Streamers: Under to ~$1k

I have been looking for a well packaged streamer for a little with my eye on the Nativ Vita (https://www.nativsound.com/en/music-server). It has a nice UI, great looking package with its own screen, and had all the hookups.

Well, it seems, that Nativ has gone MIA and their software updates have been cut off (no notice on their site of course). But it still works for now but will eventually be brought down to their local network streaming and built in storage (which can be put into a raid).

Most of my content is still local, but I would like to access Qobuz and Spotify possibly one day.

What else is out there in this price range?

Going off new prices

Well on the budget side of things, my favorite tend to be either a pi2aes or an allo usbridge signature player if you need usb, both pretty fantastic for the money, and both take very well to psu upgrades too.

Past that, for USB I like the sonore ultraRendu with a nice psu if you can push it, or a sotm sms200 neo + sps500 (or just a sole sms200 ultra neo). For typical spdif options, honestly I can’t say there’s many sub 1k that I like for the money, I would probably even say to pick a USB option above and grab a nicer ddc to connect to it lol. Although if you bring in used your options definitely start to open up

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You know me, toss those used options at me.

I love and will vouch for sotm, but you will certainly not get a pretty screen display

How about something with just a good app and ui?

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That is more than ok too.

The Nativ was a standout because the screen, design, and outputs. But I do realize most things sub $1k will have more sacrifices, bit possibly something new and useful.

The unit I was offered was ~$500 and will be a little over $600 once I put drives in. Even with the streaming services possibly being legacy. There may be some merritt here, but as always a check of the field is worth it. And to be honest i havent dove much into this field yet, and the only other options i know outside of pi solutions is the blue node.

There are the older Auralic Aries Streamers like this one

Again no screen.
Never used one, can’t comment on quality.
Some of them have upgraded clocks.

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I’d also look for the aforementioned auralic stuff, something from lumin perhaps as well. If you could find something from melco at 1-2k ish that would be cool

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I looked up melco and I am 99% sure that is just the the 2 piece vhs player my dad still has from the 80s

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The melco name has been used for a lot of things, from memory the IP has traded around and at this point they make streamers/servers under that name

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The lumin looks very intriguing and i see they have some units that are just streamers and are not streamers plus dacs/amps. It will also look very nice and shares design cues with the hegel, though that is mich lower on the list.

Was it used for JC Penny brand VCRs? Yes these are still in the house. Yes the rubber on the chords is now deteriorating into goo.

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Don’t think so, not sure what that is at least

For reference this is the melco I’m talking about

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Yes but i have to say there is some similarity. If a vhs tape popped out of that back unit there you cant tell me you would be surprised.

download (2)

Edit: also jcpenny was way ahead of the curve and had the psu seperate. Thats smarts.

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So more question. For the higher end options, do these mostly sidestep the need for a ddc? I assume that like 90% of everything audio, it depends.

And if the price bracket is brought up, does the grade of streamer drastically go up after a certain point?

Yes, although they serve different purposes. I’d go for a ddc if I wanted to use the audio device on a computer like a typical usb output, where a streamer will require you to push music to it almost like a separate device. So a ddc is good for something like if you want to use your dac as an audio output device for a pc, where a streamer is better if you want to treat your audio setup as a separate entity from a pc (and control it without needing a pc)

As mentioned before, you can get a usb streamer and then get a ddc if you want to, but that’s more just for different reasons than a ddc connected to a pc

Generally DDC do give you more bang for buck than a streamer sq wise, but a streamer can give better convenience in some situations (and sometimes better sq as well depending on how noisy your pc environment is).

If I’m understanding what you are asking correctly

Yes, imo the real sweet spot for streamers/network bridges tend to be around the 2-5k range imo from a high end perspective, there’s kinda a void for ones from 1-2k, at that price point I’d rather keep some of the sub 1k ones and just boost them further with better psu or inline digital reclockers/regenerators

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Nope, you nailed it. Ideally I would like a just music enviroment where the only pc part is reading off a nas or mass storage via network.

Darn, so I am a bit in the streamer version of the $500 dac dead zone. But I think that kind of makes my decision easier. I think for me the Vita makes a good stop gap for its used price and the ssd drives can be reused when i am done with them. Then I can wait for whatever the next big streamer feature or breakthrough is.

I would love a naim atom type device but stripped of the cost of the dac/amp sections. Also I am seeing more and more hdmi integrations making a 2 channel media suite set up much easier, and thst is part of my end goal.

Yeah kinda

:+1: no personal experience with that one but it does look nice

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The Lumin stuff looks good after the research I’ve done. The sweet spot seems to be the U1 Mini, the architecture has four clocks. But they’re super hard to find used and certainly not for under $1k

The SOtM is good, it is a step above the Pi2AES but not a significant step above when you put a good power supply on the Pi.

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The other thing to mention is a lot of the “price” for the higher end streamers comes from their fancypants UI. If you use Roon, it completely levels that playing field so it makes the decision solely about the performance.