You're not going to see much of a difference in a DAC like DirectStream or any of the latest Chord DACs. They are more or less immune to jitter and other streaming artifacts as they feed the data into memory first in the FPGA chip. For all intents and purpose my Chord DAC sounds identical whether fed by Auralic Aries or $35 Chromecast. I use Chromecast to be able to stream directly from the iOS Tidal app without using the Roon or Lighting wrap around the Tidal API. Anyone that says otherwise does not understand basics of what happens to the signal once it's fed to the FPGA's memory cores.
Streaming Quality Test - Lumin U1 vs. PS Audio Direcstream DAC vs Bridge II
I recently acquired a Lumin U1 Network Player (no internal DAC) and have it connected to a Directstream DAC via USB. I have A/B tested the U1 and the Direcstream DAC w/Bridge II by simultaneously streaming the same DSD file on the U1 and the Bridge II and used the Direcstream remote to switch inputs between the USB and Bridge II connections. Bottom line, my initial reaction is I don’t here a perceivable difference in sound.
Anybody else compare these two devices or are surprised by this initial test?
I really like the U1, but it doesn’t make financial sense to have it in my system I’m not getting a substantial increase in the quality of the sound.
Anybody else compare these two devices or are surprised by this initial test?
I really like the U1, but it doesn’t make financial sense to have it in my system I’m not getting a substantial increase in the quality of the sound.