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ATM. Streamers

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A lot of my listening is done via streaming. Before the vinyl purists start I know I am evil incarnate but living in an already cluttered one bedroom flat I really do not have the space for a vast record collection so needs must. At the moment I am streaming flac and hi-bitrate music files to my Marantz amp via an Audioengine B1 Bluetooth receiver in Aptx through a toslink connection. When the music arrives through my Dali floorstanders it sounds pretty acceptable but I am wondering if when I can eventually afford it should I invest in something like the Bluesound Node 2I streamer which I could hardwire via Ethernet to my router and so eliminate the need for Bluetooth. Would this improve the sound enough to warrant my saving up the cash to invest in it?
Anyone got any idea? No rush as it’s entirely dependent upon my making some sales or getting some commissioned work in which is as always in the lap of the gods.
I’m all ears.
For the sake of clarity this is entirely a question about streaming sound quality. I have no downloaded music I wish to stream and in a one bedroom flat multi-room sound is not at issue.

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Comments

  1. No idea about all that techno kit stuff you put on there but i bought a cable with a mini headphone pin and rca plugs At t’other end which I fed into a spare set of analogue inputs at the back of the amp.

    • Thanks Junior but I suspect my current mode of streaming would be at least comparable in terms of sound quality to what you are suggesting. I guess what I’m enquiring about is would removing Bluetooth from the equation improve the sound reproduction or not? Also is the DAC in a phone part of this and would using a stand alone streamer eliminate that bottleneck also if it is indeed part of the puzzle?

      • Calling @fentonsteve.

        I’m probably not qualified to comment in detail but in my experience the speakers are the biggest factor, and especially positioning them correctly – I had a very useful thread on here about this a couple of years ago which was hugely helpful.

        • Thanks Twang. It’s not my speakers. They are better than fine and positioned perfectly. I’m just curious about whether stepping up to a separate, dedicated streamer would merit the upgrade in terms of better sound quality. I suspect it would. I guess I’m looking for confirmation of that or a reason I shouldn’t bother.

          • If my experience is anything to go by you are completely correct, Mr Pencil, re the improvement in sound via a direct streamer. Even my ancient ears can spot the difference. Whether or not the extra cost, and there’s a bewildering array of very expensive kit out there, is justifiable is of course another matter.
            We await the Fenton….

            • The streamer I referred to in the OP is not ridiculously priced. In fact compared to some it could be considered a bargain and there is always the option to hook up a better quality outboard DAC at a later date and just use it’s streaming capabilities.

          • The answer is yes, by the way. If you stream from your phone or computer, you could do worse than buy an AudioQuest Dragonfly (big plug!). The DF Black is about 100 quid, and can connect to your Marantz amp with the appropriate analog interconnect.

            Even if you don’t take this route, from experience, wired is better than wireless, purely from a sound quality point of view.

      • I enquired about this and people were implying the source sound ie phone or dedicated streaming device were much the same. I found this hard to accept – all those iddy biddy multi function components. There are many hi fi streamers that purport to enhance the sound bit then again you can pay a motzah for speaker cable For negligible, possibly no improvement. I bought an arcam sacd player with built in streamer but all its app will read is Tidal which is crap down here due to sharing regional infrastructure.

        • There is a definite difference between DACs. Every digital source has a DAC and they vary in quality. The DAC in a phone is never going to be of the same quality as say an Audioquest Dragonfly. The sound is massively improved on wired headphones if you plug a Dragonfly into your phone and then your headphones into the Dragonfly. It’s a night and day difference. So taking that into account I can’t help but think that removing Bluetooth from the chain with the compression that it entails will improve the sound. That along with a better DAC in a separate streamer I believe must raise the bar.

  2. I would guess that the most important thing to upgrade when you get to a certain age which I believe we are both above, is a new pair of ears and I’m not convinced that’s really an option!

    • Very true John. However I recently did some side by side comparisons between Spotify at 320kbps which I have been using for a couple of years and was happy with and a free trial period of Amazon Music HD just to hear if there was a noticeable difference. There is. It’s immediately apparent. I streamed both through the same set up as I described in the OP. This has led to me listening to a lot more music than I was previously which is obviously a very good thing. Now I’m pondering if I can wring just a little more juice out of my rig with a little upgrade.

