Streamers in 2023 - Discussion, Impressions, etc

Same setup -- Roon, ethernet in, USB out -- but mine hiccups play briefly every 15-30 minutes. Very irritating.

 

Actually, in my experience, good streamers help a lot with USB, at least if the DAC doesn’t have a perfectly isolated USB port (which Holo DACs possibly have, but others?).

I replaced a Zen Stream with a Holo Red on my iFi iDSD Neo and was astonished by the extra quality it brought. (I had bought it mainly to experiment with DSD512 which is too much for the Zen Stream.)

 

I think my previous take on streamers vs decrapifiers also applies to SPDIF vs USB.

SPDIF clock is controlled by the source and the DAC is forced to drift to align or it will cut out. USB clock is controlled by the DAC and the source is commanded to adapt how much it sends to avoid the USB buffer going empty and cutting out. There is no theoretical reason USB should be any worse if realtime playback is not a concern and a big buffer is used to really avoid all jitter.

But in practice since USB Audio is the wild West in terms of specs and implementations I think that causes decoding issues that often put it below a good SPDIF out. Somehow using HQPlayer NAA and setting the "buffer time" setting to 250ms vs 5ms changed the sound a lot to me...and it's quite easy to tell which one sounds worse...

 

My USB outs go through isolators (Intona or Topping) in any case, which adds to the price but not as much as getting a Red with redundant hardware for S/PDIF and I2S.

 

Would be interesting to see or rather hear how good those isolators are in comparison.

Personally, I tested a Pi4 as a source with the stock PSU and compared it to a Zen Stream with iPowerX PSU: The Pi was very obviously worse.

Then I added an iFi iSilencer+ between the Pi and the DAC, which made things considerably better (better clarity, removed veil from the mids upwards). The Zen Stream still was much better.

Then I replaced the stock PSU on the Pi with a powerbank. Adding the iSilencer+ now made the sound a little softer. I couldn’t really decide if I liked the grain and slight harshness without the iSilencer+ better or the slight softness with it. The difference was rather subtle, anyway. The difference to the Zen Stream wasn’t very large anymore, it brought a little more clarity and a somewhat more pleasant sound.

Then again, the difference between the Zen and the Red is very obvious with my DAC, nearly as large as the one between stock Pi and Zen Stream.

Of course, the iSilencer+ is no Intona. Would indeed be interesting to compare an Intona or Topping isolator to a Red.

 

The reason that makes most sense to me in case of USB is electrical noise that good streamers can keep away from the DAC. Which is also in line with the powerbank in my test above improving the sound of the Pi: A battery is the most silent power source possible. The Pi itself is still generating noise, of course, so it still won’t be a silent USB source.

 

A Power Bank is far from being a battery. A power Bank does not supply „native“ 5 V. The 5 V are generated because the „native“ voltage is normally an integer multiple of 3.7 V (Li ion). How competent it is in executing this task (how much electrical noise it produces doing this) probably depends on implementation. I guess that is a long winded way of saying, a power bank might be able to supply clean 5 V but does not do this by design.

 

Ah, yes! Never thought about that, but you’re right, of course.

 

I still don't think, besides the worst dongle stuff that @GoldenOne has featured on his videos that passes audible hum, that PC noise itself passes through to the output in competent designs. It seems to me more like it messes up the bitstream signal carried across the cable (digital code but carried through analog medium so things like eye pattern all apply) and causes the receiver to work harder to recover the bits. So ultimately bits are bits and any direct noise from the device should be properly isolated with a transformer. But the receiver will still have to do more corrective work and it's likely this that causes noise at the DAC output.

At least we know async buffering with USB can and does eliminate pretty much all source packet jitter. I just don't know why there's still a stark difference in sound between my Zen Stream and Macbook/PC USB outs. Drivers?

 

I bring to you good folks news of the finest streamer from 2024 2010.

