Chromecast Audio
erniejade
Posts: 6,321
I know some of you have heard me recommend this around the boards so I thought it was time for a review.
This little 35$ unit is amazing for the price. You can run it directly into your preamp with a 1/8" to RCA cable, use headphones through that same jack or, optical into a dac or your ht receiver optical in. Using its internal dac sounds surprisingly good! It's much better sounding then one would ever think for $35. However for me, optical out to my dac is the real shocker.
I went on Amazon and got a cheap but decent quality fospower mini toslink to toslink cable and for the power source, since its usb and my Panamax m5100-pm has a USB jack right in the front, I used it instead of the wall wart that came with it. I am not sure if this is why it sounds as clean as it does but, I did not bother trying it with the stock power supply.
After I got it all hooked up and loaded bubbleupnp it quickly recognized my nas, signed into tidal and I was ready to go. The sound quality casting from my nas was better then I expected. I had the node 2 on loan for one of the days of testing the chromecast out and in my rig, it was hard to tell the difference between the 2 units except, my wife and I both thought the chromecast had a wider soundstage and a hair less constructing when listening to uncompressed wav. Tidal was a toss up between the two. The node software and setup is much easier and you have to jump through less hoops but, if your a little tech savvy and have a clean power source for the USB power, for the price this chromecast is hard to beat! Google music or other internet streaming sources sound darn good on this unit.
Casting using my cell (droid) once it's running does not use your phone battery or anything like that. It goes directly to the chromecast via your home's wifi.
There is several other apps you can use to cast to it but I found BubbleUPnp the easiest.
This little 35$ unit is amazing for the price. You can run it directly into your preamp with a 1/8" to RCA cable, use headphones through that same jack or, optical into a dac or your ht receiver optical in. Using its internal dac sounds surprisingly good! It's much better sounding then one would ever think for $35. However for me, optical out to my dac is the real shocker.
I went on Amazon and got a cheap but decent quality fospower mini toslink to toslink cable and for the power source, since its usb and my Panamax m5100-pm has a USB jack right in the front, I used it instead of the wall wart that came with it. I am not sure if this is why it sounds as clean as it does but, I did not bother trying it with the stock power supply.
After I got it all hooked up and loaded bubbleupnp it quickly recognized my nas, signed into tidal and I was ready to go. The sound quality casting from my nas was better then I expected. I had the node 2 on loan for one of the days of testing the chromecast out and in my rig, it was hard to tell the difference between the 2 units except, my wife and I both thought the chromecast had a wider soundstage and a hair less constructing when listening to uncompressed wav. Tidal was a toss up between the two. The node software and setup is much easier and you have to jump through less hoops but, if your a little tech savvy and have a clean power source for the USB power, for the price this chromecast is hard to beat! Google music or other internet streaming sources sound darn good on this unit.
Casting using my cell (droid) once it's running does not use your phone battery or anything like that. It goes directly to the chromecast via your home's wifi.
There is several other apps you can use to cast to it but I found BubbleUPnp the easiest.
Klipsch The Nines, Audioquest Thunderbird Interconnect, Innuos Zen MK3 W4S recovery, Revolution Audio Labs USB & Ethernet, Border Patrol SE-I, Audioquest Niagara 5000 & Thunder, Cullen Crossover II PC's.
Comments
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Yeahup I am also using the bubble app to stream from my Jriver server to the chromecast audio. Also using the optical out to the musical fidelity v90 dac. As far as not using the wall wort I haven't tried it, but it would seem any noise generated wouldn't flow over the optical cable.
It's a great piece, and my primary means if getting data to the dac. Stupid easy too.Oh, Listen here mister. We got no way of understandin' this world. But we got as much sense of this bird flyin in the sky. Now there is a lot that bird don't know, but it don't change the fact that the world is happening to him all the same. What I am tryin to say is, is that the course of your life, well its changing, and you don't even see it- Forest Bondurant -
Heck even to stream internet content / internet radio to a receiver or something that doesn't have this type of capability at this price is a no brainer. Again I am surprised at the quality just going from my nas vs units costing a lot more.
My laptop I use a w4s recovery and changing from the stock power supply to an ifi made an audible difference. Eventually I will try it with the stock power but, going right into the front of the panamax made it so I don't have to pull anything out to plug it in.Klipsch The Nines, Audioquest Thunderbird Interconnect, Innuos Zen MK3 W4S recovery, Revolution Audio Labs USB & Ethernet, Border Patrol SE-I, Audioquest Niagara 5000 & Thunder, Cullen Crossover II PC's.