  3. I think if you want the highest sound quality possible then Bluetooth is not the way to go. However dependent on your ears and whether you are streaming any high resolution files, it may make no difference to you. I use multiple Squeezeboxes in different rooms, some are wired, some are wireless. Most files I stream are CD quality (FLAC), however some are hi res which tend to need a wired network for uninterrupted listening, at least in my place. Bluetooth is not an option with these old players.

    • Thanks Dai. It’s because I’ve started listening to Hi-Res audio that this has become something to ponder and seek advice over.
      My kit sound fine, even pretty good but I can’t help but think I’m not quite getting everything I could out of it and that bugs me.

  4. There are a number of reasonably priced streamers, one from Marantz (theirs are called ‘Network Audio Players’) springs to mind (NA6006, £440ish). IMO if you can take the bluetooth part of the setup out of the system you’ll hear the benefit. AFAIK bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth to get the benefit of higher resolution files. It will still play music, but at a reduced bitrate. A separate streamer, hardwired to your network would be the best solution. Where are your files stored? Mine are in a NAS, hardwired to the same network as my hardwired streamer. Files are selected, playlists created etc, via an app on my iPad.

    • Hi Gary. Removing Bluetooth from the chain for the reason you state is exactly what I’m thinking. Playback of stored files isn’t part of my thinking, I am only interested in streaming high resolution music from say Tidal or Amazon.

  5. I’m not sure where Bluetooth bitrates are at these days but I don’t think they’re quite at FLAC quality so there will be some compression going on. I’m happy to be corrected. As mentioned above a NAS is your best bet. I have a pretty cheap WD one that’s hard wired to a Sonos connect then optical audio to the amp.

    • You and others are correct as far as my research has been able to ascertain.
      The chipset in my old Audioengine B1 can handle Aptx but not Aptx HD which is moot anyway as my phone cannot handle Aptx HD either so some compression is undoubtedly happening. Even so it sounds pretty good but I’m sure it could sound even better and that is making my old audiophile nerve endings twitch.

  6. Hello, Mr Squeezer. Sorry, I was in a meeting and needed to speak dullness.

    You have correctly identified one of the problems.

    Bluetooth aptX comes in a variety of versions:

    aptX can only do lossy (325kb/s) connectivity.

    aptX HD and aptX Adaptive can just about do CD-quality “near-lossless” using something similar to low-bandwidth Flac.

    The other problem is, all that on-the-fly processing eats up your phone battery.

    A wired (Ethernet) or wireless (WiFi) connection to you DAC would keep the precious audio data away from your phone (the phone becomes just a remote control via the app).

    As you have a DAC in the Marantz you could use a Network Bridge (Network in to digital audio out) but they tend to be expensive. This one’s nice (dCS once turned me down for a job): https://hifilounge.co.uk/product/dcs-network-bridge/

    The Bluesound model you suggest looks just the ticket. You can connect via digital (Toslink) or analogue, so you can compare the DAC in the streamer with the DAC in your Marantz amp. It’s also available on 30-day trial: https://www.bluesound.com/products/node/

    There are two Bluesound suppliers in Chester: https://www.bluesound.com/stores/

    • Thanks Steve. This confirms what I’ve been thinking and the information other good souls here have been so kind in passing on to me.
      The Audioengine B1 I have connected to my amp is hooked up through line level RCA and with a toslink. I prefer the sound over toslink so the DAC in the amp is more to my liking. I thought about an separate DAC but discarded that idea because of the Bluetooth issues with compression so it looks like a separate streamer is the way to go and the option for a different DAC maybe something to consider further down the line.
      Another question Steve if I may be so bold. In terms of digital connections is toslink better than coax or is there no appreciable difference?

      • Re: Toslink vs (electrical coax) S/PDIF.

        As ever, it depends.

