Chromecast question

It should remain the same quality in theory, but in practice may sound different.

Chromecast is lossless, and does not change the format of your files. If you have a music library on a computer, I would consider using a UPnP server such as Asset to stream to your Nova. You may find improvements in reliability, functionality, and possibly even sound quality. 

I use a chromecast audio connected to an n-dac via optical. Casting audio from chrome on a pc sounds a similar to other sources thought the volume usually needs turning up quite a bit. Casting flacs has never illuminater the hd light on the dac so I'm assuming lower res, dsd and wav do n't show up as castable.

tony123 posted:

Hi,

I noticed, that VIDEO quality is worse If I cast it from Youtube to my TV via Chromecast. If I play the same video from video player on my TV - I see big difference. Quality is better if file is played directly from TV player. So I'm thinking maybe audio is also somehow affected by Chromecast. Maybe FLAC file is recompressed to a smaller format for faster streaming?

I think you have to remember that video is rarely transmitted lossless by anything these days (except our computer/phone/displays), and that streaming video from a mobile device or computer to a chromecast enabled device will involve recompression of an already lossy stream.  Same goes for Apple Airplay which I've never liked.

Provided the sending software/receiving hardware can accept lossless audio that's what you should get bar very HD audio.

I'm also assuming there are two form of audio Chromecast - firstly say with the Qobuz app on a mobile which hands off the URL of the audio file on Qobuz servers for the Chromecast device to fetch and play.  Secondly will be sending either a specific audio stream from a computer/mobile device unadulterated or the whole mixed 'system audio' of many possible sources which might sound completely different.

I bought lossless Tidal account (hi-fi). All files are stored here as Flacs. I want to stream music to my Uniti Atom, but NOT from mobile phone or tablet, but from PC. And the problem is I can't stream music from Tidal PC desktop software to Uniti. It is very strange, because Spotify offers this functionality. Using Tidal PC software I can only play music on my PC the software is installed on.

Also I noticed that Tidal Google Chrome player has Chromecast button. And I think this is the only option to stream music from Tidal to Uniti (using PC). Are there any other methods to stream music form Todal to Uniti using PC?

If I were you I'd be sorely tempted to try Roon and use your Tidal account via that.  If you had a Mac I'd suggest Roon or Audirvana.

I don't use Tidal (or PCs)  myself so there may well be options to tweak in the Tidal app or other software that could play Tidal for you.

Presumably you can't use the Atom's native Tidal integration without a mobile device and app - I'd also consider a cheap Android based streamer, say one of the Amazon fire devices as a controller.

Alley Cat posted:

If I were you I'd be sorely tempted to try Roon and use your Tidal account via that.  If you had a Mac I'd suggest Roon or Audirvana.

I don't use Tidal (or PCs)  myself so there may well be options to tweak in the Tidal app or other software that could play Tidal for you.

Hmm, Roon seems to be interesing thing... And Uniti is "Roon ready", so it should work.

tony123 posted:

Alley Cat posted:

If I were you I'd be sorely tempted to try Roon and use your Tidal account via that.  If you had a Mac I'd suggest Roon or Audirvana.

I don't use Tidal (or PCs)  myself so there may well be options to tweak in the Tidal app or other software that could play Tidal for you.

Hmm, Roon seems to be interesing thing... And Uniti is "Roon ready", so it should work.

Yes - did you ever get an email from Naim offering an extended Roon trial?  I did late last year, not sure if that offer is still on, but there is certainly a free trial available, and although it's a bit 'marmite' I liked it enough to subscribe even if I don;t use it as my main playback method.

 

Yes - did you ever get an email from Naim offering an extended Roon trial?  I did late last year, not sure if that offer is still on, but there is certainly a free trial available, and although it's a bit 'marmite' I liked it enough to subscribe even if I don;t use it as my main playback method.

No, I didn't get such email.

Also I'm thinking what kind of streaming method Roon uses? Is it Chromecast, UpNp, or some kind of Roon's native stream method that Uniti supports? If it is Chromecast, the same question remains. Does the SQ remains the same. My intuition (and also other forum members) says that SQ remains the same as in source, but I can't find any official information about that.

It's Roon's proprietary engine RAAT (not Joe 90's RAT ).

Roon can send the data losslessly but also allows you to enable various settings to modify the way the data is sent including Eq and some compensation for speaker placement - it has a neat little 'LED' above current track which when clicked shows the signal path and any audio stream modifications from source to output device.

Download it and give it a whirl, you really have to try it to see if it suits you, and I like many of the things it does, particularly organising purchased downloads very accurately when UPnP methods I've tried have failed due to tagging issues in the purchased files, and for that it's worth the cost alone to save hours of faffing with metadata.