Streaming/Network Amp and Speakers - Experience and Advice please?

Hi, I know there have been a number of hi-fi related questions posted recently and I would also love to get some advice on a hi-fi options and set up.

We're just getting to the end of an extension project in our house and will end up with a nice size open plan kitchen diner and seating area where we will spend most of our time as a family. I haven't bought any hi-fi for probably 30 years (Marantz CD52 MkII SE, Technics amp and some B&W speakers) all of which is now long gone. I also don't have any physical media any more having got rid of all CDs etc. What I'm looking for is something like my old set-up in terms of 'the look' but with the convenience of being able to stream or access music, use DAB radio, Spotify etc, ideally in a one box set up.

My current thoughts are something like the Yamaha RN303D amp and then maybe q-acoustics 3020i or B&W 607 speakers.

(Budget circa £300-350 for each item.)

Without being able to go any demo anything at the moment, it would be great to get anyone's experience of these options, compatibility, alternatives or things to consider in general?

Thanks in advance for any help!

I've used Sonos amplifiers with some quality ceiling speakers to great effect.
I always used Sonance or KEF speakers.
So good to listen to and discreet which the ladies like.
As much radio and music you'll want.

The current Sonos amp is over your budget but if you buy the previous model (2x50watt per ch) which is excellent still it can be bought for £100 -150 used off Ebay. Very compact and can be out of site on top of a kitchen unit.

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Originally Posted by Rod

I've used Sonos amplifiers with some quality ceiling speakers to great effect.
I always used Sonance or KEF speakers.
So good to listen to and discreet which the ladies like.
As much radio and music you'll want.

The current Sonos amp is over your budget but if you buy the previous model (2x50watt per ch) which is excellent still it can be bought for £100 -150 used off Ebay. Very compact and can be out of site on top of a kitchen unit.

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I agree that Sonos is worth considering but just caution that there are a number of variants of the Sonos amp, and the product range is split into current (S2) and legacy (S1) if looking at Sonos check this out if you think you might expand.

There are a lot of paths to go down for streaming audio, but in my mind just two stand out, Sonos and Roon Labs. Sonos is the easy choice, and the easiest to use. Its compatible with the most music services and sources, the broadest variety of control platforms, and has the most hardware options as well. A pair of Sonos One speakers (or the even cheaper Ikea versions) is a tough act to beat.

Where Sonos falls down a little bit is for the audio enthusiast. If you really want to squeeze the very best out of a system, and you enjoy the pursuit, Roon is the system to beat. Its just a better sounding platform, with a really great user interface, if you put the time in to it. Many Roon based systems would be out of the budget of the OP, but I'm Beta testing a product from HiFiBerry that might fit the bill. Here's a little preview.

https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/were-...a-bigger-boat/

For the amp, how about the NAD D 3020 v2. I have the 3045 and it is excellent, the 3045 is based on the 3020 and the reviews all point to that being excellent. You can Bluetooth straight to the amp. I also just added a used airport express (£20 on Facebook market place) and so it now has airplay capability so streaming from an Apple device works perfectly.


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Thanks for the feedback and ideas so far, happy to research these alternatives. Also be good to hear from anyone who has experience of the Yamaha streaming amp(s) and what speakers to consider.

Thanks

The Bluesound Node 2i gets raves reviews and will likely be at £399 come Friday (as it was a few weeks ago).

Supposed to have a great in-built DAC, streams from all knows platforms and supports MQA if you need that. RCA out so all you have to do is plug it into the “AUX” input on any amp.

Can't comment on the Yamaha RN303D but I do use a Yamaha WXC50 for streaming amazon music HD, it's also connected to a 1TB SSD with some of my music on it. It's a very stable system and I've no complaints what so ever, especially as it's effectively added a new lease of life to my Fatman itube 452 valve amp, which has limited connectivity.

More info on the WXC50 below.

https://www.richersounds.com/yamaha-...amplifier.html

The Yamaha RN303D looks like a good solution and I love the aesthetics of it, especially in silver.

Good luck with whatever you decide to go for.

