Advice - New Setup for audio streaming on new gear.... whole house setup

[whyrichard]

Hello all,

I am stepping up my audio to the following arrangment:

• AMP: PRIMALUNA DiaLogue Premium HP Integrated Amplifier
• TURNTABLE: Music Hall MMF-9
• PHONE PRESTAGE: McIntosh mp 100
• DAC: HoloAudio Spring 2 Level 3 Kitsuné edition
• Holo Audio Spring Level 3 Kitsune Tuned Edition R2R DAC
• SPEAKERS: B&W 804 Nautilus

All are new except for the speakers....!

QUESTION:
I have also upgraded my Mac mini to an M2. I currently stream Apple Music through this main setup above, and I use AIRFOIL to throw the music around my house (Downstairs open baffle custom speakers on Musical Paradise tubes, a Bluetooth speaker in the dining room to fill out the area, my office, etc.

My Priorities are:
1: Perfect Sound in the main setup listed above
2: Ease of use (Apple Music is not easy to use in this system! I need to screenshare to my mini using an iPad... --not elegant. I would prefer Spotify's setup, where I understand I could use your phone to control the mini music server, but I understand Spotify quality is not so good...?
3: For the secondary sound areas, I would like to have music streaming easily (airfoil sorta accomplishes this).

I would love it if my secondary sound areas could have as good a stream as my primary, but not sure what can accomplish this.

In the past I used Tidal and Audirvana, and I thought it sounded quite good... but then I tried Apple Music when it went lossless.... would like to reconsider this branch of my setup.

Any Advice you fantastically fanatical Audiophiles????!!!!

Thank you!
Richard

 

[Kjetil]

The Tidal UI is just as good as Spotify’s, and even if there’s still some MQA leftovers there, they also let you stream CD quality and above.
I’d use Wiim streamer products. Excellent performance. You cannot fault the objective quality of their Pro Plus and Ultra, If you have DACs you want to use there’s lesser models to choose from. There’s also a couple of small streaming loudspeakers in their lineup.
The Wiim Home app is very easy to use.

 

[ssfas]

Hello all,

I am stepping up my audio to the following arrangment:

• AMP: PRIMALUNA DiaLogue Premium HP Integrated Amplifier
• TURNTABLE: Music Hall MMF-9
• PHONE PRESTAGE: McIntosh mp 100
• DAC: HoloAudio Spring 2 Level 3 Kitsuné edition
• Holo Audio Spring Level 3 Kitsune Tuned Edition R2R DAC
• SPEAKERS: B&W 804 Nautilus

All are new except for the speakers....!

QUESTION:
I have also upgraded my Mac mini to an M2. I currently stream Apple Music through this main setup above, and I use AIRFOIL to throw the music around my house (Downstairs open baffle custom speakers on Musical Paradise tubes, a Bluetooth speaker in the dining room to fill out the area, my office, etc.

My Priorities are:
1: Perfect Sound in the main setup listed above
2: Ease of use (Apple Music is not easy to use in this system! I need to screenshare to my mini using an iPad... --not elegant. I would prefer Spotify's setup, where I understand I could use your phone to control the mini music server, but I understand Spotify quality is not so good...?
3: For the secondary sound areas, I would like to have music streaming easily (airfoil sorta accomplishes this).

I would love it if my secondary sound areas could have as good a stream as my primary, but not sure what can accomplish this.

In the past I used Tidal and Audirvana, and I thought it sounded quite good... but then I tried Apple Music when it went lossless.... would like to reconsider this branch of my setup.

Any Advice you fantastically fanatical Audiophiles????!!!!

Thank you!
Richard

I installed a new product throughout my house three years ago that provides 24/192 PCM wireless audio through multiple speakers in each room, can be controlled with Alexa (has microphones built in), Roon (is Roon Ready) and its own app. It also has Apple Music, AirPlay, Tidal, Spotify and various other things on board, so can be controlled by those apps any UPnP app. The speaker itself was designed by Lawrence Dickie, who is one of the best speaker designers in the world. The only problem for you is that it is not available in the USA. I heard they were going to launch it last year, but I think they are rolling it out slowly.

It runs off the lighting power circuits and each unit only draws about 8 W, so two of us installed 50 units in three hours.

I don’t actually use Roon for my main to channel audio system, I use HQ Player into a Holo May DAC, using Roon as the controller.