I've been thinking about doing a bit more music streaming around the house. But before throwing cash at the problem, I decided to dig out my old Logitech Squeezebox Touch, and see what's what. It's been sitting in a box since I moved into my house almost 9 years ago, because I never got round to setting it up, then I started streaming from Plex and Spotify through the TV, then started streaming only from my PC.

I didn't even know Logitech shut down the servers in 2020, clearly I'm boned. But the open source community doesn't let good gadgets die, so through a combo of my Synology NAS, Lyrion Music Server and community firmware, I decided to see if I could turn this doorstop into a functional device. The process involved:

• Install Docker on my NAS
• Download the image for Lyrion Music Server
• Configure the Docker container, create proper share permissions to access my music folder, and run the image
• Go through all the LMS options
• Power up the Squeezebox, factory reset, and connect to ethernet
• Point the Squeezebox to the LMS server
• Install the community firmware
• Configure the Squeezebox to my liking, and setup Tidal
• Connect coax to the integrated amp, and start listening......

Took maybe an hour and a half in total; possibly the easiest time I've ever had tinkering with audio gadgets. The only real problem I had was some legacy inherited 'Deny' permissions on my music folder preventing LMS from accessing it, and some of the old Docker instruction not completely jiving with newer versions.

The whole thing is really quite remarkable. Control is through my phone web browser, connecting to the local LMS server. The Tidal app gives access to all my mixes and playlists, access to my NAS library is no sweat, TuneIn works great for local radio, everything just absolutely rock solid. The only knock against it is that buffering hi-res files from Tidal is a bit slow at times, and it takes a while to jump through long lists of high res files. Considering the age of the equipment, I simply can't believe the performance and functionality.

All in all, very happy camper.

 

That's really cool! If ever feel the need to clone the Touch, I built something like this (with Pi2Designs hat rather than HiFiBerry) some years ago for my work office setup and really enjoyed it until pandemic and other changes made it redundant.

 

Yeah, if I was starting from scratch I'm pretty sure I wouldn't ever feel the need to specifically replicate a Squeezebox device. Just about every other option in this thread would be a much safer bet.

I guess what is most surprising to me with all this, is how far ahead of their time the Squeezebox devices were. And how crazy it is that Logitech let it all slip away. And how it won't be long until my last Harmony remote dies.....

 

Geez, that reminds me ages ago during one of our first meets I think Vince was playing off his apple portable router thing (I forget what it's called) connected to his laptop feeding optical into the Squeezebox.

 

I was considering a Holo Red when I noticed it doesn’t have wifi. So I could connect a dongle. But has anyone tried replacing the CM4 on it with a wifi variant?

I don’t care about Red OS supporting it or not.

 

You could go for a wireless bridge and have a plug-and-play solution.

* EDIT *
I am wondering if Holo shipped without wifi because it performed worse. You can have the wifi bridge away from the Red as you will have an Ethernet cable if Nervosa comes into play.

 

I guess reception inside that heavy metal enclosure might be a problem unless you somehow connect an outside antenna.

 

This ethernet to wifi adapter works flawlessly and takes literally 5 minutes to setup. One of the best products I've bought in a while. I've been using my RED wirelessly for a half year or more with not a single hiccup.

 

Good point on the attenuation of the aluminium enclosure. Swapping the CM4 module doesn’t seem to be a viable path then. Thanks for sharing some alternatives that are working well for you.

 

I haven't tested the Topping one specifically but have been measuring the noise at the output of a few USB sources recently:

This is my PC's USB output vs my phone, quite surprised how poorly the phone did to be honest:



This is JDS synapse vs Intona-7055C.
Intona is overall cleaner, but the Synapse gets great performance given it's nearly 8x cheaper.




Below is Holo RED (Orange)
Phone (Brown)
PC Direct (Red)
Intona (Purple)

 

@GoldenOne - Have you ever compared the noise variance between phone brands or PC vs Mac? Given the price of a new Mac Mini, I would love to see how well it performs against dedicated streamers in a comparable price range.