Cheers,
Gary

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Originally Posted by jcm3

There are a lot of paths to go down for streaming audio, but in my mind just two stand out, Sonos and Roon Labs. Sonos is the easy choice, and the easiest to use. Its compatible with the most music services and sources, the broadest variety of control platforms, and has the most hardware options as well. A pair of Sonos One speakers (or the even cheaper Ikea versions) is a tough act to beat.

Where Sonos falls down a little bit is for the audio enthusiast. If you really want to squeeze the very best out of a system, and you enjoy the pursuit, Roon is the system to beat. Its just a better sounding platform, with a really great user interface, if you put the time in to it. Many Roon based systems would be out of the budget of the OP, but I'm Beta testing a product from HiFiBerry that might fit the bill. Here's a little preview.

https://www.hifiberry.com/blog/were-...a-bigger-boat/

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I was looking at their DSP product. I see they do a measurement mic too now, I was thinking of getting a UMIK mic to experiment with the free room correction on Foobar with the Mathaudio plug in.

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I have a pair of monitor audio bronze 2 from 8/9 years ago with a denon ceol n7 (really first gen network streaming!) and it still is great! A lot comes down to room size and how loud you can play music. I barely get to 25% on the volume and unless I can play loud I won't be upgrading anytime soon!

Currently not using streaming with tidal on the system (yet), but when I do I'll add something like the Bluesound as suggested above - good network streamer the app is supposed to be good too.

The other option is a DAC with a source (say a laptop or ipad) and feed into the Denon (I'm happy with the amp).

I reckon you can get some decent speakers, an amp and some sort of streamer all in your budget. Be a pretty darn good system!


(Lets not discuss headphones music, that's been a rabbit hole for me......)

I bought an Allo raspberry pi and DAC to stream flac from my media server. In my case I'm running moode audio but other interfaces are available. The sound is outstanding and the DAC is considered one of the finest available. Plus I think it cost about £150 for the complete kit.

https://allo.com/

I've got a 10 year old Logitech Squeezebox hooked up to an AV receiver. The Squeezebox server plays all of the audio from my iTunes library, also plays internet radio and I can somehow add a Spotify plugin to the firmware, but I've not worked out how to do that yet.
There must be plenty of them around now cheap enough 10 years down the line.

I got fed up with buying components that wouldn’t talk to each other, that introduced new interconnects, etc.

Went the route of buying a NAS that I use for all domestic computer backups, storage of music libraries including iTunes.

The NAS drive is available wherever there’s an internet connection.

I connected a B&O core so that any device can connect to it via blue tooth or the B&O app.

A pair of B&O speakers, a sound bar and a few wifi connected speakers around the place for multi room.

It’s been a good experience so far and the sound bar (Stage) is excellent.

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Originally Posted by jwillans

I bought an Allo raspberry pi and DAC to stream flac from my media server. In my case I'm running moode audio but other interfaces are available. The sound is outstanding and the DAC is considered one of the finest available. Plus I think it cost about £150 for the complete kit.

https://allo.com/

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I've been toying with a raspberry pi for a while for when my sonos goes pop or doesn't work anymore due to app issues (I've got all gen one stuff) I don't need the dac hat with it as I already have one but I want to maintain a multi-room system and I think this is where the raspberry system falls down. Last time I looked there wasn't anything available really that covers this. Bluesound Node is the other (much more expensive) option

I have (or have had) the Squeezebox (first generation, I built the required music server using FreeBSD from source. Those were the days...), Apple Airport Express, Apple TV (as audio streamer), Raspberry Pi with hifiberry, Onkyo amp with built in bluetooth and Spotify, and a Denon CEOL N10 which uses the HEOS multi room system.

You don't say if you are streaming from Apple devices, but if so, I'd consider an amp or solution (like Raspberry Pi) that supports Airplay 2. Airplay is faster to connect than bluetooth, and the audio is uncompressed. It also supports multi-room. It's just a lot easier to use from Apple devices.

