Presto Hi Res streamer

I don’t know whether other forum members have subscribed to the Presto music streaming service. This makes available a large amount of classics and jazz music in hi res (up to 192/24) by way of an iPhone or Android app. I find it very good, but getting it from there into a Naim system is the usual faff.

Yesterday Presto started to promote their own streamer box which seems to offer what is basically a Connect-type service and the box can be connected to your hifi either by an analog or optical cable. It costs about £70 for the streamer.

This is so cheap that I ordered one and it’s now in the UK postal system, supposed to be delivered tomorrow. I will report back here what I think of it in due course. But I wondered whether anyone has already tried it? (I believe it has been available for a couple of months.)

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Hi David , would love to read your review and any pictures

Found it, I could use my UnitiQute as a DAC,

best wishes

Ian

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I see that the Bluesound node has this on board. Looking at the presto site it seems more classical than jazz though. Is that correct? I may take up their free trial offer to see how their jazz content plays.

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They have separate classical and jazz sites, so you need to look for the one you want. It’s easy to swap between them though.

But the app just works across both classical and jazz without you doing anything.

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Me too.

Roger

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This Presto streamer is tiny! See the power plug next to it for a size comparison. I won’t be setting it up tonight as I am about to go out. So more tomorrow.

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I was a beta tester for this product and supporting app software. The intention is to allow those customers who are not invested in streaming an entry point to bridge the available catalogue to an alternative means of playback vs CD and vinyl.
I had suggested to them early in those discussions that integration to popular platforms like those using Node OS would be more lucrative. The hardware itself is a generic off the shelf design they’ve branded.
I tested mine mainly as a Minijack to DIN input to my then NDX2/SN3 system and found it surprising capable considering what it costs.

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Very interesting. I’m going to be using it with the optical output into a digital input on my Nova. Can’t wait to try it. But I am going to wait as the taxi arrives to whisk us away in 5 mins!

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It’s a nice idea, and their library and editorial curation bring additional dimensions to the listening experience.
The iOS and Android apps require a lot of resources to support and develop continuously, something they were probably somewhat niave to when they went in to the project.
Considering the price point it’s a risk free solution in the grand scheme of things :grin:

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Well I have connected the Presto streamer up and got it going. But the setup was somewhat different to what the instructions described. In particular it took maybe two minutes for the streamer to show up in my list of devices, not 10 seconds as they said.

But a much more serious problem is that the device seems to pause and buffer more or less constantly, apparently worse on 192/24 files than 96/24 (as one might expect).

Playing the same file through the Presto app with my iPhone on the same WiFi network and in the same location as the streamer works fine, but when the Presto streamer plays it, I get frequent pauses while it buffers.

It’s impossible to judge sound quality like this so I will not comment on that for now. I think I’ll hang onto that Qobuz subscription for the time being.

I will report more in due course, but I am not feeling the love for it right now :slightly_frowning_face:.

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An update! I recalled how many people report that Gen 1 musos and green screen streamers have terrible performance on WiFi even when the router is only a few feet away. My Presto streamer was about ten feet from the nearest WAP with a clear view of it, but maybe that isn’t close enough I thought.

So I have added a spare AirPort Extreme fed by Ethernet and sited it within 20 cm of the Presto streamer. So far no buffering!

More later.

Edit: I have now played all the way through the 192/24 album that was suffering from so much buffering before and it’s been totally fine. Sounds great in fact.

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I’m not going to pretend this is a review or anything like that, but for £70 this is an amazing value box and I can see abandoning Qobuz streaming as a real possibility for me now.

So for people who never read a thread from the top, Presto (a CD, vinyl and download store in UK covering classical and jazz music) started a high res streaming service about a year ago. It costs about the same as a Qobuz subscription. There is a nice app which doesn’t present you with hundreds of rock and pop albums that you will never want to hear - it’s just classical and jazz. The curation and editorial content is interesting and helpful. About a week ago Presto started promoting their own brand streamer which they sell for just over £70. They have several different country options for the power supply, but at the end of the day the streamer needs a 5V 1A supply by way of a Micro-USB socket.

