Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

cast to my stereo from my phone.

shudders

;)

better than Chromecast audio

You won’t get that with anything Bluetooth - the streaming codec itself is the quality bottleneck.

This... Bluetooth is inherently bad

Chromecast runs off WiFi which is better than Bluetooth.

I only that companies like sonos have their own propriety software that makes it better.

Most casting has the castee getting the media directly from the source (spotify, netflix, etc) rather than streaming via the caster. Exceptions are mirroring with apple airplay and I believe android can do similar tricks with chromecasts.

You won’t get that with anything Bluetooth - the streaming codec itself is the quality bottleneck

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?

Interesting

I get what you’re saying but I don’t think it adds up - you’re adding an additional stage of lossy compression to that already compressed audio and streaming in real time over low-power radio from a device that will move around, all in pursuit of marginal gains.
An optical cable from the chromecast would be easier! External DAC if your amp doesn’t have optical in obvs.

An optical cable from the chromecast would be easier!

This seems to be a wise comment

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

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?

Is there any reason the laptop in this sitch couldn't be replaced with a headless raspberry pi controlled by ssh/etc?

Probably not, but I have limited knowledge and even more limited patience. The main advantage of the laptop is ease of use.

Once the PC is up and running, I generally control it via mobile phone app so a headless device would work. It's just a bit of a pain if something needs fixing.

I was using a laptop with a dead screen for a while, but I got frustrated with having to plug in a monitor when something went wrong.

At one point, I had remote desktop set up to my Chromebook but the Chrome remote connect app has changed and now you need to enable it for each individual session. I guess there is another app for doing this but again, ran out of patience.

Mainly reliability - laptops have poorer heat management IME so fail more frequently. Also with a micro pc you can just replace the motherboard and it’ll gorilla tape to the back of your tv. OTOH you’ll need a tv :)

Power consumption as well. A headless raspberry pi uses a lot less power than a fully fledged laptop.

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?

There are distros for Raspberry Pi like Volumio which have decent setup interfaces and functionality.

Mac optical out has some speed limits built into it. Optical connection quality can be affected by the cable too, not least a poor quality cable can just fail on and off. The big advantage of optical is electrical isolation. These days it's less usual to have the kind of problems that require the computer and dac to be isolated.

I have an issue with RFI interference with USB audio on my PC, which I can only assume is down to the PC case as it’s remained present through multiple powersupply, motherboard and audio interface changes! Fortunately FireWire solves the interface problem as it’s also electrically isolated (and old school midi, which is optically isolated).

Very common with USB audio, it's the quality of the interface since the USB standard doesn't really call for the level of isolation the USB interface needs, hard to blame the PC since it's an RF nightmare inside the case.

I've got quite a few pro level interfaces but one of the nicest 'budget' ones was a Gustard. Simple USB to AES convertor but very good isolation. The Gustard DACs are a lot more money though.

Increasingly speakers use AES inputs anyway so I've found that USB->AES is a useful type of interface.

Interesting, I’ve not used a pro-level USB interface with this PC to be fair. I suspect a grounding issue with the case, as sending midi over usb will cause the issue to show up in the audio output of various bits of kit, even if that’s coming in on balanced analog cables (not using the cheap baked in usb audio interfaces).

It's part of the design of PC power supplies that a small amount of current leaks to earth. It can cause problems with RCD's in large offices.

Weird that the midi is causing it too but I suppose it could be a ground hum due to earth differences between the midi and audio connections.

One of my favourite firewire options was the Motu 828, they are easy to pick up now although they had some issues with the 2 inputs on the front everything else is pretty good and the aes output stands up to some expensive stuff.

Running balanced cables is only sorting out any interference picked up by the cable, if there is noise in the signal when it's sent it will be treated as signal.

Yeah it’s an odd situation and I’ve basically narrowed it down to something about the USB earth (although it’s typical RFI noise rather than hum - related to the graphics card iirc).
I seem to remember it kicks in if you just touch usb earths without fully inserting the connector. Everything is running off the same wall socket and the problem has persisted through moving houses!

My old band had an 828, it was a bit temperamental but great when it worked! Very happy I picked up a ‘broken’ RME fireface very cheaply a few years ago though.

I use the RME PCIe card with 8 AES channels and various Lavry convertors. It's a pretty reliable piece of kit and they keep releasing drivers and supporting it. I bought the Motu 828 years ago, 2nd hand and paid £500, definitely got my moneys worth, I think the DA sounds much better than the AD on the MKII. Never really had a reliability issue with it. The front pre amps are a problem on a lot of them though.

Had the Apogee duet at one point, that's a pretty sweet spot in the firewire interface curve. It's not the best I've heard but it integrates vey well with OSX it's quite pretty and a volume knob is always handy.

Very difficult to set about curing the RFI problems in a PC. I'm guessing you're not running a cheese grater Mac Pro. Apple seemed to do a decent job with shielding on that but of course they keep the power supply well out of the way and physically separated. I still wouldn't risk another USB DAC unless it had a good reputation for RFI rejection.

I'm very happy with the RME - it works with no fuss, the mixer matrix is excellent for home studio stuff and it sounds pretty good too. We had a Motu 828mk2 or 3, I think it was the firewire ports that were dodgy but it kept losing connection at inopportune times! Looked a lot tougher than it was.

Yeah it's a PC - think the case is about 15 years old now (maybe more!). Everything in it has been changed at least once but the problem remains... Admittedly it's inaudible at normal listening levels but it shows up on recorded inputs and layers up louder and louder that way. It isn't there with the isolated gear but it's irritating to remember to unplug stuff as USB midi and USB power is ubiquitous now.