        Coax cable has the advantage of bandwidth far in excess of audio data rates. Why does this matter? Because it is a single connection, clock is recovered from the data. Data with ‘squarer’ edges requires a wider bandwitdh cable, and the ‘squarer’ the edge the more stable the recovered clock (“lower jitter” to use the audiophile term). Lower clock jitter in the time domain means less smearing in the frequency domain. Low jitter means your 1,000 Hz signal is more likely to come out as 1,000 Hz, and not as 9950 Hz, or 1,050 Hz, or somewhere inbetween.

        There’s nothing inherently wrong with optical digital cables but Toshiba sold off the division which manufactured the transmitters and receivers and their quality has suffered since (leading to lower bandwidth and higher jitter). There’s now only one decent manufacturer left. Also, plastic cables are a bit shit but you can buy glass fibre ones instead (for more money).

        Chord (who make the Mojo DAC, which would be my suggestion for any future upgrade) swear by optical digital links because they remove electrical hum loops. They only buy the good optical components, though, and recommend glass cables. I once had a very nerdy chat with the man from Chord about this very subject.

        Sorry, I have gone very dull again.

        • Thanks Steve. I don’t find you dull in the slightest. When you mention square waveforms are you referring to the obvious difference between an analog waveform which is curved and a digital waveform which is stepped and should be preferably regular and even? If I am understanding you correctly then a coax connection would be preferable because of it’s superior bandwidth and therefore it’s ability to keep the squared waveform of digital even and regular?

          • Sort of… Warning: I am about to going to go off on a nerdy detour.

            There are three different factors involved with digital audio; amplitude domain, frequency domain and time domain.

            Amplitude domain mostly affects the analogue signal. In 16-bit audio there are 65,536 different steps (sample values). If you say 0.0v = 0, and 1.0v = 65,536, and have a 0.500v analogue signal, you would expect the ADC to produce a sample value of 32,768 and the DAC to produce 0.500v output. This is what is known as linearity.

            Time domain stability is crucial. The ADC and DAC need to have precise and stable clocks for the system to work. If the ADC clock varies, it will sample the analogue waveform at the wrong time and capture the wrong sample values. There’s no way for the DAC to know this, so the wrong values come out the other end. Bad linearity. Also, if the DAC clock varies, the samples are converted at the wrong time – also bad linearity. So the potential for a double-whammy of wrong signal at the wrong time.

            Frequency domain problems are usually the result of poor clocking. If you sample an analogue 1000Hz sine wave, you’d hope to get a 1000Hz sine wave out of the DAC. Have a jittery clock, though, and you might get 990Hz, or 1010Hz, or somewhere inbetween.

            The weak link in the system is the serial bitstream (the digital signal going down the S/PDIF coax or Toslink). This is where you need the excess bandwidth. If you look at the waveform here on an oscilloscope, a good one looks like Scrabble letter squares laid end to end, a bad one looks like pyramids (the “bow-tie”). This bitstream is either a ‘1’ or a ‘0’, 16 of these go to make up one 16-bit sample. The serial bitstream runs at slightly higher than 1,411,200Hz (2 x 16 x 44100) – a bit higher to allow for metadata and error correction.

            Compare the 1.4MHz digital bandwidth to the 20kHz analogue bandwidth and you can see why bandwidth is important. Now consider that the clock is recovered from the bitstream and it is doubly important.

            It is much easier (and cheaper) to make a coax cable with 1.5MHz bandwidth than an optcal cable, let alone the transmitter and receiver electronics. So, for that reason, I’d go for coax (unless you have a hum loop problem). Also, you can buy a suitable coax cable for a couple of quid, whereas glass-fibre Toslink cables start at £50 or more.

            It’s really hard to describe this in words, whereas a few pictures would suffice. A problem you can well understand, I’m sure.

            • But generally for digital music reproduction the cables make no difference as long as a “1”s and “0s” can be differentiated. If you had a signal of 3V then 1.51-3V is a 1 and 0-1.49V is a 0, thus you can have masses of noise that do not affect the signal at all. This would not be the case for analogue signals. any selling of digital transmission cables as “high sound quality” or something is just snake oil and even the cheapest ones will generally be good enough for sound reproduction. And there is no sound quality difference at all, you either receive the signal or you don’t.

              • Sorry, Dai, I conclude (i) you have not read or understood the points made above (ii) you have succumbed to the “digital pure perfect sound forever” marketing scam.