Zuma.ai

 

[ecwl]

I find myself with more questions than answers for OP.
But I think this is the general principles I would say that might be helpful.
When one decides to use Apple Music (and it’s not clear to me if whyrichard uses only Apple Music lossless streaming or whether he also has his own music files that is within his personal music library in Apple Music), the optimal way to setup your entire home audio would be to have every device in the home fully compatible with Apple Music. Otherwise, you end up with the current situation of using AirFoil to send music from the M2 Mac mini to every device and then you have to screen share/remote log into the Mac mini to control what music stream you want to send to which device. And for the bluetooth device, you can use the bluetooth of the iPhone/ipad/mac Apple Music app to choose what music to play on that device because bluetooth is not lossless anyway.

Otherwise, most people use Audirvana or Roon and subscribe to Tidal or Qobuz to stream lossless music throughout their home. Because Tidal/Qobuz allows Audirvana/Roon to access the music database (which Apple Music/Spotify does not). If your software can’t access the music database, you can’t choose which song to play within the software. Alternatives like Bluesound/WiiM would generally expect all your streaming devices to then support Bluesound/Wiim and they generally require Tidal/Qobuz.

But fundamentally, the challenge in offering useful and specific advice is that I have no understanding of OP’s streaming setup. For the main system, what is the streamer? Or is the M2 Mac mini directly connected to the Holo Spring via USB? What is the streamer for the downstairs system? Is the old Mac mini now connected to the downstairs system? Because it comes down to how much do you want to spend, how you want to build out your system (software & hardware).

 

[Republicoftexas69]

I find myself with more questions than answers for OP.
But I think this is the general principles I would say that might be helpful.
When one decides to use Apple Music (and it’s not clear to me if whyrichard uses only Apple Music lossless streaming or whether he also has his own music files that is within his personal music library in Apple Music), the optimal way to setup your entire home audio would be to have every device in the home fully compatible with Apple Music. Otherwise, you end up with the current situation of using AirFoil to send music from the M2 Mac mini to every device and then you have to screen share/remote log into the Mac mini to control what music stream you want to send to which device. And for the bluetooth device, you can use the bluetooth of the iPhone/ipad/mac Apple Music app to choose what music to play on that device because bluetooth is not lossless anyway.

Otherwise, most people use Audirvana or Roon and subscribe to Tidal or Qobuz to stream lossless music throughout their home. Because Tidal/Qobuz allows Audirvana/Roon to access the music database (which Apple Music/Spotify does not). If your software can’t access the music database, you can’t choose which song to play within the software. Alternatives like Bluesound/WiiM would generally expect all your streaming devices to then support Bluesound/Wiim and they generally require Tidal/Qobuz.

But fundamentally, the challenge in offering useful and specific advice is that I have no understanding of OP’s streaming setup. For the main system, what is the streamer? Or is the M2 Mac mini directly connected to the Holo Spring via USB? What is the streamer for the downstairs system? Is the old Mac mini now connected to the downstairs system? Because it comes down to how much do you want to spend, how you want to build out your system (software & hardware).

I for one prefer Innuos products for server/streamer and the Sense Application, streaming service is Quboz, walked away from Roon yeas ago…

 

[ssfas]

I for one prefer Innuos products for server/streamer and the Sense Application, streaming service is Quboz, walked away from Roon yeas ago…

As a long-term Innuos user, a nice thing is its flexibility. There are four modes:
- Standalone
- Sense endpoint
- Roon endpoint
- HQ Player endpoint
I've used them all, currently use the latter, and it takes seconds to switch.

It used to have a uPnP option that I managed to use for Sense for multi-room, but it wasn't 100% reliable and they removed it from the frontend system options. It probably still exists in the backend somewhere.

Having tried uPnP, Apple, Amazon HD, AirPlay and Roon in my multi-room system, Roon is the one that works best, especially when grouping zones.

 

[Bones13]

Sonos units for the home side (combination of their powered speakers, and AMPs into inwall speakers. Wife can easily use them via her Spotify app.

I put a modded PORT unit from Wyred4Sound in my main system. I use Roon (and I am free to use any other system) and she is insistent on Spotify. Peace at my house. Sonos is limited to non DSD files up to 96hz, so my HiRez does not work.