Potential Lyngdorf TDAI-1120 Purchase - First-time Hi-Fi User

[Tassin]

I’ve had enough of waiting for Spotify to join even the cd rate offerings of others.

Spotify had announced it would release its HiFi by the end of this year. They have one day left ...

I've always wondered how they would tackle this topic. They don't have a lot to gain by offering cd-quality, let alone hi-res. They already have the largest user base, though many are using the free tier. What is Spotify's commercial strategy? What is the business model like? There is more in play than we know.

Most Spotify subscribers don't care about cd or hi-res quality. They appreciate the UI and AI. Audiophiles don't make for a large user base.

 

[Paul7777x]

Spotify had announced it would release its HiFi by the end of this year. They have one day left ...

I've always wondered how they would tackle this topic. They don't have a lot to gain by offering cd-quality, let alone hi-res. They already have the largest user base, though many are using the free tier. What is Spotify's commercial strategy? What is the business model like? There is more in play than we know.

Most Spotify subscribers don't care about cd or hi-res quality. They appreciate the UI and AI. Audiophiles don't make for a large user base.

They did however claim to be offering cd quality streaming by now. And they have not.

Instead they seem to be concentrating on Podcasts! Of all the tedious things.

So instead I’ll give my cash to those who concentrate on music. Nothing else I can do.

 

[Mar555]

Last question that I bother this great group with: As I explore a few different streaming options, I sampled a few songs to Cast Music from the Google Home app and even thought the sample rate says 32 PCM and 48 khz, the sound is far weaker and muted than what I am hearing on my CDs and higher quality vTuner stations. Not much clarity and I have to turn the volume up louder than the stations I hear in vTuner. Is that normal or is that what I would be experiencing from Tidal or Qobuz or any streaming option? Just surprised that the sample rates for the cast songs appear higher than my CDs but with a weaker and more undefined sound.

 

[jamieu]

Can anyone give me an imbeciles guide to running Qobuz on Roon through the 1120 please? Specifically if I can set volume levelling using Roon, as Qobuz does not offer it.

I’ve had enough of waiting for Spotify to join even the cd rate offerings of others.

Download Roon to your PC, Mac or NAS and setup the 1120 (which is listed as Roon Ready) under audio settings, then hopefully you can select that zone and play to it. For a basic Roon setup that's all you need to do.

If using a PC or Mac just select ‘use local core’ for now when prompted - more on this below.

It should hopefully be obvious, but if you need help enabling your Qobuz account in Roon this guide should help.

You can then additionally install the Roon control/remote app on your phone/tablet and point it at your Roon Core running on your PC, Mac or NAS if you’d rather control Roon from a mobile device.

btw. In case it’s useful this link / code gets you an extra 30 days added to your Roon subscription for new signups.

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For a smoother life down the road, assuming you stick with Roon, you ideally want a computer/device that can run the Roon Core (server) 24/7 — which problay isn't your PC or Mac. You also want that computer/device connected to your router via ethernet — see below for why.

For the best experience, maintenance and support I'd get a used Intel NUC (an older used Gen 7 or 8 model is fine - suitable models listed here) and install Roon's own ROCK OS on it which comes pre-installed with the Roon Core (server) software – it's basically DIY Roon Nucleus for a fraction of the price.

Then hide it out of sight next to your router, hopefully in another room. That way the 'headless' Roon Core running on on the NUC will be ready to play music 24/7 to any Roon supporting audio output device using any Roon control app without you having to first boot up your Mac or PC.

If you have already started using Roon on your Mac or PC (with a local Core) simply create a backup, then connect to the new Core running on the NUC and restore the backup from there.

You can then delete and reinstall the desktop app, skip the setup of a local Core and instead just point it at the remote Core running on your NUC. With this configuration the desktop app is just acting as a remote control and an audio output/endpoint. If a fresh desktop install doesn't completely remove your old local Core you can also remove the old library / database files from your Mac or PC manually, this will ensure you only have one Core / Library running on your network.

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You might also want to take a look at these two articles:

• Roon Done Right: A User Guide – PS Audio
• Roon Done Right: A User Guide, Part Two – PS Audio

This Roon KB guide may also be useful in terms of understanding the three key components of Roon's architecture — Core, Control and Output. In short you can only have one Core, but you can have multiple Controls and Outputs.