                I was not suggesting buying an “audiophile” digital cable, but using a coax in preference to an optical, for solid engineering reasons.

                I might ask to have “It’s really easy to get wrong, and really hard to get right” on my headstone…

                • It was more a reply to ps, who asked about “quality” of square waves. I mostly understand your answers, in my experience the cables make no difference at all, all have high enough spec for transmission and if it gets there the sound quality will be the same whether the cable costs $1 or $5000

  7. Most of this thread sounds double Dutch to me, but decent streamed sound you say? Look no further than the Marantz NA6006. I’ve tried to upload a picture, but that whole Imgur thing doesn’t seem to work any more. So you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s pretty as a picture and delivers a punchy slab of sound. I have had a Marantz based system for years. Top banana they are too.

  8. As always on this type of thread I find myself simultaneously hugely impressed by the knowledge in this place; finding it all absolutely fascinating, and not understanding a word of it. I have mid range kit – not bad but certainly not high end – for physical formats, and tend to stream a lot via Spotify to Sonos, or to Bose headphones. But my inadequate ears are pretty poor at hearing the difference, generally and I feel not worthy.

  10. Posting this down here to avoid the thread narrowing schtick.
    I agree Dai. All things Hi-Fi are prone to the situation of diminishing returns, cables especially in my experience. More money buys better build quality but it’s vexed as all get out whether or not they improve sound or not. I tend towards not.
    My question to Steve was not really about expensive cables Vs basic cables but whether in his opinion if there exists a difference between coax and optical cables and if so which mode of digital connection would he recommend. Now about line level interconnects…are they truly inferior to balanced interconnects?

  11. Apropos of nothing I read a fine scientific paper on the merits of bi-wiring speakers. For the (lucky) uninitiated this is where you have 4 way speaker cable which drives the treble and bass speakers independently, the rationale being that the big butch bass electrons muscle the weedy treble ones out of the way en route to the speakers, compromising the sound. So having separate (bi, even) wires means they get their own lane to the amp.

    The paper concluded that scientifically there is a case to be made for this. Theoretically it’s better. But the audible difference is way smaller than, say, moving your chair 9″ one way or the other, or even turning your head slightly.

    Marvellous.

    • Our Missions are biwired, as they could be and also ‘cos the nice man in the shop said I could have the four ‘strand’ for the same price as the measly two-strand. Cable Talk bi-wire it says. The 780s sound excellent, driven by a NAD with a Marantz Original SE CD and a Rega RSD vinly rotator.

    • I used to have my B&Ws bi-wired, but always knew the cables could be better. So I went to buy new cables and got advised that it was far better to single wire with a very good cable than bi-wire with a so-so one, so I flashed out on some Chord cabling, and the improvement was well worth the investment. The advice also was that it really wasn’t worth bi-wiring unless I was bi amping.

      • I think that’s right. My 4 way cable is very thick copper wire cores so I’m happy with it. After all my investigations the result was I positioned my speakers better and left it at that. My biggest problem is my chair is in the wrong place, ideally you’d be at the fulcrum of the golden triangle but I’m actually to one side looking across it which is a bit pony. For serious listening I have to turn the chair round through 90 degrees and pull it over 4 feet which I generally can’t be arsed to do.

        • My Dali floorstanders don’t require toeing in. In fact Dali are emphatic that you don’t. This seems to create a much broader “sweet spot”. They deliver a huge soundstage and a sweet midrange with crisp highs. They lack a little finesse at the lower end, lacking a tiny bit of detail but have commendable wallop as compensation. I like a good bit of wallop.

  12. Back onto built in streamers and amps. Does the marantz accomodate all streaming platforms. As noted above I have an arcam and their musiclife app is shit, not accomodating Amazon , just Tidal and some other French thingy.

    • I’m guessing the French thingy is Qobuz. Tech is moving so quickly that unless the makers of hardware are prepared to support it with firmware and software upgrades when necessary then eventually it becomes left behind. I’m guessing that is what has happened to your Arcam. I know the Bluesound streamer I mentioned in the OP has support for Amazon Music HD, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify and a lot of internet radio stations baked in. Not sure about the Marantz. The Bluesound seems to be pretty well regarded both as a stand alone streamer and as part of a multi-room set up.

