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Pretty sure we’ve done this to death (repeatedly!) earlier in this thread. I have plex and Spotify premium so use chromecasts across most of my rooms. Tried the chromecast for main hifi but settled with a Mac Mini running plex (and Spotify) with an off-board DAC connected by usb to reduce jitter. Optical out from that to my hifi DAC for optimum quality. This means I can cast plex or Spotify (or anything that also has a Mac/pc client app) to the Mac mini.
I also have an audioengine b1 for Bluetooth on the main hifi but it’s only really for guests. in general your DAC is almost always the bottleneck (the one in the chromecast is shit, the one in the b1 is a bit better), though I agree with everyone else. adding codecs as another constraint isn’t going to help you get a good result.If you don’t have a DAC on the hifi just save a bunch of effort and buy a micro pc of some sort and a Topping D50
freddo-
My system is:
FLAC files on NAS, ethernet to
Laptop running J River Media Centre, output via UB to
External DAC, RCA to
Amp.Laptop has died. I was just going to go on eBay and get another cheap 2nd hand laptop with SSD hard drive.
Is there any benefit to looking at a micro PC instead?
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What's the thinking with the off-board DAC (I'm assuming audio interface - was it you with the focusrite scarlett/red?) not doing any DAC? Is the Mac optical out a bit shit?
ChasnotRobert
Dramatic_Hammer
Whilst true, it's far more complex than that... it's also about the sender capabilities. Which codec is chosen and how it performs is a negotiation between client device and the bluetooth receiver: https://www.soundguys.com/understanding-bluetooth-codecs-15352/
However I'm not replacing my wired setup, I'm finding a place between that setup and the ChromeCast. Do I think the ChromeCast audio is doing a good job on Wi-Fi with higher bandwidth? In principle yes, but in practice I think that the DAC in the ChromeCast is actually the weak spot.
When I use the wired setup my system is superlative, and with the ChromeCast it's OK but nothing special. Bandwidth and latency on Wi-Fi isn't the problem so what is? Well it could be the source files (Spotify, Google Audio... or transcoding by Plex)... but it could also be the DAC.
What I want to find out through experimentation is whether aptX HD from my phone to a bluetooth receiver with a good DAC produce an overall better listening experience on my existing stereo than I feel I get from the ChromeCast. I grant that it is compressing the signal to fit in the bandwidth, but with Spotify et al the source is compressed to fit in the transit bandwidth... so if both sources are compressed, what does the better job at unpacking the audio and turning it into an analog signal for the amplifier?