The streamer itself is a small black box, 95mm x 53mm x 18 mm. It has the power socket, a 3.5mm analogue socket and a Toslink optical socket. There is a button which can be used with a router that has a WPS button for setup and also by pressing it longer, for reset. There is an almost invisible blue status light.

Setting it up with an iPhone or Android phone running the Presto app is very simple. The unit has to be connected to your WiFi and only works with 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz.

You can choose to connect the streamer to a Naim device by analogue which uses two RCA plugs, but you could change that lead for a 3.5 mm to DIN if you want to. I chose to connect using the provided optical lead to a digital input on my Nova. I thought the analog feed was ok but nothing special. The optical feed sounds just as I would expect, as it’s using the Nova’s DAC to convert to analogue audio. Multiroom to my office SuperUniti and the 272 in our sitting room worked fine.

The Presto streamer works up to 192/24 and the Presto streaming service provides the highest res that they have available, which is always at least CD quality and higher for many recordings.

The way you use the streamer is to select the digital input (and adjust the volume) in the Naim app and then choose what you want to listen to in the Presto app. The wanted music is sent to the streamer from their servers via your WiFi, so you can turn the phone off or whatever if you want. If you do that and then turn it on again, the Presto app picks up where you left off and you can see in the Now Playing screen in the Presto app where the album has got to and what’s coming next.

My hearing is not good enough these days for me to be able to comment on sound quality at all critically and people who follow what I write here on the forum may have noticed that I almost never say anything about sound quality. But to me this streamer sounds excellent. Also I am very sensitive to unwanted distortion and I am not hearing any at all. It all sounds very clean to me.

Earlier in the thread I mentioned that the only issue I ran into was that I was getting a lot of buffering over the WiFi connection, despite having a very good broadband connection and this streamer being the only 2.4 GHz WiFi device in the house. The two existing WiFi access points were four metres and 8 metres away from the streamer. Giving it its own WiFi Access Point sited only 40 cm away from the streamer totally fixed the buffering issue. (I would rather hardwire the Ethernet but the streamer doesn’t have an Ethernet socket.)

Anyway my overall conclusion is that this is excellent value and does exactly what you hope for almost no money, a lot less than a BlueSound Node for example. Whether the Presto app suits you is something you have to decide for yourself. But personally it does suit me and I am very pleased with the whole thing.

I’m happy to answer questions if I can and would also be glad to read what others think of this, if they try the app and/or the streamer.

It occurs to me that it is probably worth adding that when you are away from your streamer, the Presto app will look for Bluetooth and AirPlay connections or play to your phone, so it’s great for having music on the move too.

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Likewise, will fire mine up again :partying_face:

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You do know you can filter your Qobuz feed by genre……

Yes of course. But thank you.

Thank you David, the Presto streamer looks very interesting . It could slip into my AV unit and I can use my UnitiQute as DAC

best wishes

Ian

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You could do that. It has a built-in DAC too which you could alternately use. In fact you could connect both analog and digital outputs to your UQ and switch between them to see which you prefer.

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Is it something one could take on holiday and use with a pair of headphones?

You’d probably be better off just using their native iOS/Android app on a phone/tablet and if you felt it necessary, a USB DAC connected to it. If you want to go beyond 24/48 (on Apple devices at least) you require an external DAC to achieve it, and then using wired headphones.
The Presto Player requires it’s own Internet connectivity regardless and mains power and for you to then be on the same network to control it from a phone/tablet.

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Yes exactly as @Mr.M says. The app works very well on my iPhone and streams directly into my hearing aids, but for people lucky enough not to use hearing aids then you can enhance an iPhone substantially with an Audioquest Dragonfly DAC/headphone amplifier. Or alternatively the Apple AirPod Pro 2 is pretty impressive imho.

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