    • That’ll be Qobuz, I expect.

      My 5-year-old Naim streamer is too antiquated to run Qobuz, apparenty. No wonder vinyl is making a comeback.

      It does support Tidal but, since I’m older than 15, I can’t find anything I want to play on it.

  13. Weirdly I’ve just been followed on Twitter by a German audiophile publication based in Leipzig. This kind of malarkey never used to happen when I was a lad. Back then it was just strange lonely old men who used to follow me around offering me a go at their pear drops.

    • Thanks Chris. I am aware of Mr. Darko’s YouTube channel and his blog. He seems to be a pretty sensible chap and not a snake oil salesman. Indeed it was on his channel that I first heard of the Bluesound streamer.

  17. Towards the end of last year I took up the Amazon HD music three month trial mainly to see how the upgraded streaming service sounded on my extensive number of Sonos speakers dotted around my house compared to Spotify.
    Whilst Sonos limited the streaming to CD quality only, the difference was instantly noticeable ( with the Sonos upgrade to their firmware – S2, I am hoping full Hi Res will be available in the near future ). So I have kept up my subscription to the service.

    I am fortunate to have a media room where my high end listening equipment is stored.
    I wanted to be able to listen HI Res streaming in this room.
    I purchased a Yamaha RX – A3080 as an AV amp to primarily look after my 4K movies on my projector.
    However, some people sing its praises as a hi fi amp, and, in a recent Yamaha firmware upgrade it embedded Qobuz,Tidal, and …… Amazon HD music as available streaming services.
    Yep ! It worked and sounded great, but then I hooked up the Yamaha amp to my Accuphase Hi Fi equipment to take adavantage of the superior DAC which then played through my Focus JM lab speakers.
    The sound is just breathtaking.
    I am typing this whilst listening to the the new Bob Dylan album and it sounds just …….. Beautiful.
    Would there be any chance of a similar firmware upgrade to your Marantz amp now or in the future ?

    • No. My Marantz has no internet connectivity so firmware upgrades are not going to happen. It’s true that Amazon’s HD music service is a step up in sound quality. It’s instantly noticeable even over Bluetooth 5.0. It’s that step up that has got my long dormant audiophile nerve endings tingling once more. I’ll always put the music first but I do care about hearing it as well as I possibly can so kit matters certainly more than format which I leave up to the record collectors. I just want to hear the music.

  18. So. I have weakened and expect to be taking delivery of a Bluesound Node 2i later today on a trial basis. I know I will like it before I plug it in and set it up. Oh dear. That’s me eating crackers and boiled rice for the foreseeable. Life is too short ect.

  19. Here are my first impressions.
    It’s very compact. Quite weighty and feels well constructed. It has a lot of connectivity. I have hooked it up with line level RCA cables into my amp and with a coax interconnect so I can compare the DAC in my amp with the DAC in the Node 2i. I prefer the DAC in the Node 2i. Very clean and detailed with good separation and excellent bass weight. I don’t have a long enough CAT 6 Ethernet cable to hardwire it into my router so I’m using the Wi-fi. It’s fine very stable with no discernable dropouts. As I mentioned it has a host of connectivity options one of which is a USB port for thumb drives ect. I’ve plugged a stick that was given to me by the mighty Tiggerlion some time ago which contains a number of albums. Exactly what one would expect from Tigg…The Ray Conniff Singers, Russ Conway In Dub, Dancing On Ice The Album.
    I installed the app on my phone and set the device up from that following the given instructions. The whole process took about twenty minutes.
    All the providers one would expect Amazon Music HD, Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer, Spotify, Tune in…
    So what does it sound like. Very impressive. The CD quality music streams are precisely that. Easily a match for my Marantz CD player.
    The Hi-Res content on Amazon Music HD is a notch or two better again with noticeable gains in every way one could wish. As I said very impressive. The music Tiggs very kindly gifted me plays equally well. playing the first couple of cuts from A Moon Shaped Pool from the USB stick I was immediately impressed. Indistinguishable from CD. If anything slightly better especially in instrument seperation.
    Currently listening to a stream of some Portico Quartet which is presented with real weight and authority and is very pleasantly making the speakers disappear which is always desirable. This is fun.
    First impressions…yeah, yeah, yeah. No downside yet. I think it may be sticking around.

