I was tempted by the Pro-Ject Streamer circa £600 as it has had some good reviews and would make life simpler and hopefully better SQ. With respect to the ultraRendu it is nearly £1K so I would hope that it would be better than the combo's you mention, and the Signature Rendu being our £4k you would certainly hope that you were going to get VGSQ for your £'s. As I have mentioned before I would consider the ultraRendu but is it really going to be an improvement over the microRendu or is it more of the same in a slightly bigger box? 

I was talking about being able to rely on the quality of the digital files being streamed from 3rd parties, there have been numerous discussions about this where it can be a bit of a lottery in terms of original source and transfer and actually being what it is said to be, having said that Qobuz does seem to be more reliable.

If I recall correctly you use 4G because you can't get a decent Broadband connection, I checked and if your latching onto a reliable local mast that is not overused then if you are getting 4G LTE-Advanced it should be pretty good even 4G (4G LTE) gives typical download speeds of around 20Mbps, possibly better than some Broadband suppliers. Also you may not suffer from bandwidth issues like broadband can when heavily used, an issue we get now and then when streaming TV/Film and sometimes Hi-Res music at peak usage times. 

I'm going to be contentious here, but I feel that I need to make the point.

Streaming can sound as good as or (in my opinion) better than LP. It transpires that many MoFi pressings are digital originated, but not well declared, and now that LP lovers are aware of it they are up in arms. However, they were perfectly happy with their records before they knew any different. There is a lot of emotion around this subject and it's difficult to have an unbiased conversation with many vinyl lovers.

Using a good hi-res streaming service that does not tamper with the original data (Tidal need not apply), you are using the same source data as has been provided to the pressing plants.  So what precludes you from achieving the same or better sound quality?  Nothing - except it absolutely cannot be achieved inexpensively.

You can forget any notion of extracting the fullest sound quality from a digital stream by using an inexpensive streamer and midrange DAC.  If you want the sound quality of a serious high end system from streaming, I am saying that you can achieve it, but it's going to cost you not much less than about £10,000 - probably more - for the digital equipment.  There must be a great deal of attention to noise along the replay chain, including levels of isolation, good grounding arrangements, top quality power supplies and vibration control / damping of components.

For example: I have recently acquired a top of the range Sonore Signature Rendu SE and I did wonder whether it was going to be worth the outlay of £4,600 versus the quite inexpensive ultraRendu.  I can assure you that it is.  The same goes for my DDC and DAC combo, costing not much short of £2,000 and far surpassing my previous DAC's performance.  Then there's the cost of power supplies, grounding boxes, cables, supports etc.


Now for the contentious part: my system now sounds better than any LP replay system I have ever heard, including several listens at different times to the Continuum turntable and arm and the TechDAS Air Force One, each costing an outrageous amount of money.  It is impossible for the record medium to achieve either the noise floor or the dynamic range of a good digital recording - it's inarguable.  That leaves the emotional aspect of vinyl over digital, which is rather like the valves versus transistor debate, it boils down to preference.  It needs an objective viewpoint - when I had a turntable I loved it, and the whole ritual of putting a record on - and that requires a paradigm change to realise that all of it is quite secondary to the pursuit of listening to music.

I am stating my case now as on several occasions recently I have been told that I am a fool for thinking I could possibly take streaming seriously or that it's only a 'secondary source'.  Rubbish.  Prove me wrong.

I have to say I am very pleased with the streaming I do with Google music on a tablet sent Bluetooth to a little JBL charge 5. Couldn't want for more and I don't need anything better, I enjoy the music just the same and without the equipment obsession.

New ways of playing music always start at a disadvantage physically and in many people's minds
When I first heard CD it was appalling. Put me off for many years.

Oddly enough sub optimal streaming sounds pretty good to me

That and playing from files are going to have serious work done and I assume will replace both LP and CD
as well as 8 track and cassette

Using a good hi-res streaming service that does not tamper with the original data (Tidal need not apply)
I am stating my case now as on several occasions recently I have been told that I am a fool for thinking I could possibly take streaming seriously or that it's only a 'secondary source'. Rubbish. Prove me wrong

Playing all day with a Pink Faun Ultra Streamer 2.16 running  Euphony Stylus OS   + Lampizator Horizon
SOTA  digital ( with tidal ) and sounds bloody amazing  almost as good as my vinyl rig on some tracks( Vertere / Ortofon ) but i do not have 60million songs in my collection

 Stylus operates from 32GB ECC RAM allowing locally stores music files and files from online services like Tidal to run in RAM before playback starts (this is different from buffering music files, playback of the music files happens in real-time from the RAM). This ensures lowest latencies, high data integrity resulting in easy, stress free musical reproduction.

'Play and Relax". You can create a playlist, add songs to that playlist, and set the playback mode to "Play and Relax." This mode effectively turns off the network card of the Ultra server making control of the unit disabled until the playback of the entire playlist is completed. In this mode your performance makes an instantaneous boost 

.

£120 for one of these 




Plus a tablet and a subscription of your choice. Couldn't be easier plus you can take your hifi anywhere. You don't really get any stereo effects but stereo is a load of bullshit anyway. Some might say it doesn't do scale and to a  degree they would be right. Thing is I am not a saddo and don't listen  to music on my own very much. This is all you need for family time music. All the detail is there, there is plenty of bass and it goes plenty loud enough without any distortion.  It's a bloody miracle, small and quite frankly makes me wonder why nerds like us put so much time, effort and money into a behemoth pile of boxes which essentially does the same thing.

One of my buddies recently bought two of these and a Spotify subscription for his outdoor deck. I was somewhat shocked at how well they sounded. Bose has been in the small speaker business for some time and they nailed this one for portable, place anywhere stereo.

I had a BT receiver for under 35 that I used for about 9 months until I had a DAC with a built in receiver

Common enough