The four types of high-quality audio systems, turntables, CD players, AM/FM/DAB+ radio turners and today’s discussion, networked audio streamers. Stephen Dawson looks at how integrators can get the most out of network audio streamers.

At Christmas, I was caught on the hop by a young relative when I mentioned that my music streamer had broken. What was a streamer? she wondered. Being of that generation she was far from convinced that you needed anything other than your phone for Spotify.

I tried to explain that a streamer is what you use to get that Spotify music into your proper high-fidelity sound system, rather than being stuck with headphones and your phone. If you do have a quality stereo system, then you do need a source device that provides access to the not quite infinite (as we’ll see) supply of music available online.

More specifically, a streamer connects to one or more of the many internet services that provide music, radio stations or podcasts, and turns the content into an analogue or PCM digital signal that can feed an amplifier. Some services allow the streamed music to be retained on a device, but by far the most common use is for the music to download, play and then disappear.

Streamers generally come with dedicated apps for phones and tables. The app controls the streamer and allows settings to be adjusted and content to be chosen. The usefulness and usability of a streamer usually depends at least as much on its app as on the hardware.

Most streamers also provide additional network functionality: playing local content served via DLNA, playing content from a phone, computer or tablet using Apple AirPlay or Google Cast. They often include Bluetooth as well.

Some are large, heavy and expensive. Some light and low in cost. Most have stereo RCA outputs and optical digital. Some also add balanced XLR outputs or coaxial digital audio. All connect to your home network, using WiFi, Ethernet or both. The quality of performance and usability is not always aligned with cost and build. Some also come with small LCD screens showing what’s playing, but many omit that and rely more heavily on the app.

Now, let’s look at what it is that they’re actually streaming.

A little history of the internet

The internet first offered music in the form of downloads. It was all computers then. And those downloads were often of the naughty variety: Napster, which was eventually sued into submission, and many even sketchier sites.

Those sites were inevitable, since the music industry was slow to offer digital music in legal, purchasable forms over the internet. Remember, as far as the music industry was concerned, even ripping a CD, personally owned by you, to load on your digital audio player was a form of piracy.

I think Apple’s iTunes Store was the first source of legal music for download – in other words, music that you could purchase – or so the internet suggests. It first opened in April 2003. Mind you, the iPod had been launched eighteen months earlier, and in that time window, there really wasn’t a thoroughly legitimate source of music to put on it.

With the iTunes Store, online, downloadable music sales truly got going. Five years after launching, the iTunes Store was “the largest music vendor” in the USA, so says Wikipedia. Initially iTunes Store tunes were digital rights managed (DRM), which meant that they were only playable on “authorised” devices, typically Apple gear. That caused no end of problems, but by April 2009 virtually all the music was DRM-free.

Other sources came along catering for those outside the Apple ecosystem. Many still exist, and often specialise in sales of high-resolution music – high sample rate or 24-bit or Direct Stream Digital.

But by 2016 streaming was bigger than downloading, thanks largely to the launch of Spotify.

Spotify

The company was launched in Sweden in 2006 and started providing streaming music in the massive US market five years later. It is the music streaming platform of choice. There’s no point in launching a streaming speaker or system that doesn’t support Spotify as you’re unlikely to sell any. Out of the dozens of streaming systems I’ve reviewed, only one didn’t work with Spotify and that was by accident. Out of the box it did, but there was a problem with Spotify licencing and the first firmware upgrade eliminated that capability… and sales.

Indeed, Spotify is so dominant that it can afford to be zealous in control of access to its servers. With only one exception, proprietary streaming apps can’t directly stream Spotify. Instead, if you tap its icon within them, it simply switches you over to the Spotify app. The exception is Sonos, with limited direct access to Spotify within its app.

Fortunately, the Spotify app is well developed and pretty much perfectly reliable on all the devices I’ve used.

In addition to computers, tablets and phones, Spotify support is built into innumerable high fidelity (and not-so-high-fidelity) pieces of equipment, such as network amplifiers and receivers, smart speakers and of course network audio streamers.

The main way to use Spotify on such devices is via the app running on a phone, computer or tablet. Once some music is running on that device, you can tap on an icon and then select for playback any of the listed devices. Those are any Spotify-supporting devices on your network. How the music gets to the device depends on its capabilities. If it supports Spotify Connect, the music will stop playing on your phone, or whatever, and the playback device you’ve selected will directly connect with Spotify to stream the music.

The Spotify app (even the iOS version) also supports Google Cast so it can be used with Google Nest devices, plus anything else that supports that format. If you’re using Apple devices, you can also use AirPlay. In both cases, it will be your tablet etc. which accesses the music from Spotify and then sends it to the playback device.