      • It’s very good. Very user friendly. I forgot to mention it’s also MSQ compliant so the highest quality from Tidal is on board. However if you wish to run MSQ with an outboard DAC that must be MSQ too or it will only play the first fold not the highest bitrate.

          • Sorry I meant MQA. I am a dolt. It’s only necessary if you wish to take advantage of the files encoded for it on Tidal. I’ve never heard it so I really cannot comment upon if it’s a huge step up from Hi-Res or just a little bit incremental or of no value whatsoever. I suspect one would need considerably higher end kit than mine to make it worth the extra cost.

            • Easily done, there are so many TLAs.

              Performance of MQA is similar to 24/96 hi-res. It is quite clever, though, as it is (unlike every other format) backward-compatible.

              The MQA file is encoded as three separate parts. Standard 16-bit 44.1kHz “CD quality” lossless. Then the extra 8 bits, to make 24/44.1 lossless. Finally, the harmonics above 22kHz are lossily encoded to keep file size down.

              Any device should be able to play the first part, mid-range devices get 24/44.1, full MQA decoders get the whole lot.

              Pros: smaller file size than 24/96 Flac, backward compatibility.

              Cons: bigger file sizes than 16/44.1 Flac, not many MQA decoders, bats hear lossy-encoded ultrasound.

              To be honest, in this era of fast broadband and cheap storage, I’m surprised it hasn’t yet died a death.

              Bob Stuart of Meridian once explained it to me during an interview. I didn’t get the job.

                • My interview at dCS (a very high-end DSP-based digital audio firm) began and ended thus:

                  Them: “What do you know about under-sampling?”
                  Me: “Erm… not much. That’s bad, isn’t it?”
                  Them: “Thanks for your time, we’ll be in touch.”

                  At least Bob Stuart gave me the time to finish my tea before he realised I was a thicko.

              • ” Finally, the harmonics above 22kHz are lossily encoded to keep file size down.”

                Can you explain for another thicko how this helps, considering we can’t hear frequencies over 20Khz ? Do the inaudible harmonics contribute to what we can actually hear?

                • It’s not so much that you can hear the harmonics above 20kHz, but that severe filtering is required to get rid of the nasty digital artefacts above 22kHz when you sample at 44.1kHz.

                  A filters with a 20kHz cut-off will have ripple, time-domain ringing and phase shifts in the 5kHz to 20kHz (treble) region.

                  If your sampling frequency is 192kHz, the aliasing is all above 96kHz, and your filter can be flat to about 30kHz. So your 20kHz of audio sails through unmangled.

                  • Thanks for that. I think 😀

                    So it’s not just during mastering at higher bit depths & sampling that those artefacts are minimised then? It ends up on the disc too?

                    • Yes, to a greater or lesser extent. Capturing at higher sampling frequencies & bit-depths, then down-converting to 16/44.1 minimises some of it, which is why modern converters with more computing power sound better than old ones.

                      The Shannon-Nyquist theorem (which says you can reconstruct a 20kHz signal by sampling at 40kHz) quoted by the “pure perfect sound forever” brigade is actually a bit more complicated in practice. The main stumbling block being it requires an infinite amount of time.

    • Hi John thought I should add that I am streaming from Amazon Music HD so I cannot guarantee that the Node 2i will play gapless across all platforms. I know that gapless playback is supported by the device and with a good broadband signal the buffering that is required to enable gapless playback should not be an issue. I have read that some Spotify users who are not paying for a premium account have had some difficulties but that is entirely down to a problem at the Spotify end of the chain. Using all the other platforms as far as I have been able to ascertain it does offer problem free gapless performance.

      • Thought I would just ask. Sadly, whilst the sound quality from my set up (as described above ) is excellent, it is not gapless. Really annoying. It makes the Abbey Road medley unlistenable. Hoping for a fix at some time in the future.

