DirectStream Performance with CD Quality Streaming services?

Audio Components DACs
21

I’m very happy with TIDAL. I’m running BubbleUPnP, which does both streaming and local play. I use the DLNA server built-in to my router for local files - no need for a PC at all, just the Android control tablet and the Bridge.

Their $20 Hi-Fi SQ is generally excellent - as good as my CDs ripped to FLAC, with the exception of some of their tracks that are not 16/44. I see a handful of percent of tracks reported as 96K AAC - they have apparently not yet ripped all their tracks to CD-quality, much less MQA. I also (rarely) have stalls between songs.

The one issue that makes me crazy about TIDAL is that they have a long-standing bug making it impossible to delete more than one track at a time from a playlist. If you want to remove a whole artist or album from a playlist, it is a major time-consuming PIA.

Aside from those cavils, I find that TIDAL is well worth the cost, and a huge upgrade to the music playing 16/7 in my home.

22

I subscribe to TIDAL HiFi and have three ways of getting it to the DS:

1. WiFi --> MacBook Pro --> USB --> DS

2. WiFi --> OPPO BDP-105D --> Coax --> DS

3. WiFi --> Squeezebox Touch via MySqueezebox.com (w/Enhanced Digital Output) --> Toslink --> DS

They all sound really good, although I think #3 could be the best. TIDAL on the Touch is also easy to control remotely with various Squeezebox controller apps (“Squeeze Ctrl” for Android works particularly well).