Having ditched Spotify connect/Sonos at the weekend in favour of Roon/Tidal via my MacBook, now looking to get rid of the computer in the streaming set-up.
Sonore Microrendu and others offer allegedly better sound quality for a price, wondering if a Raspberry Pi would compete, saving the funds for a better DAC (or beer and wine).
Would be good to hear what others are using, and if the Aries/Lumin of this world are worth the extra outlay.
My personal opinion is the prices for those Sonore products and others like them are total and utter absolute piss take. Get a HiFiBerry Digi+ and spend the rest on a nice DAC.
The world is full of people who have been striped up and need to justify their expensive purchase.
Re sound quality it’s always the DAC - surely everything is bit perfect now?
The real issue is how nice the system is to use. I’m not sure I’d really change from the Mac Mini if it works OK, what benefit are you looking to achieve? I’m a big fan of RPi systems, but tbh they can be a ball-ache to set up and with big databases they can get slow. I don’t know how Roon will work with it.
Big thing for me is that I already have a shed load of computers, due to work, and loathed to pay too much for something that is essentially passing on a signal. Really impressed with Roon/Tidal, so willing to pay the entrance fee.
Using a MacBook, if it were a Mac mini would probably just leave alone. Main thing I want to achieve is not having to switch another bloody item on and off.
2nd hand Auralic Mini for about £325 - now officially roon ready and no immediate need for seperate DAC as it sounds superb on it’s own.
The iPad app is brilliant too.
NB: I have no idea what Roon brings to the party over and above a Tidal h-ifi subscriptiuon.
I use a PC, with an Asus u7 soundcard as digital source. JRiver hosts a system that has digital crossovers, and it plays via a Rotel six channel amp to the three-way speakers (which have had their crossovers removed).
Despite being cheap (except for the speakers), it sounds better than most systems I’ve heard.
Having arsed around for 15 odd years jumping from iTunes, JRiver, Spotify, Quboz, Tidal, it was a breath of fresh air to have a consolidated library and good looking interface with decent metadata. The multi-room functions with my existing Sonos speakers around the house, the clincher for me.