You ideally want the machine running the Core connected to your router via ethernet — this is where a lot of users running a local Core on a WiFi connected laptop run into issues when first using Roon — as the Core both retrieves and then decodes the audio before sending it out to RAAT (Roon Ready) endpoints as uncompressed PCM or DSD data which is more bandwidth intensive than a compressed FLAC stream, especially if you have multiple hi-res streams playing to different endpoints at once. This is another reason why running the Roon Core (server) on a dedicated NUC (ROCK) directly connected to your router via ethernet is the way to go.

The standard PC and Mac Roon apps include all three components (in one package) and can be setup to either run and use a local Core or alternatively point to a Core running elsewhere on your network — this would be the case if you installed the Core on an NUC or NAS and just wanted to use the Roon app on your PC or Mac as a remote control.

The latter is how most people end up using Roon long term, as waiting for your your Mac or PC to boot up in order to play music isn’t much fun — but to start you can run Roon with a 'local core' enabled on your Mac or PC to get a feel for whether Roon is for you.

 

[harkpabst]

In my setup vTuner is easily the loudest of all inputs. Can be different from station to station (and you can customise the level individually for each of the 10 presets with the TDAI-1120) but holds true in general.

Please note the volume setting is not synchronized when streaming through Googlecast (unlike e.g. Spotify Connect). Open the Google Home app and make sure volume is set to 100% there prior to comparing it to other inputs and adjusting volume on the Lyngdorf side. And remember you can still boost the Googlecast input individually (don't think it will be necessary, though).
[See below post ...]

How exactly did you stream songs through Google Home? Streaming by mirroring is probably not the best way to do it. Use a music player like Hi-Fi Cast or BubbleUPnP instead.

The TDAI-1120 supports Spotify Connect even for free accounts, so you can try their catalogue very conveniently. And there's more: Spotify supports connecting to the 1120 either using Spotify Connect or using Googlecast. You will be limited to Spotify free streaming quality (approx. 160kbps), of course, but this is another way to try out Googlecast.

Edit: At least in theory. Looks like whenever I try to stream through Googlecast to either my TDAI-1120 or my Onkyon R-N855 it lets me down and doesn't work at all.

 

[Paul7777x]

Download Roon to your PC, Mac or NAS and setup the 1120 (which I assume is Roon Ready) under audio settings, then hopefully you can select that zone and play to it.

For a smoother life down the road, assuming you stick with Roon, I'd get a used Intel NUC (an older used Gen 7 or 8 model is fine - suitable models listed here) and install Roon's own ROCK OS on it which comes pre-installed with the Roon Core software – it's basically DIY Roon Nucleus for a fraction of the price. Then hide it out of sight next to your router, hopefully in another room. That way it wil be setup to play music 24/7 without you having to first first boot up your Mac or PC.

Thank you very much sir

I’ll be dealing with all that this weekend.

 

[harkpabst]

Please note the volume setting is not synchronized when streaming through Googlecast (unlike e.g. Spotify Connect). Open the Google Home app and make sure volume is set to 100% there prior to comparing it to other inputs and adjusting volume on the Lyngdorf side. And remember you can still boost the Googlecast input individually (don't think it will be necessary, though).

Oopsie ... better forget about this. I finally managed to get Spotify playing through Chromecast built-in (at least on my Onkyo R-N855 after disconnecting it from mains power) and it appears that volume is well synchronized between Spotify/Google Home/device! So be careful!

I probably was taken away because it doesn't work that way with the physical Chromecast "disc" dongle.

Sorry for giving wrong advice.

 

[mickbirch2000]

I have found the Node 2i that I was originally going to sell has added some extra streaming options to the 1120 that are very useful.
1. Tidal Connect
2. Radio Paradise fully integrated
3. TuneIn Internet radio let's you choose quality of stream.
4. Gapless playback when required ie. DSOTM etc
If you can get a Node 2i then I would highly recommend it in conjunction with the Lyngdorf 1120.

 

[Cebolla]

Last question that I bother this great group with: As I explore a few different streaming options, I sampled a few songs to Cast Music from the Google Home app and even thought the sample rate says 32 PCM and 48 khz, the sound is far weaker and muted than what I am hearing on my CDs and higher quality vTuner stations. Not much clarity and I have to turn the volume up louder than the stations I hear in vTuner. Is that normal or is that what I would be experiencing from Tidal or Qobuz or any streaming option? Just surprised that the sample rates for the cast songs appear higher than my CDs but with a weaker and more undefined sound.

