[EricDH]

Generally good advice, of course, but I don't think it applies in this case. I checked before I wrote the dremel comment, and I'm pretty certain it's a two-layer board. I don't have an x-ray setup handy, but all of the vias that I can see come back out the other end.

Though your advice still stands, regardless: If you can't be sure, don't take a dremel to it. And if you do, know that you do so at your own risk.


As I've said: Won't defeat the microphone for certain, might just muffle it. Could be sufficient, but might not be.


This will break your streaming capabilities as well if you block the entire device. If you block just the right ports, you'll have to figure out which ones to block first, and hope that they won't be used for any other functionality the device might consider "crucial" for its operation.


And just to clarify:
I'm not arguing against any of this. It's all very good and solid advice. All I'm trying to say is that I don't understand why anyone would buy this device in the first place. If you don't have a good reason to trust the manufacturer to be honest with how they use the microphones that they ask you to install all over your home for them, and if you can't really reliably defeat those microphones without running the risk of bricking your device, then don't buy their products.

And this doesn't just apply to this particular manufacturer of audio and TV streamers that just so happens to be Chinese, it applies to everyone, including Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, and pretty much all car or "smart" phone/watch/speaker/door bell/TV/younameit manufacturers.

Apple has earned my trust to a sufficient degree with how they generally have been acting over the past decade regarding user privacy questions, which is why you will find their products in my home. Alphabet has proven to be a shady actor in this field at best, and Meta and Amazon have made abundantly clear that you can't trust them at all. So you won't find any hardware containing a microphone or camera from them in my home, period.

WiiM/Linkplay is an unknown actor to me. They might have the best intentions, but they haven't proven that they can be trusted, either. And until that changes, none of their products will remain switched on unattended for any length of time.


I'm not a tin foil hat kind of guy. To the contrary, actually; most people will probably describe me as rather naive and maybe a bit too trusting. But when it comes to this kind of stuff, I might have spent a little too much time in this industry to blindly trust some random manufacturer with their declared intentions by installing hardware in my home and place of work (where I regularly discuss trade secrets that are in part covered by NDAs) that can easily be converted into a sophisticated surveillance device with just a small, automated over-the-air firmware update behind my back.


Edit:
I will remove myself from this discussion now, if that's ok. It wasn't my intention to have this turn into a WiiM dissing session. Sorry about that.

I agree with all of this. And for the same reasons (apart from the fact that I don't see the point of it) I don't have Tiktok, and I am hesitant to use any (Chinese) app that uses face recognition. And for the same reason I don't register for any app/website through Facebook or Google. Heck I even haven't connected my debit/credit cards with my iPhone wallet, although that would probably be quite safe to do.

 

[EricDH]

Indeed. Let them rule and support humankind according to logic and equality.
In the beginning a lot of lives will be lost due to Ai's killing of the killers.
After that we'll have a peaceful future.
Humans are just not capable of wielding power without getting corrupted.
There's not one human on this world capable to avoid it and too many that are pathologically addicted to power.

Until the AI robots conclude that nothing works, and they simply have to kill all of us to save the planet.

 

[styler]

The Loki Max bands are a fixed width and frequency, whereas a parametric EQ has adjustable width and band frequencies. So if the mid peak on your speakers matches one of the Loki's bands in both width and frequency, Loki will probably be OK. Otherwise, the Roon will let you match your speaker's peak more precisely. Of course, there's also more rope to hang yourself with a parametric EQ since there are more things to adjust and mess up.

The other big difference is that Roon will work only on Roon sources, whereas the Loki will work with all your sources.

REW I believe shows its adjustments in parametric EQ terms, so they should be directly transferable to another parametric EQ.

Thank you. helpful info!

 

[styler]

But a streamer can never be not a computer. Everything that has a network connection needs security updates every now and then. That a whole lot of devices are not getting them is apparently deceiving people into thinking that such a thing as a network connected device that doesn't need security updates does exist. It doesn't, as far as I know. Maybe it can't, at the very least it is not easy.

There is such a thing as provably correct correct code. However, it may be a bit limited, and there isn't much of it. But if you could build your entire connected device in that way, then yes, you could get out of needing security updates. Until there's a bug in your hardware. And it may very well be provably impossible to do this in the first place, but I don't know that.

I understand the appeal of ease of use. I understand the appeal of things that don't change too much over time. I understand that in general, hardware is much better for this than software.

What I don't understand is how a piece of hardware that runs software is a better solution than just software, because it really does have all the software problems, maybe those problems are just a bit more ignored. That's how I see it. I may well still be very wrong somehow, but a lot of you are making good arguments that make good sense and you haven't changed my mind yet.

I applaud and appreciate the great discourse on this topic so far!
Many thanks

I'd expect that this is the kind of product where the more units you sell, the more you can spend on the software development, and that a very popular low- to mid-priced streamer is probably where you'd find the best software. Perhaps there's a whole world of crazy high-end streamers that can fund their software teams anyway, with much higher prices on lower volume, but I dunno if I need the milled aluminum chassis that badly.

having owned Lumin, Wiim, NAD, Roon and HiFi Rose Streamers I can confidently say the software matters. How much to pay for it is a valid debate but user experience, searching for music and organizing a large library make or break a streamer.

using a Roon Nucleus is not a headache. Once every few months you get an alert to update and that’s it.

