Very simple streaming

[Ant]

Been playing about with trying to get my phone and an old very rarely used tablet to output audio via the usb-c port this morning.
As they are older, i had to enable developer options and faff about to get them to do it.
Eventually i got there, and am streaming youtube from the tablet via the topping e30 dac, via a usb-c adapter which i got in with a usb microscope and a spare printer cable.

So far so simple. Now the interesting thing is, my phone, a samsung galaxy note 9 has the dac telling me it is outputting 192khz, and the tablet is outputting 96khz. Same android system, so the tablet must have different hardware.
As you would expect, as the phone was a high end one and the tablet is a low end 100 quid alcatel which we bought so the kids could all get on teams during lockdown.

So. Why am i buggering around with this?

Daughter keeps pestering for spotify, and i thought if i am going to have to pay for the damned thing, id like to use it myself.

For as cheap as possible an outlay.

What i am surprised at is that the phone sounds quite a bit better than the tablet does, and that the crappy tablet sounds perfectly acceptable streaming youtube.

I havent a clue how to go about setting up a 'proper' streaming setup and am uninterested in shelling out a ton of money for widgets and doodads to get fabulous sound quality out of it. There is only one wifi jump this way too so it hasn't buffered like the squeezebox used to do all the time.

Streaming might not be so complicated after all

[Cressy Snr]

Aye, my AppleTVHD and Apple Music is perfectly adequate and dead simple.
Now Apple have stopped messing up your album artwork, the service is great.
My ATV does not stream lossless, but the new AppleTV 4K does. Might treat myself this Christmas.

[Ant]

What annoys me is that my apple tv cant be used with apple music but this nasty android tablet can. And if the mac is on and apple music is installed it will stream the itunes library.
Its just silly

[Paul Barker]

Aye, my AppleTVHD and Apple Music is perfectly adequate and dead simple.
Now Apple have stopped messing up your album artwork, the service is great.
My ATV does not stream lossless, but the new AppleTV 4K does. Might treat myself this Christmas.

oh! I set my iphone music settings as Lossless, and it definately sounds better streaming through my pretty old apple tv thing, which is optically connected to the Beresford dac.

Do you mean that this doesnt do lossless?

How much is the one which does?

[Cressy Snr]

£169 or £149 if you don’t want ethernet. Cheeky bastards I say. one more excuse to gouge a bit more money, but still not bad.
After the AppleTV series 3 which you have, they did away with the direct optical out, so you have to use your TV’s optical out instead.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-tv/apple-tv-4k

Edit, the dearer model has double the storage so ignore my whining about the price for the ‘better’ one.

[Ali Tait]

Yep that’s what I do. YouTube sounds excellent this way.

[vinylnvalves]

A plug computer running something like Dalphile, is an alternative approach. S/H plug computers fanless can be bought for about £50 off eBay. Latest approaches using Roon etc are worth a look, there are free versions with limited functionality, Dalphile is free to download.

[Ant]

Listening to return to forever via the tablet and spotify premium at the moment. Ive connected the cyrus cd player to the dac too via an unfeasably long coax cable as i didnt have enough inputs on the b1 to do it separately. Set the quality on spotify to very high rather than automatic.

Ill get a proper cable with the right ends on it so i dont have to use the usb-c adapter, i need that for other things. a couple of quid off ebay.
I'll also find the linear psu for the dac instead of the phone charger because i couldn't lay my hands on it yesterday.

Given the dac is displaying 96khz, i presume the tablet is upsampling whatever the spotify stream is set to?

I mentioned to emma that i now have access to all sorts of wierd jazz fusion such as return to forever and all i got was a very withering look......
Just wait till i play world service project. The tablet will probably get launched at me

[Nick]

via an unfeasably long coax cable

As long as the cable is of the expected impedance that should not matter much. Both the transmitter and receiver will see what looks like a infinity long one anyway.

[Ant]

It came in with a load of long cables from an av installation done by cornflake, they appear to know what they are doing so hopefully its the proper 75r
Id have preferred an optical connection but the cyrus only has coax

[Paul Barker]

After the AppleTV series 3 which you have, they did away with the direct optical out, so you have to use your TV’s optical out instead.
https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-tv/apple-tv-4k

Yes I swap between hdmi to TV to optical and direct optical when its me alone. But Im not sure direct optical is any better, maybe slightly different but not enough to matter.

Well if my new contract with an old employer carries on as well as it has just begun Ill get a new ATV in a matter of months.

The old boss head hunted me The man from Scarborough he say yes and that he’s Minted!

[Max N]

That's brilliant news, congratulations Paul!

[pre65]

That's brilliant news, congratulations Paul!

Good news Paul, you sound pleased.

[IslandPink]

[Cressy Snr]

Good news Paul.