Recommendations requested

Good to know. Another vote for the current set up coupled with a quality optical cable.

My TV is a Panasonic. It does add noise. The extractor wall wart and extractor with LPS is a noticeable difference. The AppleTV4K is miles ahead of older generation of optical out. Apple TV sound beats various fireTV choices. The noisiest conversion had been letting TV do it. Sony may have better internal supplies and better handling of the reclocking.

also worth looking at a good quality HDMI cable for the ATV - can help picture and sound

Thanks for the helpful information. I agree with your sentiment on the convenience of using the TV as a hub of sorts. For those of us who do not want to go the HT route (for whatever reasons) it is quite nice having a device that we already own which accepts multiple HDMI inputs. In my case, ALL of the external devices that I use connect via HDMI. The problem is that very few (and very expensive, at that) 2.1 channel preamps accept HDMI. NAD used to make the C 510, which was a really functional piece in this regard, but I think it is discontinued (can’t be purchased anywhere from what I can see, yet is still shown as available on their website). I imagine that those of us who want to retain their 2.1 channel gear while at the same allowing their TV watching (netflix, blu-ray, firetv, appletv, etc.) to play through their existing 2.1 system are a sizable market.

I never use the optical input for music tho since the DAC is capable of much better than what the TV provides - hence the I2S input stack

Gotcha. I have really been hobbled by my decision to use Apple TV as my music source. I did consider a Naim streamer, or something on par which would have enabled me to have a separate stack, like you do, for music and thereby avoid the HDMI/TV dilemma. The reason that I opted for the Apple TV, was that I cannot connect ethernet to a Naim or similar streamer and I have read repeatedly that almost all of these streamers have spotty trouble using WIFI as opposed to ethernet.

The Auralic streamers do just fine on WiFi as does even the lowly Bluesound Node 2i.

Try the Bluesound Node2i - I had one and was very impressed by the sound and the software - also works on ethernet and wifi reliably .

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WiFi should be good and I would recommend as you avoid the endless ethernet rabbit hole.

Just make sure to use your 5G band and you’ll be good to go :slight_smile:

I’m using three different Auralic models in two different houses all on WiFi and have used one of them for five years.

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If you have solid wifi then any of the above streamers will be perfect

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What kind of router do you have? Supplied from ISP or your own?

I swear that I read a significant amount of anecdotal posts about how hi-end streamers have spotty wifi behavior. I thought to myself “I’m going to spend $3,000 or so on a hi-end streamer and worry if my wifi is compromising the quality”? But if that is not the case, as many are pointing out, then I am just itching to get rid of the Apple TV. Now I’m excited again.

I have my own, its a rather expensive Netgear 5ghz. I used to be a Unix sysadmin back in the day and read with suspicion those posts which talked about wifi connection problems given local network bandwidth. Come to think of it, many of those posts mentioned the Blueos app. Knowing that I couldn’t use ethernet, I just basically didn’t even consider a hi-end streamer after reading those posts.

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ok, good to know. tomorrow i begin the search for a streamer!

This is only one example of the kind of thing that I was reading regarding wifi

And this, again not the articles that I actually came across when I was doing research, but similar:

If you have a problem with WiFi which you shouldn’t that can be solved with a $30 WiFi extender which will let you hard wire the streamer. The Node is using an off the shelf Intel WiFi chipset just like was used in the original Aries Mini. They changed that chip a couple of years ago but it is still only a $500 plastic unit so the parts quality will only be so high. If you want an all in one DAC/streamer with proven WiFi I would look at the Auralic Altair G1. You can even order it from Audio Advisor where you have a 30 day trial to see if you have issues.

If you want to stay hard wired however the Aurender N100 is an excellent server./streamer and the output compatible with your stellar DAC

Forgot you had just bought the SGCD so you just need a streamer. Narrows it down to only the Aries G1 or Node 2i for wireless but if you are willing to use an extender and hard wire from it another group of options are available from Aurender, Innuos and Lumin all in the $2k to $2600 range.