Any thoughts?

for streaming transports I am looking along the lines of Auralic Aries G1, Bricasti M5, Lumin D2.  

Curious to hear to what extent the Beolab 5’s DACs can benefit from such streaming transports. 

+1

Haubjes wrote:

Any thoughts?

although the Bluesound is only a notch above Sonos sound quality wise.

But that becomes a question of pice and value - if BL5's and a Node sound very good, then is it worth spending 2,3k or more of a true high end streamer?

I think consensus on streaming transports is that they affect sound quality. I appreciate that whether they matter enough to justify a certain investment, of course is subjective to a large degree.

I am predominantly looking for people's experiences where they have upgraded towards more high-end streaming transports and what their experiences were (and also how their choices were made). I do recall reading somewhere on the board that a user was deploying an Auralic streaming transport on his Beolab 5s.

Next to that, I am looking for any technical info on the DACs inside the Beolab 5s.

Does anybody know the make and model of the DACs that are in there?

Much appreciated!

There is no ‘ordinary’ DAC in the BL5’s.

The audio processing is done within a DSP solution, that works with 32-bit floating point 180 MFLOPS, (512k byte Flash-ROM).

You can get a good overview about how the BL5’s work reading this PDF:

I was using the "big brother" to the Node 2, which is the NAD M50.2.  Digital output, etc,, but has a 2TB NAS in RAID configuration and a CD player (with CD ripping capability).  It uses the Bluesound app for control, and includes DSD conversion as well.  I was very happy with it (and with the digital coax out, no need for a optical-coax converter like with the Core for digital output).  

In the end, though, I ended up routing everything through a beosound core (and using just normal Powerlink inputs) because I preferred to have the auto on/off for the speakers (no need for a beoremote anymore) and just control the volume via the core, if necessary.  Convenience won out over superior audio quality.

As a note: the biggest difference between these devices and something like a chromecast (or iPhone airplay) is that the bluesound components are servers, so playback is not affected by the status of the bluesound app.  It's like the difference between a beosound moment and an essence, as I understand it.  If a chromecast device continues to play audio even if the computer with the open browser page goes to sleep, I stand corrected, but when I last used them, that wasn't the case.

alee wrote:

In the end, though, I ended up routing everything through a beosound core (and using just normal Powerlink inputs) because I preferred to have the auto on/off for the speakers (no need for a beoremote anymore) and just control the volume via the core, if necessary.  Convenience won out over superior audio quality.

@alee

This could be interesting for you:

I guess I should have clarified: I didn't want to open up the walls to run a second set of wires for digital coax from my AV cabinet to BL5R, then a second cable to run from BL5R to L.

As it is, I have Cat7 cables behind the walls for PL connections from the av cabinet to the BL5R then another cat7 behind the walls running from BL5R to BL5L.  I've got optical from my TV going to my NAD M50.2, then optical out from there going to my core (so music streaming and TV go direct to the core). Powerlink from core to speakers, which is fine.  I get an almost imperceptible hiss.  

You have inspired me to come up a dual wire, though.  If I can bundle Powerlink (just power and volume) and digital coax in one cat 7 cable using a custom connector, maybe I can wire it up like it's supposed to be.  I'll take a look at it and report back.