[bilzebub]

I have an xmod wireless setup throughout my house. It sounds good, not as good as my better DACs but not bad at all. I have always played my music via my windows rig in Mediamonkey and/or Foobar, but the latest Spring update immediately made my computer not work with the ol' Xmod (ten years old now!) for some reason. Anyhow, while waiting to find out what happened, I decided to buy a Chromecast Audio and see what the fuss was about. Audio quality seems really awful when my phone is the renderer, acceptable with Google Play Music. Maybe I should find a way to get it to work with Mediamonkey via Bububble Upnp or something? Sounds like a lot of work, and $$ to put in 7 rooms, but I would be willing to do it over time if the CCA is SO much better than the Xmod -- anyone have any experience with both? There's almost nothing on the internet about the Xmod anymore, but it has worked flawlessly for me, with none of the headaches I am seeing in the Chromecast forums. Just not sure whether to (1) jump whole hog into the CCA pool or return the 2 I bought and try to sort out my USB issue with the latest build of wWindows 10 and stick with the old creative. Man, though, I wish they had continued to develop that unit....

 

[bilzebub]

Well I somehow managed to get the XMod connecting to my desktop again, so I did a comparo after finally getting CCA working correctly, and I can say that the internal DAC on the CCA certainly isn't much better than the one in the Creative Xmod Wireless receiver, 10 years on! (FLAC file played via Mediamonkey 5 Alpha player casting to the CCA from a desktop Win10 PC). But improvements were certainly audible when using the SPDIF optical to an external (Matrix Mini-I) DAC over both of those, which itself was about on par with the Internal DAC on my new Onkyo CD player (which I bought mainly for the SPDIF out feature, but which sounds surprisingly good for a 200$ player). I shall keep the two CCAs I bought, but I imagine that 90% of my listening will continue to be through the Creative Xmod Wireless and Foobar/Mediamonkey, both of which have excellent remote apps developed for them on Android. The Xmod's just a more convenient product, which can be easily turned off/paused/play/skip/back from buttons on the unit as well. But who knows for how long it will continue to work.

 

[Endless_Chris]

You may have stated it in your second post, but I'll ask to clarify. Are you using the mini-toslink out on the CCA or are you running it over 3.5mm-to-RCA?

 

[bilzebub]

Oh I have tried both, but am currently using the mini-Toslink, thanks