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Review Notes
Unboxing
Unboxing was straightforward: a double-boxed container, with a pull-out container. Inside, foam inserts to hold/protect the device, along with a printed User’s Guide and a Quick Start Guide, as well as a standard, three-prong (grounded) IEC power cord.
I used a power cord, ethernet cable and an AES/EBU cable from my existing Bryston BDP-1. The AES/EBU digital cable plugs into the my Bel Canto DAC 2.5.
Following the quick start guide, I turned on the e.One Stream.
The SEEK iOS App
Downloading the SEEK app was easy, since Bel Canto provided the correct search string in the Quick Start Guide.
I installed the app on my iPad Mini (2d-Gen). I also have an iPad Pro, but I typically use the Mini for music stuff, so I started with that device. I was pleased to see that the SEEK app was design for both iPhone and iPad.
SEEK immediately found my e.One Stream device and there was nothing to configure on the device.
So far, so good.
Next, I went right to vTuner and quickly located a local internet radio station (Classical 24 from Minnesota Public Radio).
By default, output is direct to the analog out ports. I wanted to hear the device play through my existing DAC, so Step 10 in quick start guide describes how to switch the output.
I was a little disappointed that I could not switch outputs via the app (and there are no controls on the front panel). So, I pressed and released the Program button and the front panel switched to digital out.
Still no sound… oh, wait, the volume is turned down on the app. I turned the app volume up to max and we have music.
Next step: let’s play some music from one of my local libraries.
I plugged in a 256GB Corsair USB thumb drive, formatted on my MacBook as FAT32 with a few thousand tracks of all types (more on this, later).
Immediately, the eOne Stream stopped responding (according to the SEEK app’s warning dialog). However, I was able to tap on Browser and see the Stream available as a local music source.
Browsing into e.One Stream is basically browsing by folder; and browsing speed is a little slow - not unusable, but nothing like I am used to with similar apps. Obviously, the Stream isn’t scanning/caching track information, so each tap is a read from the device.
Something I noticed: the default sort order is descending, as opposed to ascending (i.e. Z-A ordering). You can tap the menu icon on the upper-right and it re-sorts, but the default values are backwards and non-standard.
On the positive side, there is nothing to setup or configure - you plug in a USB drive and play music.
I played Deafheaven’s “Ordinary Corrupt Human Love” (96/24 from HDTracks), as I’ve been listening to that album a lot.
There was a noticeable “scratch/tick” when changing sample rates from 44.1 to 96 - not from my Bel Canto DAC, as I’ve never heard this when feeding similar tracks from my Bryston BDP-1. I wanted to confirm that, so I repeated the process: I went back to vTuner (44.1 MP3), played a track and re-browsed back to the USB stick. No noise whatsoever, this time, so who knows? I will watch for this as I test out my library - for devices at this price point, playback should be 100% smooth when transitioning from services and tracks.
One more comment about the SEEK app: the playback buttons. There is a volume scrubber below the buttons (see photo) and the usual REW/FF buttons, bookending two other buttons. The two buttons: PLAY/PAUSE and STOP (square). PLAY/PAUSE and STOP work like they do on a CD player or tape deck. STOP completely stops playback and tapping PLAY restarts the album.
There is a scrubber along the top that allows you to move back-and-forth through a track - works pretty well.
And, below the scrubber, there is a line of text containing: audio file type | bit depth | sample rate | bit rate (e.g. flac | 24 bit | 96.0 kHz | 2692 kbps). Bookending the information text are icons for REPEAT and SHUFFLE playback options.
As I am listening… wait, what? No gapless playback?
So, bookending the scrubber there is a SETTINGS icon and an INFO icon.
The SETTINGS icon is just what it sounds like: configuring the device settings like networking, device name, and Wi-Fi network selection.
The INFO icon has some device info (F/W version, IP addr) and a button for Gapless. I tapped the slider to enable Gapless playback. When I did that, I was treated to this error message:
Delay in streaming or unsupported file format.
Really? My 96/24 FLAC files are not supported with gapless playback?
Hmmm… OK, I rebooted the e.One Stream and repeated browsing to the same Deafheaven album, playing the first track and waiting for the second track.