The Denon is the closest to the Yamaha one-box you are considering. It supports direct access to Spotify and Amazon Music, and some others, Internet radio, NAS music, USB drives as well as native Airplay 2 and bluetooth. Plus it can switch on and off automatically from the optical input, intended to make it easy to use with a TV. It's quite a good system, with an amp capable of driving most speakers. Denon do a matched speaker, and the amp can equalise for this speaker if used. It also has an analogue (phono plugs) input, which might be useful if you have older components too. I use it with my record player, with an external phono preamp. The sound is just fine. It replaced a multi-thousand pound valve pre/power and sounds identical. It just doesn't look as beautiful :rugby:

The only negatives I have on the one box solution are:

- I use it wired (it also has a wireless connection) but occasionally it will drop off the network for no obvious reason. It is much better than the Onkyo in this respect, which was famous for randomly shutting down entirely.

- If you use its inbuilt Airplay, your phone *directly* controls the amp's volume. Which is fine, until you accidentally play some music with your phone volume on max, and instantly fry your speakers/go deaf. It happened once too often in our household, so I now use an old Apple TV (an Airport Express or Pi would also work) plugged into one of the digital inputs, as an Airplay receiver. The phone now controls the volume on *that*, leaving the amp's volume as-is. Much safer.

- The HEOS app used for accesssing the other streaming services and setting up multi room is cataclysmically dismal. Just awful. Using Airplay (or bluetooth if you prefer) negates the need for it, but it's a shame. Check the app for the Yamaha you are interested in - they can often be downloaded and used in demo mode. You'll get an idea of how usable it is.

- You can't disable Airplay on the Denon. You can switch off bluetooth, but you'll always see an additional Airplay source available on your network on Apple devices. If you aren't using it (see above) it's a pain. I set an Airplay password on it, to avoid any accidental streaming to it and the potential for max volume incidents, but it still appears as a source. Denon could make it an option to switch this off by updating the firmware, but they haven't as yet.

- Indeed, you are at the mercy of Denon to fix bugs or add new features. To be fair, they do keep updating this model but it will stop at some point. Other solutions like the Raspberry Pi generally last longer, as the community support tends to keep going.

- The physical remote has simultaneously too many buttons (I counted 49 in total!) most of which are not used, and yet not enough buttons for things that are used. For example, the amp has 2 digital inputs on the back for external sources. There are 8 dedicated buttons on the remote for input source selection, but only one for the digital input. You have to press it twice to select the digital input 2. It's tedious, especially as it has direct buttons for lesser-used inputs like USB and "Music Servers", and you only know which of the two inputs is selected by peering hard at the Denon display.

It's still a fine amp despite these niggles, as it consoidates a lot of sources and functions into something small and tidy, but with entirely adequate sound, that most people can operate without a level of tech knowledge.

Hope some of the above helps,

Paul

I looked and looked under almost the exact same circumstances and went Sonos. The ease of use is so hard to beat. Stereo Ones as a pair in the kitchen, stereo pair Play 3s in our family room and am just looking for an S2 Sonos amp and some small floorstanders for another room. All served by Amazon Music HD. Sounds great, not quite the last word but I’ll take the compromise in those rooms. Hoping for even more from the amp and some proper speakers.

I looked at Denon, NAD 3020 etc but I decided I wasn’t going to add other sources and less boxes made me happy. Bought it all secondhand. In fact, I “accidentally” bought an extra Play 3. If anyone wants one?

Good luck whatever you decide. I’m loving rediscovering all my old stuff and the way Amazon Music leads you down rabbit holes of new music via suggestions. I’m sure all the apps do this. It’s been a great lockdown diversion for me.

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Originally Posted by Tokyo Tokei

- If you use its inbuilt Airplay, your phone *directly* controls the amp's volume. Which is fine, until you accidentally play some music with your phone volume on max, and instantly fry your speakers/go deaf. It happened once too often in our household, so I now use an old Apple TV (an Airport Express or Pi would also work) plugged into one of the digital inputs, as an Airplay receiver. The phone now controls the volume on *that*, leaving the amp's volume as-is. Much safer.