Spotify has a free ad-supported tier which is limited to 160kbps compressed music in Vorbis format or 128kbps in AAC. The Premium – that is, paid – level doubles both of those bitrates. Since 2021 Spotify has been promising a lossless compressed version at CD quality, but there is still no word on when this will eventually be delivered.

Tidal

This is the primary Spotify competitor and initially sought differentiation through some exclusive artists, such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Jay-Z was an early investor. Now both artists are on Spotify as well. Not surprisingly, since Spotify has more than 200 million paid subscribers. TIDAL is pretty secretive, but it’s estimated that it has about five million.

I’m one of them because the other main difference with Spotify is that most of its music is at least CD-quality, provided losslessly compressed. For example, playing Beyoncé’s Lemonade from Spotify delivers a 320kbps stream. From TIDAL it’s 748kbps.

TIDAL also offers an uncertain amount of content in high-resolution formats. Originally this was the controversial Master Quality Authenticated (MQA) format which purports to fold the high-sample-rate parts of the signal into the noise floor of a lower sample-rate file. MQA claims losslessness, but this has been disputed, convincingly in my opinion.

In any case, for MQA to release its high-resolution content – it plays more or less at standard CD quality otherwise – a DAC with an MQA decoder is required and appropriate switches in the TIDAL app (on computers only, it’s not on the app for portable devices) must be set. I used to get it to work with some fiddling, although I can’t say that it made any difference to the sound.

Lately TIDAL has announced that its high-resolution content will henceforth be in standard FLAC format, eliminating that problem. By the time you read this, it will have merged its two subscription levels – regular CD-quality lossless and HD quality – into one.

TIDAL also offers a Connect feature that works in a similar way to Spotify’s. The app is just about as well supported on high-fidelity streaming devices as Spotify. And often it is incorporated into proprietary apps designed to run these devices.

In my experience over several years, Spotify and TIDAL both work extremely well.

Other services

There are plenty of others, many directly supported by streaming devices. For example, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Qobuz and of course radio services such as TuneIn and iHeartRadio.

Apple Music isn’t typically supported on non-Apple devices, but if you have an iPhone or iPad or Mac, you can use AirPlay to send music to any AirPlay-supporting playback device, and there are many of those. There should be no loss of quality because AirPlay uses Apple Lossless.

Limitations

Twenty years ago, then Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson wrote that the future of business would heavily involve the “long tail”. That is, in the distribution of products, many businesses concentrate on high-volume central part, it not being worthwhile carrying and supporting the low volume products at the tail end of the distribution. But with digital content, he argued, the costs of holding and offering the product were so low that virtually anything would be available.

Well, he was right… and he was wrong. The amount of music available on streaming services is astonishing. Spotify is said to have 70 million tracks available, and TIDAL some 100 million!

If you type the music you want into the search box of either, there’s a very good chance that you’ll find it. But not a 100% chance. Don’t throw out your old record collection yet.

The other days I was idly looking through the vinyl records of my local Vinnies and came across Encounter by Mark Holden. Holden was a significant Australian pop star back in the 1970s and is probably better known as one of the Australian Idol judges in its first iteration (these days he’s a barrister!) The surface of the vinyl looked pretty grubby, and I wasn’t going to bother forking over $5 for it as a curiosity. After all, I figured if I ever wanted to hear Holden, I could dial him up on Spotify.

Wrong. Mark Holden has one live album on Spotify (and on TIDAL) and that’s it. Neither is Cha by Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons available on streaming services, nor is the Mario Millo solo effort Human Games.

They’re records that didn’t make much of a splash upon release, even though I happen to like them (I bought them on vinyl at the time). But how about Wendy Carlos? Heard of Switched-On Bach? That is the pivotal synthesiser record. It hit the top ten in the US in the regular charts, got a Grammy in 1970 and sold more than a million copies. I’ve got it on vinyl (and CD) and a bunch of follow-ups also on vinyl. You can’t stream it.

Nor can you stream the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange, also mostly by Carlos. I have that on vinyl, from back in those days, and on a recently purchased second-hand French language CD.

Don’t expect streaming to replace anything a bit rare, or perhaps with certain quirky artists. Neil Young had a spat with Spotify in 2022 and pulled his music. So did Joni Mitchell. As I write now, almost all of their stuff is still not on Spotify, although it’s all on TIDAL.

But, that said, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred when a yen for a particular track or artists strikes, I find it there on both platforms, ready for me to enjoy.