Nope… again, a gap between tracks. I verified that the Gapless setting was set to on. And, with Gapless turned on, I no longer see album art on the iPad display. Disabling Gapless restores the album art during playback.
Wow… that’s a show-stopper for me, but let’s move on to my next test: playing music from a uPnP / DLNA source.
…
Audirvana+
To be honest, this is the use case for which I was most interested. I like Audirvana+ because I am also a fan of Sonarworks - the headphone EQ’ing software.
Audirvana+ showed the e.One Stream as a UPnP device in the Audio System Menu, so setup was a snap.
Let's go back to Deafheaven playing from my Audirvana+ library via ethernet.
A-n-n-n-d… still no Gapless playback, regardless of the Gapless setting on the device.
I had a Denon streamer 5 years ago that behaved this way: no gapless playback and no seeking within a track. What year is it, again?
Also, the UPnP / DLNA interaction with Audirvana+ is unusable - my guess is that the e.One Stream does not support UPnP seek and, hence, Audirvana does not start playback of the following track. So every album plays only the first song. You can manually select and play any track, but that’s not really a work-around since you only one track plays at a time.
OK, let’s try something else: analog out on the e.One Stream.
…
Analog Output
I connected some RCA cables and restarted both the Stream and the Audirvana+.
I also set A+ preferences to enable the device for pass-thru of MQA files for full decoding/rendering on the e.One Stream.
Again, no gapless playback and no seek support. Not surprised, I guess, but I had to try.
At this point I started wondering if there is newer firmware version that might address these issues, but the device info tells me I am on the latest release. I also did a press-and-hold on the Program button, which performs a F/W update check; nothing newer is available.
…
Media Library and Test Configurations
The e.One Stream supports a number of cloud-based music services: Apple Music (from your iDevice), TIDAL, Qobuz, and vTuner. There is also support for Roon (the User’s Guide states that Room Ready certification is pending, but I would expect this work work well).
Apple Music
The SEEK app does a nice job is walking you through enabling permission for the app to access your iPad music collection. I am not an Apple Music subscriber, but I do have iTunes Match, so my iCloud hosted library can be accessed via any iDevice.
I was able to browse my iCloud library, but unable to play anything - this requires an Apple Music subscription to send audio files to a remote device.
NAS Hosted Library
My entire music library resides on a WD MyCloud NAS device. Maybe I can attach to a share and play music on the Stream.
Nope… it does not support attaching to a NAS share. At least, I cannot see anything that would allow me to set that up - in the app or by reading the User’s Guide.
Qobuz
Quboz is not available in the United States, as I am posting this review.
Dropbox
I am impressed that the e.One Stream offers support for Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive as storage locations for audio files. So, I uploaded an album to Dropbox to test this out. Browsing is similar to the USB flash drive experience, except there are no sorting options. In my example, the album displays track out of order, so I can’t see an easy way to play an entire album in correct order, other than to queue the tracks one at a time. That works, but is more than a little clumsy and (again) there is no gapless playback. Sigh...
Roon + TIDAL with MQA
I had canceled my Roon and TIDAL subscriptions some time ago, but I re-subscribed to both Roon and TIDAL for this review.
To start, I setup the SEEK app for playback directly from TIDAL. I added my login credentials and picked an album from my library. The default playback setting was “Normal”, so I wondered why my MQA “Master Quality” album was playing back as AAC. With a few taps I found the settings and changed to HiFi/Master. Not sure why I should have to do that, but whatever.
Listening to Tina Dico’s new album “Fastland”, all I can say is: wow… nice sound. This is from the analog out with MQA full decoding. I decided to sit back and listen to the album, to reset my brain from my earlier experiences (which was frustrating, to say the least).
I queued up the same Deafheaven album in TIDAL to see if Gapless playback works. Nope. Again, no Gapless playback streaming directly from TIDAL via the SEEK app.
OK, on to Roon… I had to re-download and setup Roon. I started with some TIDAL tracks while Roon worked to import/analyze my library of roughly 20K tracks.
Playback worked perfectly with Roon, which was expected, and… sounded really, really nice.
I am going to listen with the e.One Stream (analog out) with Roon and my collection of headphones + amps. Then, I will write-up my final thoughts.
…
could you ship one to Saudi Arabia, 220?
