Camlan
Does your Bubble/Lumin setup just play rips of your CDs, or does it play streamed music from Tidal or Qobuz?
It plays streamed music from both Qobuz and Tidal, in hi res on Qobuz (I have studio) but not MQA with Tidal so no real point in using Tidal over and above the Naim app. It streams in UPNP so there is no discernible difference between hi res downloads and hi res streaming, I have tested using my downloads against Qobuz streaming. The only difference, if it bothers you, is that you don’t get the full album art on the Naim streamer just the initial screen.
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OR too add you could get a chrome cast audio WHILE cheap and use it as a roon end point/bubble network you like or if you really want to splurge, a raspberry pi from the likes of Allo and use that as an endpoint and have all your album within roon.
Don’t care what people say when feed properly and using a decent 5v plug that little chrome cast audio is amazing. very little difference if any between other more expensive streamers
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I’ve read that the Chromecast Audio has been discontinued.
Perhaps there are still available in some local stores.
It has. But the CCA protocol will not be going anywhere
supermarkets will have them and still readily available online just about, can’t really see why they discontinued them maybe don’t sell as well as the normal chrome cast
Why would I want to get a Chrome Cast Audio? I already have an excellent streaming system set up - Tidal HiFi via 40MB broadband into PlusNet router, into my 272, into NAP150x, into Naim Arivas.
Because it’s away of getting Qobuz and isn’t that what you wanted? And sorry the cca sounds just as good as the internal streamer of the 272 quite frankly especially once a better 5v plug is in place . And if you wanted to try Roon ,which some have mentioned, it’s a cheap way to achieve this by using a cca as an endpoint for that. To see if you like the outcome and user interface without spending to much money. Then you can also sell the cca on if you don’t like the way Roon works and probably won’t lose any money in the process .
Typed this on my phone so hopefully make sense
But as far as I can tell you can only get CD quality Qobuz through a Chromecast Audio device. Is that right? Because I’d like to do a free trial of Qobuz Studio.
I’m planning to either try and access that free trial by downloading the Audirvana+3 onto my iPad or my PC. Which is better - the iPad or PC?
And is that a good way to trial Qubuz Studio?
If I do that, will the actual music files flow through the iPad/PC? Or would the iPad/PC just be a control device for telling a server online to send the Qobuz files to my 272?
“But as far as I can tell you can only get CD quality Qobuz through a Chromecast Audio device. Is that right? Because I’d like to do a free trial of Qobuz Studio.”
Depending on your toslink caps (my dac v1 is capped at 24/96 I believe, so I suspect the 272 will be also) the CCA will do fat hires audio from quboz . Its what im listening to now. The only problem i have is that the hi-res versions drop out from time to time for me but that a problem with my network/wifi.
“I’m planning to either try and access that free trial by downloading the Audirvana+3 onto my iPad or my PC. Which is better - the iPad or PC?”
Ok theres a little confusion here Audirvana is PC/MAC based application with a remote application for the iPad/Iphone. so you will need the computer on and connect physically to the 272 with a digital link of some kind. But will sound mile ahead better than the internal streamer of the 272 and the chrome cast
“And is that a good way to trial Qubuz Studio?”
Its a very good way of streaming qobuz if you thats all you want to do and you dont mind haveing a computer in the room with you. But it can do a lot more than that. It can also link to you iTunes and play content from there while applying it system cleaning algorithms (Audirvana shuts down/bypasses certain parts of your hardware to improve the sound) to your tracks or you can store your files in local directory on a USB stick/hard drive and point Audirvana to read from there as well, while still having access to your streaming services.
“If I do that, will the actual music files flow through the iPad/PC?”
NO
“Or would the iPad/PC just be a control device for telling a server online to send the Qobuz files to my 272?”
Exactly that Audirvana is a render able to retrieve files from Qobuz servers
the chrome cast audio works much the same way but is headless (no interface). meaning if you turn your phone off the chrome cast will carry on retrieving the data with out the control device present until either the album/track ends or your device reconnects and tell it to do something else.
