Best Sounding option for a Streamer without a built-in DAC?

[Miska]

8 minutes ago, Wagninger said:

hmm… still leaves the recommendation algorithm that qobuz has, it’s not really a great one…

 

At least HQPlayer supports that too... Both automatic playback when you run out of current queue and suggestions based on either album, track or playlist.

 

I've used it quite a bit recently and has been working pretty nicely. Although in a long run (many hours) it tends to drift away.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, dericchan1 said:

I have now sold all of my streamers and settled with simply using Hqplayer pc streaming qobuz to my 3 music systems, controlled by the hqplayer client app.

 

Least expensive hardware for doing this at the moment is Raspberry Pi4. Of course not very powerful for heavier DSP, but it can do some basic things. And now the Raspberry Pi5 is out which is more powerful.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Wagninger said:

It's a Ferrum Wandla, so I'm thinking to give it the raw data and not upsample much and let it do its thing.

 

Yeah, it has some of my custom algorithms inside. Since you use Oor, you likely also use some headphones. So you could still run for example some headphone EQ on RPi4/RPi5 or similar.

 

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, Wagninger said:

Yes, that's what I have experimented with - do you have any thoughts about putting HQPlayer in the mix with the Wandla, or do you think it doesn't make much sense?

 

You can still do things like running headphone EQ, headphone cross-feed, room correction EQ and such in addition to various playback options in HQPlayer (playing from Qobuz, etc). And of course if you like, you have tons of filter options at HQPlayer side. So one could consider it as an optional streamer add-on.

 

12 minutes ago, Wagninger said:

If it doesn't, I could be happy with feeding an RPi4 running MoodeOS

 

I don't know anything about MoodeOS. But you can try booting up HQPlayer OS on RPi4 for comparison and decide which way you prefer to go. Trial works for 30 minutes per boot.