        • I know it can be a problem. There is an option within the Spotify app to turn gapless on or off. I can’t imagine why anyone would have it turned off but the option does exist. I tried the gapless performance with both Abbey Road and Dark Side Of The Moon and both played faultlessly. As I understand it the device has to begin buffering the next track in the queue before the currently playing track ends so effectively playing without a gap. Hope you get a fix soon as I can well imagine how irritating a pause must be in Abbey Road ect.

          • Yeah. I’m confident that it is a Yamaha problem and that Amazon music is fine.
            Fortunately I have many other ways of playing gapless music. I’ll wait for the firmware upgrade …… but won’t hold my breath.

            • It’s the long term support that is so often lacking. I know Sonos have or are going to be stopping the support for some of the older kit. Understandable I guess but still disappointing for those who adopted early. Bluesound seem to be pretty good as far as I have been able to find out. The same parent company as NAD. Hopefully they will continue to push out upgrades as and when for the foreseeable.

              • I’m sure you won’t need to worry yet awhile, but I think most technology that requires constant updating to keep competitive loses support eventually, eg computers. As I understand it early Sonos stuff simply doesn’t have the grunt to deal with things you didn’t know you needed, like Dolby Atmos or higher than CD-quality sound. It won’t stop working though.

                • That’s my understanding too. Technology is moving at such a pace it’s bewildering trying to keep up. Even 4K screens are now being nudged aside to make way for 8K. I can’t help but think that economics are driving this rather than necessity.

  21. Glad you’ve got a good result pencil. Reading this whole thread is making me feel I need one of these to connect into my main system rather than just rely on the Sonos for streaming. Wonder if Mrs BB would notice another black box appearing on the shelf. I fear she would.

  22. Moved by this thread I upgraded my work lappy speakers – I was using some small cheapo USB speakers but sprang for some JBL 1 Series 104. Bought them as travelling recording monitoring too. Brilliant for 100 quid. Seriously beefy but I’m only using Spotty as I’m not discerning.

    These bad boys.

      • I realised after 3 weeks with the new job working from my dining room that as I spend all day in front of my laptop (actually they’ve now given me an awesome 26″ monitor too) I might as well have some decent sounds. The little USBs are better than the lappy built in but the JBL are so mega I cant wait for Monday!

        • Have you considered using an outboard DAC with your laptop? The DAC in your lappy is there to do a job and that job is not musical fidelity. Hooking up say an Audioquest Dragonfly (Black) would immediately improve the performance.

          • I don’t really understand how they work TBH. how do you interject the DAC into the Spotify stream to the lappy? I’m being lazy obvs as I could look it up… Idiots guide?

            • Plug it in to the USB port and it appears in Windows as an external soundcard. Set your Spotty app to use it as default. Then plug your headphone/speakers into it. No more clever than that.

            • Basically an outboard DAC replaces the crap but serviceable DAC that your laptop shipped with inside it. An outboard DAC will do all the digital to analog conversion instead. An outboard DAC has no effect on any UI whether it’s Spotify or Tidal or any other digital music provider.
              It’s only effect is to improve the quality of the analogue information your speakers deliver to you because it’s doing a better job of converting the digital information and it’s doing that in a much less electrically noisy environment than the one that constitutes the inside of your laptop. It’s the same philosophy that lies at the heart of hi-fi separates. Isolating each component reduces unwanted “noise”.

        • That’s useful to know. I was going to start a thread up about what speakers I should consider to replace a pair of trusty Yamahas plugged into my computers, and those go onto my list.

          • It would be worth investigating ones with a built-in DAC which, as Mr Squeezer says above, keeps the precious analogue audio away from the unpleasant environment on the insides of your computer.

            That said, I use a pair of JBL Control Ones bought for £50 from Richer sounds and they’re great. They were standard issue in American recording studios in the 1970s-80s.

            • Oh, lordy. Fitted with a DAC?Any recommendations!?

              This thread takes me back to about three years ago, when the first of the low-energy bulbs we bought went phut. In the shop; but what are all these LED things? Where did they come from? Why am I so out of the loop?

    • Slightly off-topic, but I upgraded my 24-bit USB audio interface from an ESI (which had an intermittent 10kHz -80dB noise) to an Arturia Audiofuse which a friend got rid of for a tenner.

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