I’m tired of sending music to my speakers through my phone and shitty bluetooth/wifi/airplay, so I’ve decided to look for a nice but affordable dedicated audio streamer that I can plug into my integrated amp and not be worried that the music will stop if I take my phone into the kitchen.
What are you guys using? Any recommendations before I go into the google and specialist forum rabbit holes?
Ideally would work with the major services like apple music and spotify. I’m not looking for Sonos type stuff with extra speakers, just the actual streamer that I can plug into my amp and listen to on a very old-school type 2 channel stereo system.
I’m still rocking a Google Chromecast into an old school hifi amp. It’s absolutely rock solid, way more stable that the Sonos or similar streamers I’ve used. And seems to be more universal with the apps. I can stream Bandcamp directly to it unlike Sonos.
Think they’ve discontinued making them but well worth picking up 2nd hand if you can find a cheap one.
I use a Sonos port connected to my amp. Other than the clusterfuck that was their software update a year or two ago, it’s worked well for exactly what you describe.
I have an Apple Music and match subscription and a lot of other devices don’t seem to do Apple Music direct, only airplay 2.
I use it regularly with Apple Music, bandcamp, Mixcloud, SoundCloud.
Navigation in the iPhone app could be a little better, takes an age scrolling up and down a large library.
The only thing that would tempt me to upgrade would be a Linn streamer, but again they seem to have dropped support for Apple Music direct.
I sold one on ebay last week, never took it out of the box
I thought it was HDMI only, how would you connect to audio?
(not that I’ve got one any more)
Its the Chromecast audio that I’ve got. It’s got a 3.5mm with both analogue and digital outputs depending on whether your amp is old or new school. I think the later Chromecast’s were more TV / hdmi orientated. I def recommend the audio version.
I’ve bought the boomboom 93 from marmitek. No fancy things, just a great sounds, no latency and multi-device pairing on bluetooth aptx. Cost 80€ though but in my opinion it was worth it regarding the prices of the competition.
I use Bluesound streamers here in my house. Stream tidal & have a USB harddrive with tunes connected to it. The app is pretty decent. Would also check out Wimm streamers out too.
Apparently Apple Music doesn’t play nice with the majority of streamers out there for lossless audio BUT, in an ironic turn of events, Apple Music streamed from iOS devices to my old-ass Airport Express actually outputs CD quality audio. So I guess I got lucky and apparently am pretty much all set, unless I want to spend lots of $$ on a dedicated android streamer that actually pulls Hi Res Lossless and doesn’t convert it, which I don’t.
I’ve got a WiiM Pro Plus going through my mixer/amp setup in one part of the house, and the WiiM Amp in another room.
Been really happy with them, both sound great (got the same model of speakers in both rooms, the amp is very decent for the price point) and I can “cast” anything playing through the mixer to the other side of the house which is great.
Still haven’t tried any streaming service (although might give Tidal a try, Spotify can go fuck themselves) but SoundCloud works just fine. The WiiM app has vTuner which is a great ad-free alternative to TuneIn and I was an instant fan (really easy to add your own stream URLs, too, and set as a favourite).
At the risk of stating the obvious, you wouldn’t need the amp with active speakers - so if you’re looking to build a setup from scratch, that’s worth keeping in mind. However, the amp does have a USB port and the app has some kind of software to support playback across your whole WiiM setup. Haven’t tried this yet, but will be getting around to it. I’ve heard the initial indexing takes a while if you add a large USB device filled with music (and if it’s an external drive, will need its own power supply) but usb sticks apparently run fine once initial indexing is done.
At first I just wanted more convenience, but in practice connecting my M3 Macbook or an iPad to my integrated amp gives me the best quality when I want to listen to apple music in High Resolution, which is fantastic. When I just want a playlist going, then the airport express router via airplay does the job. In the end I had everything I needed here for the best experience. There is a little sacrifice in convenience to be made here and there but my conclusion was that it was worth it. I’d rather spend the extra money on records.
