Streamers in 2023 - Discussion, Impressions, etc

Good question, I know their older discontinued model was base off of a Raspberry Pi, not sure about this one.

 

I owned the BDA-3.14 for a brief period. It's the BDA-3 DAC with a built-in BDP-π streamer.

The streamer did the job, but was nothing to write home about, usability-wise. I found the interface a bit slow but was using Roon so didn't really have to interact with it much.
The sound of the unit as a whole was great, though. This could be a testament of the solid digital implementation of the BDA-3, more so than the built-in streamer, however?

I think the BDP-3 is built around amore powerful x86 platform, so it should be snappier than the 3.14. Bryston clearly knows a thing or two about digital implementation, so I would give it a shot provided you can find one at a good price.

 

I had the original BDP-1 for a while (BNC instead of USB). I didn't keep music on it. I fed it music remotely using MinimServer. If I had kept it, I suspect it would make a great roon endpoint.

It was very good and replaced a SotM sms-200 streamer because I wanted to move away from USB. I felt it was a bit of an upgrade from the SotM.

 

There won’t be any differences as long as you stay in the digital realm. If there aren’t any extreme influences from the outside, digital is perfect.

Only when you convert to analog, things a streamer can do are starting to become important. Most DACs receive their clocking from the source (streamer) if you use optical, coax, or AES connections. A precise clock is not required for digital communications, but it makes the outcome of digital to analog conversion much better.

For most of today’s USB connections, the DAC’s clock is the one that matters. But still, it seems that good streamers can make a difference by shielding off electrical noise that will otherwise harm D/A conversion, too. Other effects like unstable USB input making it “harder” to reconstruct the digital data, thus creating EMI or whatever else inside the DAC and harming the D/A conversion, are discussed, too, but I personally don’t find those ideas very convincing.

But all this has nothing to do with the digital side of things. It takes extreme influence from the outside to really change the digital data.

 

Helping a friend who wants a good sounding dac/streamer combo up to $2,000. I have no knowledge about these, does anyone have experence and reccomdations?
best,
Josh

 

Eversolo DMP-A8 and Gustard R26 are 2 that come to mind as steamer-DAC combo below 2K.
I have not heard any of the above but both are getting traction these days.

You can also add Mojo + Poly 2

 

I spent a few hours with a friend's simple desktop rig recently. He has a Volumio Rivo (streamer only) connected to a DAC > amp chain. It comes with a premium Volumio license. This was my first time ever with such a device and even my dumbass couldn't screw this up. He has a USB SSD attached that holds his local library and streams using Quobuz.

I have been thinking about getting a Mac Mini since I am entirely macOS & iOS anyway, but for ~$1,100, the Rivo is a possibility for me.

 

https://imgur.com/a/vrX05GV

My streamer - an overclocked 3100hz RPI5 8gb - running hqplayer 5, connected to ssd for local music content, upsampling to dsd256 on the fly, with convolution fir filters routing qobuz streaming and local library music to 3 systems in different rooms in the house.

I have another rpi5 with the exact setup which I bring to work with a hidizs s9 pro plus usb dac dongle and a pair of iem

 

If I'm trying to compare the Hydra Z to the RED, is this a fair fight or do I need an ALLO USbridge with Shanti or something similar? I don't know any other streamer that puts out USB. And the RED is too cumbersome to go back and forth between DDC and Streamer for comparisons.

iPhone 13 mini Tidal app -> USB -> Intona isolator -> Hydra Z
RED as a streamer with Tidal

 

I think most apples to apples would be to compare them both as DDC/decrapifiers from the iPhone right? IME as an owner of an Eitr, PI2AES and now iFi Zen Stream, streamers with optimized software will beat trying to decrapify a PC USB output. But the Hydra Z seems very stacked for a decrapifier so maybe as a DDC it will beat the Holo RED. RED streamer versus Hydra might not be fair but it's valid if you're trying to gauge peak performance.

 

I might have to pick up a Zen Stream used to input into the Hydra Z for a fair comparison. I just saw that it outputs USB.

 

I don't think using a streamer into a decrapifier is indicative of a a decrapifier's job. If anything plug it into the worst USB port you can find.

Transports and Streamers are designed to create less noise in the first place. They are really quite a different approach. And I am among those on the forum who do believe that creating less noise outscales trying to isolate/filter it out. Same sort of nervosa as inherently linear tubes being better than transistors with feedback and inherently accurate R2R being better than low bit DACs with noise shaping.

Or if you're wanting to see what happens just for kicks, use Holo RED as streamer then USB out into the Hydra Z and see if that affects sound.

 

Yeah, I would, but it takes too long to switch from DDC to streamer mode to do very good comparisons. The Zen Stream is cheap, worth it before I sell the unobtanium Hydra Z.

 

I think if the Holo streamer workflow is ok to you, I'd say putting the Hydra Z in to see if it does anything to the sound of the Holo is the best judge of whether you should keep it. If forum impressions are correct there shouldn't be much to decrapify and it might even change the sound for the worse by doing redundant work to receive and retransmit packets.

Otherwise, if you want a more versatile/useable realtime transport like your phone or PC for say A/V, gaming, Zoom, etc... compare your PC USB out (go with the worst USB out you think you will use) filtered by the Hydra Z to the Holo on streamer mode to see how it goes.

Essentially decrapifiers for realtime (your Intona isolator already is one) and streamers for lowest noise possible is my take on it.

 

Not cheap when you include one's time struggling with its bugs.

 

The Zen Stream's issues are due to feature boat and lack of refinement causing a number of buggy user flows, but depending on your specific user flow branch, it's very stable. For example, I fixed my NAA dropout issues after I checked my router and saw that it kept latching onto 2.4Ghz instead of being steered to 5Ghz wifi like my other devices. So much for wireless streamer when the basic wifi driver has jank. Going ethernet has been fine ever since.

 

Mine is wired, still too many issues to count. Replacing it with a Pi running Ropieee in a Flirc case with a Topping HS02 USB isolator (which Archimago compared well with the Intona isolators I have on my NAA endpoints).

 

I'll second this... I may not ask it to do much (roon endpoint via ethernet and USB out to DAC), but its been bulletproof for me

 

Honestly, the Ropieee developer deserves all the kudos in the world for maintaining it. It's easier to use and more stable than any of the other stream OSes while being free. I'm not liquid enough to own a Holo RED to have both Ropieee and USB output but that to me is a perfect streamer.

 

I don't need a Holo Red because I'm all USB DACs these days. The Pi setup I described cost ~$200. I could go crazy with fancy power supplies to replace the basic SMPS I got with it and still stay cheaper than the Red.