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Well via Roon there is no difference for standard cd quality files that I can hear. I have started a thread on Roons forum to discuss this and others pretty much align with my results. MQA Vs HiRes is a different area and will be hotly contested either way but for CD they are very even. Which is to be expected using the same path and transport for both they should be the same, they are after all flac 44.1./16. I really thing that comparing two services via different paths is not the way to judge it. And I don’t believe Tidal is doing anything to their streams that some alledge to. Maybe it’s just bias as some do seem to have it in for Tidal because of the owner or its perceived musical bias. Not that I have ever seen this myself in being a Tidal user since it started up before Jay-Z owned it.
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Yes, AB tests should be made along the same path.
(Anyone who is upset about buying something from J zee should consider whether buying they are already buying something from, say, Rupert Murdoch or the Barclay Brothers…)
I’m going to do a trial of Qobuz soon.
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If you don’t use Tidal very regularly, and particularly if you have just signed up, it seems that you are confronted with loads of playlists and suggestions from the likes of Jay-Z. Not that surprising, perhaps, but I find that the more you use it, the more you seem to see material related to what you actually listen to. I can see that this would be off-putting (unless you actually like his music!!) but to me, it’s an irrelevance, as I use Tidal as a search tool, and only tend to look at the playlists, albums etc. that I have saved as favourites.
Having said that, I now seem to have used Tidal often enough that it now seems to make suggestions that I might conceivably want to listen to. I might even give it a try!
Yes - I’ve done a tidal 3 month trial - and liked it enough to start paying for it.
I have hundreds of tracks, lps and artists saved.
I listen to stuff I know and also browse from there - e.g. discovered Szun Waves and a Miles Davis album On the Street last week.
It’s so good I’ve sold my Cd player…
But clearly it wpuld be nice to hear their masters MQA files - hence this thread.
What I’m looking for is a way to hear the difference…
Think I’m going to try Audirvana 3+ via my iPad tonight if I have time - and if there’s a free trial option.
Roon has revealed that some files on Qobuz are MQA encoded after all. So this either them not checking the provenance of their material and accepting what they are given or just plain lying as it’s advertised as 192/24 pcm. One user reported this as playing the album it revealed in Roons signal path it was MQA and performing the first unfold. They are following up with Qobuz. It was a classical album on 2L label.
That’s a bit sloppy of Qobuz, quelle surprise 
I noticed last night that the Nick Drake LPs ‘five Leaves Left’ and ‘Bryter Layter’ are described as 96kHz/24 bit.
Do these sound different/better than other recordings on your systems?
I have Spotify and Tidal apps on my phone and they work fine, can anyone explain to me what Roon does and how it improves the streaming interface experience? ( In layman’s terms please!) 
I’m choosing Tidal hifi after the two trial periods. There’s less and there’s more rock music … and then Tidal has the app inside our Naim … When Qobuz comes in I’ll think about it
I ran Tidal HiFi for a year, first feeding my Hugo 2 / Senn HD800S desktop setup and then laterally with my living room set up based on Naim’s new streaming architecture. I played it directly from Tidal’s app, Naim’s app and Roon. It always sounded ever so slightly better directly than via roon. I also noted that they normalised the volume of the tracks they stream.
When QoBuz became supported on Roon 1.6 I switched from Tidal HiFi to QoBuz Studio. I did this for the following reasons 
- The QoBuz app on Android is more intuitive to discover new music.
- I find the curation is quite good compared to Tidal, however not nearly as good or immersive as Spotify
- QoBuz HiRes doesn’t require an MQA equipped DAC or ability to unfold. When Tidal MQA unfolding on Roon, I used to think that MQA didn’t sound very good and usually preferred the standard FLAC instead.
- The actual servers that stream the music are in Europe not the USA, which leads to the potential for less latency and fewer drop out issues if you’re based in Europe (which I am)
- The music catalog is decent with a good selection of the stuff I like to listen to in hires.
- I find the SQ to be CD like for 44.1 and better stuff to be really quite good. Is it as good as the downloads (cd or hires) I have? Maybe not… but it’s close enough.
- They don’t mess with the files! They don’t normalise the volume.
How did Tidal sound through the Naim app compared to via the Tidal app and Roon?