It sounds very good.
So my deduction is that what is lost in the wifi link from router to iPad and back again, is more than made up for by the upnp connection, by the hires files and by the fact that the 272 is doing less processing internally?
Your Path with MConnect is:
Tidal / Qobuz -> Ethernet Router
Router WiFi -> Ipad WiFi
Ipad WiFi -> Router WiFi
Router Ethernet -> 272 Ethernet
If you are happy with MConnect, good. Itās a kludge to me.
Itās strange for me. I have no idea on why it works really. Perhaps you are right, but my feeling is if files go through the iPad, they would be corrupted and the sound would be worse.
But just my feelingā¦
All I can say is that Mconnect Qobuz sounds better than native Tidal, when I tried once.
You donāt need WiFi on 272 it will go from internet to router to phone, then back to router and 272. The issues likely arise with poor WiFi as it can only handle one thing at a time so any delay due to other wireless transfers on other kit could cause dropouts. Serving from a wireless source is not ideal.
So why it sounds better vs native Naim Tidal app ?
Itās curious, not?
I never found native Tidal sounded very good on my NDX vs local streaming, itās certainly better on my NDS where the gap narrows but it stills falls short of the local files.
My understanding is that the processing required to stream Tidal generates noise in the streamer. Also the file is FLAC so there is a need to transcode the FLAC stream which adds a further overhead for the poor old legacy streamer.
This is why offboarding (is that a word?) the processing to a server via something like Bubble or Roon is successful as the streamer then receives something far closer or even identical to a local file being streamed.
This issue doesnāt seem to be as significant with the new generation streamers which seem to handle this much better.
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Yes, but in the case of Mconnect, it transits by the IPad but still sounds better. Which is surprising for me.
I suppose itās solving half the problem. MConnect is doing the Tidal download and processing and presumably sending FLAC to the streamer?
I tried MConnect briefly some time ago and found it pretty unreliable. It must have improved since then as @JimDog seems to be getting on well with it.
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I bought MConnect and tried it 5 years ago, I think I must have tried it for a week or 2 weeks and then I gave it up for some reason, there was something about it that I did not like.
I did not remember that it was still on my iPad until someone here mentioned it.
The App is indeed not friendly.
I see another Roon trial on the horizon.
Iām not happy with any wifi legs in the signal path.
Wifi is surely worse than wired.
But the sound is not a ākludgeā at all.
The sound is distinctly better than wired native Tidal.
If there was an MConnectHD route without a wireless leg it should sound even better.
Yes, MconnectHD Qobuz does sound better than native Tidal on my system.
And MconnectHD Tidal sound also better than native Tidal on my system.
I gave a hypothesis of why it sounds better in post 123 above:
āā¦what is lost in the wifi link from router to iPad and back again, is more than made up for by the upnp connection, by the hires files and by the fact that the 272 is doing less processing internallyā.
So Iāve never heard hi res files on the 272 until now.
Also, the 272 does like to be fed files via ethernet cable/upnp.
Also, Iām not sure about this but perhaps the processing going on in the iPad is taking some processing activity away from the streaming board and/or DAC, this cutting down on noise in the 272?
So far Iāve mainly been using it at night when wifi activity and router activity is extremely low in the house.
Yes, I think the processing required to stream from Tidal may be reduced by whatever MConnectHD is doing in the iPad.
But as dknk says above, MConnectHD is not transcoding to WAV (unlike Bubble).
I doubt it, Ray.
I suspect that Roon is a very expensive way to get something similar from a SQ perspective to what I have got with MConnectHD.
Roon adds nothing to sound quality and even can get it a bit worse.
There a few versions - MConnectHD, MControlHD and others.
And maybe they have been improved over time.
Itās not as nice to use as the Naim app, and the information on it is very limited as far as I can tell.
But itās been reliable and stable over the past several days.
I can flick easily in and out between Tidal and Qobuz to compare tracks, and search say Tidal while still listening to a track Iāve played on Qobuz.
So functionally it does what I want at the moment.
Then Roonās defo not for me.
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