how long till technology makes streamers obsolete?

Hmm,almost certainly they will become obsolete at some point. However I am not aware of what they would be replaced by yet.. Perhaps it's not yet been invented... It might be first the network streamer evolves rather than initially being replaced. Perhaps it will become more integrated with amplification and perhaps there will be more of a focis of streaming from cloud based content rather than physically storing the content at home. Some of these ideas are developing now with Spotify and iCloud, but they use lossy compression technology that compromise thequality of file media. Almost certainly as Internet bearer bandwidth increases, here in the UK using ADSL2, FTTP and FTTC technology will see domestic 100mbps accesses becoming quite common, and even higher for some, and so uncompromised network content streaming will be viable, even at 192/24.

The other are I expect big changes is network web radio. Current approaches are quite crude because of the limitations of IPv4 implementation of Internet protocols. This means strictly the audio is not broadcast but is setup as a bank of streamers on a peer to peer basis. This is inefficient and bandwidth expensive. With IPv6 proper internet wide broadcasting is supported (using multicast) so true web radio at highdef bandwidths for almost unlimited users will be possible. 

Therefore expect streamers to exploit this and ipv6 in the future.

Simon

Ethernet/wifi are all still back-compatible. All Ethernet switches will handle 10Mbit devices which are out of the ark.... Now there is a standard interface for Ethernet, it will be around for a LONG time to come. Wifi has its problems - my house has blackspots for instance and I don't get a consistent speed which is painful for streaming HD movies. Consequently, I bought some home plugs which have - you guessed it - Ethernet interfaces.

I'd be more worried by the formats moving on to be honest.

The alternative - depending on how geeky you are - might be a PC plus nDAC. If formats change, swap the PC....

When building my system last year, this one of the issues that worried me, but more with dac technology. I didn't want a one-box solution because I was afraid that dac technology would outpace advancements in amplification technology.

But now that I'm 'into it,' I've learned a few things.  First, nothing will outpace one's upgrade desires   Second, while you can worry about what the next technology might be, you're in the dark with no music (or perhaps, no music via cd-less source).

There will ALWAYS be a next thing. My advice is to jump in at a price point you are comfortable with, and just acknowledge that what you chose in 2012 will not be state of the art in 2015.  That doesn't mean it won't be playing nice music in 2015!  Or keep waiting . . . in the dark . . . shuffling cd's . . . 

Streamers are all about the front-end user interface. They become obsolete when newer interfaces come out that make the old ones look dated, or when the manufacturer stops developing them. I prefer the mac-mini plus dac approach so I can always load up whatever new player software and try it out. Plus you have more options wrt codec support and audio streams that do not have direct URL's.

I was in the same boat. Now yhat i have looked inside a nd5xs and seen boards getting upgraded, im less worried. A firmware upgrade should sort things out.

A more interesting question: how long does naim intend to support these devices?

I have digital music stored on a hard drive. I think that it will be easier to access this digital music in the future than it is now to play old music on LPs, 78s or cassette tapes.   A format conversion might be necessary, but if needed it will be quite easy to do. I have just found that I can read a spreadsheet on my PC which is probably 30+ years old. I had to run some old software in emulator mode to do this.     

If you think like this you would never buy anything. Who worried about cd players becoming obsolete back in the eighties?

I think streamers are still an emerging technology, and will be around for a while.

I think the developments are likely to be how we buy the music and store music. Hopefully this will only require software updates to keep up with technology. 

If the recording industry can come up with a new format to get us to buy all our albums again, they will do.

I think that is going to be much more difficult for them to do, because of the portability of digital music and the apparent market tolerance for a less that CD level of quality.  

If anything CD music is an example of data in a digital form from the 80s  which is easily used today and most likely will be equally usuable in the future.

Personally I would wait for the new "burst mode microwave" NMR devices become available before buying another streamer. NMR will easily outpace ethernet for speed, wifi for reliability and coupled with Windows software can cook a chicken in under two minutes.

Tog

Just googled this and got adverts for microwaves in Argos.