 

[styler]

Having used a variety of such boxes: they've never been as trouble-free as you specified above. Making hardware-software combos really trouble-free while keeping them up to date with security patches and other changes requires a level of systems skill and investment that is incompatible with a low-cost, low-volume business. The least troublesome digital sources I've owned were Raspberry Pi + Pi2AES + touchscreen assemblies I put together with Ropieee or moOde as software. Less troublesome that any of the plug-and-play commercial boxes I owned before and since.

There’s no security patches with stand-alone single purpose streamers. Does someone want to hack my Nucleus?

 

[EELawson]

Yep. I’ve been using a Mac Mini to rip my cds to a hard drive which I then plug into a Volumio Pi which allows me to play all of my music but also allows guests to stream whatever they want to.

I just want a one box solution that:
1. Doesn’t spy on me
2. Doesn’t sound like ass
3. Costs less than $500
4. Doesn’t require a subscription
5. Has proper digital outputs (coax / USB-C)
6. Has a sane interface
7. Doesn’t mess with album art.

J-River on your PC?

 

[wout31]

That is extremely dissapointing, I was eagerly awaiting this amp, getting schiit products abroad was hard enough as it is, now we are told its not even possible.

No problem, just add a 230-115 V step down transformer.

 

[rkw]

I've been eyeballing streamers recently, but always stop short of purchasing...there's nothing that device is going to do that my laptop can't already do.

That's where I am. I've looked into streaming with a Raspberry Pi a few times, but decide my laptop works just fine so why even spend the money (though not much of it) or the time to set up something else that really won't make things easier?

The top two reasons I switched from my laptop to using a streamer:

• Cut the cord between my laptop and the DAC. Using a streamer, I have freedom to move around the room with my laptop.
• Ability to control playing music using different devices. With a streamer, I can also play music using my other laptop, a phone or tablet. I'm not tied to a specific laptop for playing music.

I went with Raspberry Pi because I'm a tech geek and I enjoy playing with such things. However, I discovered that all of RPi music players (Volumio, MoOde, DietPi, etc) have limited functionality for searching and browsing through the music catalog, and the user interface designs are crude. Roon to the rescue, giving me a superior user interface and functionality.

 

[HWB3]

Now back to our regular channels...

"Cats in the Cradle" literally!

I'll see you and raise you one. Now just for some pictures of cardboard.

 

[Erratic Gravy]

I'll see you and raise you one. Now just for some pictures of cardboard.

Gotta love a Webber BBQ - got myself a new one in the spring , excellent for thick steaks , boned out lamb joints and suchlike

 

[Timster]

I just noticed there's no "Why isn't the power switch on the front?" segment to the Schiit sine wave. Surely an oversight.

Maybe, maybe not. There is "Power Switches"... which I'm pretty sure was on there because of the back or front question that constantly pops up! (it was added in Dec 2021 BTW)

 

[HWB3]

Gotta love a Webber BBQ - got myself a new one in the spring , excellent for thick steaks , boned out lamb joints and suchlike

I'm getting a new one for my birthday next month. It's on a stand with a shelf. The one that I have now is twelve years old and I did a lot of cooking on it. A big Weber fan. Have a Genesis gas grill too.

 

[JohnnyCanuck]

You mean (Counts on fingers, borrows some from a friend), uh, number 4, perhaps?

(rechecking my own fingers) We're both wrong. I meant #3.


JC

 

[Timster]

What remains unclear to me about this idea is that I still don't understand what benefit I would get from bringing my own choice of hardware or OS. I only want the box to serve one function: select, decode, and then output audio files to an external DAC. I'm not any better at choosing a silent, passively-cooled, single-board computer platform than a streamer vendor is going to be. Supporting a range of different hardware makes the software problem more complex, because now it has to run on more than just the one vendor-selected board. This means I either pay the vendor with increased cost, or I pay in labor with increased troubleshooting time. If I'm bringing my own operating system, then it gets even worse, because now I have to do all of the above plus take responsibility for general-purpose OS patching.

A more powerful box doesn't help me at all, because decoding even absurd bitrates of FLAC is an easy workload. And if the box is so much more powerful that it's running hotter, or worst of all louder because it has a fan in it, then now it's worse in every conceivable way than a passively-cooled, vendor-supported dedicated streamer. At this point I'm starting to wonder, "okay, can I just pay more to get out from under this mess?" Maybe you want this box to do more than just the one thing, and that's what I'm missing.

I'm not averse to building PCs, and I've built my own for decades because I want more flexibility... for a general-purpose home Linux workstation. I'm not averse to working on special-purpose integrations of open source and commercial software, and I spend all day at work doing that kind of thing. It's mostly just that once I'm done and I want to relax and listen to some music, I'd rather not keep doing more of that work, and especially not if there's a box I can just buy from a vendor, one with all the right inputs and outputs, with software already installed, designed specifically for the box's one purpose, and that downloads its patches from the vendor in the middle of the night while I'm asleep.

I have CDs, HDDs, MP3s, FLACs and some others. I've been building PCs since the 80286. Currently have 2 laptops and desktop PC (all recent models). I gave up a while ago on this and simplified by buying a Bluesound Node. I have not thought about it since

Only if I want to listen to my headphones with surgical EQ (EqualizerAPO) do I use my laptop straight into my Bifrost 2.

Can't now be bothered with the energy required to do anything more complex. YMMV

 

[Timster]

Humans must just play, make babies and art en listen music etc

Can we just practice the baby stuff?