BEST MUSIC STREAMER UNDER 5K? BEST MUSIC STEAMER OVER 5K?

@dwette before we developed the streamer. I tried several streamers.  Aurender, melco, lumin and esoteric. I went using roon and other interfaces.  We developed our streamer because the others seemed to not have the clarity and dimensionality of the physical media.  Hans figured out the best way to stream and implemented it with Audirvāna and bingo. It sounds better than the others we tried 

@calvinj 

OK, but I don’t even use a separate streamer. My DAC exposes a Roon (or UPnP) endpoint on an ethernet input and that’s what I use.

I have a 3-month trial for Audirvana. If it’s better sounding for streaming Qobuz than Roon is then it’s barely noticeable to me. Sadly, I think the user experience of Audirvana is pretty crappy, at least compared to how I use Roon.

Out of curiosity I went to your home page to have a look, but it redirected me to Google search when I rejected site cookies. Maybe revisit that requirement if you want people to visit.

@dwette i will have Hans  look at it  for sure. I allow folks to try stateside in the US 

@dwette go to Infigoaudio.com and hit streamer for more info 

@ohlala wrote:

Thank you. I have found Roon offers less resolution than upnp/dlna applications, all of which sound the same on my system. I have wondered if Grimm products escaped this issue.

I’ve only used Roon(/Qobuz) when listening to the Grimm Audio MU1 and NuPrime Evolution Stream, and I have read of a reviewer who found bypassing Roon for another software on the NuPrime leading to even better transparency.

However I’d be surprised if Grimm Audio would have let themselves be bottlenecked by an inferior sounding software (i.e.: Roon) in their specific implementation of it. 

@calvinj wrote:

we found using Audirvāna with quboz to be a game changer. We have got it to gauge the best sound quality I’ve heard streaming so far.

Have you tried JRiver in some music server combination? 

@mapman wrote:

Anyone compared sound using their streamer versus Windows dedicated WASABI to same DAC using USB 2 or 3?  I’m finding this combo sounds very good and USB is generally considered better technically than spdif or toslink.

In different systems, including my current one, I’ve always found the AES/EBU protocol to sound the best; it strikes me as having the more "balanced" presentation (no pun intended) vs. USB that’s subjectively a wee bit more up-front and center oriented. Both can sound great, but it’s likely a matter of taste and system synergy.