to buying CDs.
So last Friday, I decided to replace my ISP-provided router with Apple Airport Extreme. It immediately took care of range extension, buffering and persistent drops. But what shocked me was the increase in the quality of sound. Immediately I could notice that there was a certain fullness (warmth?) to sound, base was more pronounced (in a good way) and the music was much more engaging than before. In other words, Tidal finally rocked!
I'm just wondering if it's all in my head or what. I mean can a router improvement make such a not-so-subtle improvement in streaming quality? Regardless, I'm loving it. Next on my to-do list is to replace my Apple TV with Bluesound Node. I've heard that this will take the sound quality to the next level.
Besides the quality of sound (or the lack thereof), there was too much buffering and drops ruining the whole experience. I was quite ready to ditch Tidal, or even streaming altogether and go back to buying CDs.
So last Friday, I decided to replace my ISP-provided router with Apple Airport Extreme. It immediately took care of range extension, buffering and persistent drops. But what shocked me was the increase in the quality of sound. Immediately I could notice that there was a certain fullness (warmth?) to sound, base was more pronounced (in a good way) and the music was much more engaging than before. In other words, Tidal finally rocked!
I'm just wondering if it's all in my head or what. I mean can a router improvement make such a not-so-subtle improvement in streaming quality? Regardless, I'm loving it. Next on my to-do list is to replace my Apple TV with Bluesound Node. I've heard that this will take the sound quality to the next level.
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