Paul

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Idle curiosity, is it a case that the digital link between the atv and amp is effectively a ‘line level’ connection negating volume control?

Or is something else at play?

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Originally Posted by Captain Morgan

Idle curiosity, is it a case that the digital link between the atv and amp is effectively a ‘line level’ connection negating volume control?

Or is something else at play?

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When connected via Airplay, the phone's volume control is *directly* mapped to the amp's. It's convenient, to some extent. But if you happen to have had your phone at 50% volume to listen to a call or watch a video on the phone, and then decide to Airplay some music to the amp, the amp goes to 50% volume. Which is a lot. And I had situations where a family member connected their phone that was on max volume, and the amp duly output at max volume. This was like being hit by a missile.

Putting the Apple TV (or any other box) in between just means the phone now controls the Apple TV volume, and the main amplifier volume remains untouched. This is usually the behaviour you want and expect.

To be fair, Denon does offer a volume limiter, but the most it will "limit" to is 80%.

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Originally Posted by Tokyo Tokei

When connected via Airplay, the phone's volume control is *directly* mapped to the amp's. It's convenient, to some extent. But if you happen to have had your phone at 50% volume to listen to a call or watch a video on the phone, and then decide to Airplay some music to the amp, the amp goes to 50% volume. Which is a lot. And I had situations where a family member connected their phone that was on max volume, and the amp duly output at max volume. This was like being hit by a missile.

Putting the Apple TV (or any other box) in between just means the phone now controls the Apple TV volume, and the main amplifier volume remains untouched. This is usually the behaviour you want and expect.

To be fair, Denon does offer a volume limiter, but the most it will "limit" to is 80%.

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As expected

Sonos connect lets you choose between a variable or fixed output levels depending if you are connecting to an integrated or power amp.

The dual volume scenario is a pet hate of mine

Watching this thread with interest, as I will need to do something similar in the summer!

I've got several streaming systems in my house - main system is a Naim Uniti which is great but beyond your budget. Unstairs and in the garage I've got Marantz MCR610 units driving Dali Zensor 1 Speakers. Great sound for the money, but the Marantz mobile app is pretty shaky at times. For any wireless solution you're looking at the quality of your wifi network is critical. There's nothing worse than music dropping out in the middle of a favourite tune! The Marantz is a bit outside your budget new but they're readily available on eBay for a couple of hundred quid.

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Originally Posted by Captain Morgan

The dual volume scenario is a pet hate of mine

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Whereas in my case, it's what I explicitly want, hence adding an (otherwise unnecessary) intermediary device. It now mimics my previous setup behaviour, with the amp as "master volume". Anything streaming to it cannot exceed whatever volume I have the amp set to.

If you prefer one master volume, you just use Airplay (or Bluetooth) direct to the Denon. But be careful about swiping the volume up on your phone!

Probably the cheapest way is to get a raspberry pi 3B, an IQaudio DAC or alternative , and then a second hand amp and speakers from pink fish media or hifiwigwam

All of my kit was bought second hand, and most of it from those forums

In my study I have the above RPi in a 3D printed Naim olive box to match the NAC82/ Hicap/ NAP 250, it sounds amazing considering how much it costs.

Running Volumio / spotify etc etc. and the app is v stable

Loads of really useful information, so thanks again. I have to confess that having read some of the comments and information above it has made me realise I'm pretty out touch with the options and the technology, so loads of research for me to do!

This deal for a little Denon streaming/radio/CD system and B&W speakers looks like it ticks all your boxes and is (almost) in-budget - https://www.richersounds.com/hi-fi/h...607-black.html

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Originally Posted by jwillans

I bought an Allo raspberry pi and DAC to stream flac from my media server. In my case I'm running moode audio but other interfaces are available. The sound is outstanding and the DAC is considered one of the finest available. Plus I think it cost about £150 for the complete kit.

https://allo.com/

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That looks very clever, is it easy to set up? Wonder if they have one with room correction...

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Originally Posted by mindforge

That looks very clever, is it easy to set up? Wonder if they have one with room correction...

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Relatively easy to setup. Not sure about room correction though.