pbphoto

I was ready to slit my wrists after a couple minutes. 32 minute video, maybe 5 minutes of decent information.

french_lowres.mov

Must be a bachelor pad. Gear is on the floor and the speaker is blocking the closet door. Priorities.

Nice article on hearing vs listening with a shout-out to Klipsch. Not sure if there is a pay-wall, but i was able to see the whole thing. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-03-17/coronavirus-deep-listening-music-albums#null The best part is the 1959 picture of Clint Eastwood listening to a Barney Kessel album. Can anybody name those speakers in the corner? Or some of the gear on the floor?

Pretty sure that's why they don't offer it.

Dopes. Their loss, your gain. Congrats.

Good advice above. You are not losing anything sonically because of WIFI itself, but I don't know anything about Bluesound or what it's driver is doing on your laptop, or what app you are using to stream etc. Lots of things could be changing the sound between the Tidal source and your DAC, with WIFI not being one of them (unless your wifi really sucks but then as thaddeus said, it would be noticeable drop-outs). I got rid of Tidal about 18 months ago after they starting shoving MQA down everyone's throat. A flac file and an MQA file could have different sounds - even if they are from the same source. Some people like, some don't.

Lots of variables there. I would start by making sure your Tidal subscription is configured to send you the highest-quality stream possible - CD quality or better. Then, as a second test, you could eliminate the DAC as a variable. I'm not familiar with how the Node 2i works, but it looks like you can connect its digital-out to the digital-in on your Maverick DAC? This would allow you to directly compare Tidal-source+Bluesound-wifi versus CD-source+Jolida-transport. Make sure your sources are the same lineage/mastering.

Airplay runs at lossless cd-quality 44.1/16. This is upsampled slightly to 48/16 when it is sent to the ATV, but no real gain in SQ. First, is your ATV sending digital audio (either via HDMI or optical toslink cable) to your Marantz? I don't know for sure but I'm guessing your Marantz would have a better DAC than the ATV. Second, if you are not tied to Airplay/Apple, then you could pick up a $45 chromecast audio puck off of ebay and connect it to your Marantz via toslink cable. You would now be in the google camp and you could cast music at up to 96/24. I'm not too familiar with the ins-and-outs of google casting, but you need a chromecast-enabled app or browser to cast music to the chromecast audio puck. With both Airplay and Chromecast, you are trying to transport the digital music directly to the DAC in your Marantz which will have the biggest impact on SQ. In theory, Chromecast is better because it supports 96/24 vs Airplay 44.1/16, but YMMV. Also, you could eliminate the "Air My PC" app and maybe use a better/simpler chromecast enabled app on your PC. I've used both - chromecast can be a little glitchy at times, but both protocols can reliably transport the digital stream to the DAC.

If the goal is to listen to music controlled from your iphone but without having to turn on your TV, then I would buy a $40 chromecast audio puck off of ebay and connect it directly to your amp via a 2nd headphone-to-RCA audio cable. Chromecast audio has been discontinued but still available on ebay. It's got an internal DAC that supports 96/24 pcm wifi audio and sounds great. I don't know if it would be better or worse than the audio path through your TV you are using today, but it's certainly a simpler and cleaner method. just my .02

Does your amp have google cast/audio built-in? I'm not really understanding your setup.

BT is a different animal. I believe even the most modern BT codecs are still lossy, but have gotten a lot better over the years. Wifi-ethernet and wired-ethernet are both capable of delivering in-order bit-perfect data to the end-point over TCP/IP. And then whatever streaming app you are using probably has optimizations at the app-layer above TCP/IP. Maybe what you are hearing is some end-points might prefer one over the other (optimized NIC card or driver etc) and people can hear a difference.

How is this possible?

Not necessarily. If you have good wifi, that's much easier. All my streaming end points are wireless.

I have three Samsung TVs. A 2017 40" NU7100 that was in my kid's college dorm but is now in my bedroom since he's "remote learning." A 49" Q6FN from 2018 that I have mounted on a swing-out arm for optimizing viewing angle. And last month, after the death of my 8 year old Panasonic plasma, I went with a 55" Q90T. I think they are awesome TVs- great picture, good enough sound, and great smart features. I went with a smaller Q90T rather than a larger Q80/70T because the location where it is mounted does not have an adjustable swing arm, so I wanted the maximum viewing angle - I believe the 90 series has an extra-wide coating of some sort. It's just a matter of time before somebody tells you OLEDs are better. Maybe so, especially if you watch a lot of outer space movies with black backgrounds. But I find the QLEDs as good or better than my old Panasonic plasmas without any burn-in issues.

It's one of those "it depends" answers I'm afraid. Many of the music services mentioned above offer lossless CD-quality music or better. Qobuz often has higher resolution versions of the same album in my local library. So it comes down to 1) the mastering - which version of the album do you prefer? Your personal CD or the remastered one on your music service? and 2) the quality of your CD player versus the quality of the streamer/DAC you are using.

I have my Roon Core running on an iMac. Feeding it is either Qobuz, internet radio, or my own music library on NAS storage. On the output side, I have one Roon-ready end-point DAC (PS Audio DSjr) and then a bunch of other end-points - Airports, Sonos Play, Chromecast Audios, iPhones, and Macbooks. The Roon Core and NAS are hardwired ethernet, everything else is wifi. Roon can stream just about any source to just about any endpoint, with a great GUI and database search engine.

Dedicated AVP's are very expensive and go out-of-date every 18 months or so. Unless you are really really into HT and multi-channel music, I would get a Japanese AVR with multi-channel pre-outs and connect to the amp(s) of your choice.

Get whatever Japanese receiver in your budget with a full set of pre-outs. A full set of pre-outs puts you in the mid-high range of all manufacturers and gives you options for an external amp down the road. And because the Japanese companies make these things by the container ship load, they have the economies of scale to keep up with the hdmi/dolby/dts specs that change by the hour. I've had good luck with Yamaha over the years. Check out accessories4less.

☝️"Frageelay - must be Italian". 😀

Correct - the Anthem is playing the PCM file unaware of the embedded MQA encoding. This backwards compatibility mode is a feature of MQA that results in slightly less than CD quality PCM. I haven't used Tidal in over a year, but they used to have the hi-res PCM-FLAC version of every MQA album. Assuming they are the same master/lineage, the OP can compare to see if he hears a difference. I never could.

The Tidal app will do the first unfold for you. Turn off "passthrough MQA" unless you have an MQA compatible DAC, which you don't. If you do the first unfold in Tidal, then your Anthem should see an 88.2 or 96 PCM stream. Read this a couple more times: https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360005773698-Optimizing-HiFi

The Anthem MRX 720 does not support MQA so it's just playing those MQA files you are sending it as regular CD quality - slightly less actually. MQA files can play on non-MQA devices in a backwards compatibility mode, but at slightly less than CD quality. The best you can do with your setup is to decode (1st unfold) MQA in software. This takes it up to 88.1 or 96, and then send that stream to your MRX 720. Or, just stream regular hi-res FLAC files to your Anthem.

Roon is fantastic - been using it for 3 years now. Great UX experience and integration with Qobuz (or Tidal if you prefer.). I run the Roon Core on an iMac and stream to a bunch of devices throughout the house. Give it a try. If you end up going with Roon, your Lumin D2 becomes a very expensive digital pass-thru streamer to your Ares II. You might consider a less expensive Roon endpoint to pass digital to your Ares II, or buy a Roon Ready DAC/streamer all-in-one. Good luck.

I didn't say that. I said they are experiencing the same case-demic we are in the US. Cases in Canada started increasing in early September but, thankfully, deaths have not followed thus far. Northern US should track Canada very closely. Southern US had their first wave over the Summer which is why the blended US graphs don't match Canada. US has a double-hump because of the different climates. I'm told Canada is fairly cold. And yes, Canada will be heading into their normal respiratory virus season soon - let's hope the reporting is accurate and the hysteria doesn't follow.