I would say that this is the reason for the poorer audio quality streaming via Google Cast in that specific case:

How exactly did you stream songs through Google Home? Streaming by mirroring is probably not the best way to do it. Use a music player like Hi-Fi Cast or BubbleUPnP instead.

Google Cast streaming by mirroring captures the audio output being produced by whatever app you are using on the handheld smart device and re-encodes it into a low bitrate lossy audio file format before streaming. The 48kHz sample rate is explained by it being the audio sample rate that the smart device's own audio output hardware is set to, resampled by the smart device's audio output driver from the 44.1kHz sample rate music file (assuming the file is an audio CD rip) being played by the app on the smart device.

Contrast that with using a Chromecast supporting music player app (such as the BubbleUPnP & Hi-Fi Cast apps mentioned by @harkpabst) and engaging the player app's Chromecast support by selecting the 1120 as its Chromecast player. In this case, the actual audio file track itself is streamed by Google Cast (not the player app's captured audio output contained in a lossy audio file format as with mirroring). So if the audio file track being played by the app is a lossless file ripped from an audio CD, that's exactly what will be streamed & played by the 1120.

 

[Mar555]

@harkpabst, @mickbirch2000, @Cebolla - thank you for this information. @harkpabst - that was exactly my issue - I had no idea about the native volume controls in the Google Home app (I was just casting whatever random free songs they provided in Chromecast) - once I adjusted the volume, the sound improved dramatically and linked with the Lyngdorf. I didn't realize how sensitive that volume control was and nearly deafened myself and neighbors - but know I know!

@mickbirch2000 - I am going to definitely look at the Bluesound Node 2I for those exact reasons you listed, thank you. I was also looking at the Roon Nucleus for the best streaming quality possible, but as @Tassin mentioned in an earlier response, I am learning that hi-res streaming chasing is very swampy territory indeed.

Also, I am sure all those using Lyngdorf has found this out, but listing this here in case it helps others. After taking more RoomPerfect measurements than I care to admit, I have found that RoomPerfect is extremely sensitive to mic placement and percentage of room knowledge. I have tried three separate rounds of RoomPerfect measurements and finally landed on a setup that I think works best for my room. The first two setups - For my first two go-arounds, I did 12 - 13 random measurements each - both 100% knowledge, moving the speakers closer to the wall each time. In each case, RoomPerfect was better, but to me, not overwhelmingly so compared to bypass. With Roomperfect on, the sound felt a bit flatter and less lively to me than without RoomPerfect.

For my third and final go-around, I read on the Facebook forums that trying to "game" Roomperfect for the most random and varied measurements up to 100% may actually yield poorer results. That was definitely the case for me. The final test, I moved my PSB Alpha T20s closer yet to the wall (6.5cm) and ran RoomPerfect exactly how it was instructed in the Youtube video by Lyngdorf. 5 measurements and 2 focal point tests for 94% room knowledge and stopped with measurements. Now, the difference between RoomPerfect and default (bypass) is more stark for me, with RoomPerfect giving me the lively, strong sound I was chasing, lifelike and defined with decent punch.

In summary, for me, chasing past the 94% range actually yielded worse results in my specific setup. I did find that I have to crank the base and treble gain nearly all the way up, but maybe I just like more punch for my untrained ears. Thought I would give my testimonial to anyone trying to chase the perfect setup in case it helps.

Thank you all for the brilliant advice and helping me make this purchase - extremely happy with the end result!

 

[mickbirch2000]

Now, the difference between RoomPerfect and default (bypass) is more stark for me, with RoomPerfect giving me the lively, strong sound I was chasing, lifelike and defined with decent punch.

Glad you were able to achieve the sound you wanted, its definitely worth doing a backup of the settings on a memory stick if you can.
In fact I keep a memory stick plugged into the USB socket on mine & can change the settings to previous ones if I like.
I think I've finally found my best settings after playing with the o/p crossover & subwoofer settings reducing analog o/p to sub from -12 to -14 & adding 12ms delay.
The bass seems much better focused & is fairly equal level anywhere in the listening room which is quite an achievement with one sub in the RH front corner.

 

[Mar555]

Once again - thank you to this amazing group. One last question now with my Chromecast and Roomperfect questions resolved - has anybody had success playing USB drives as input in their Lyngdorf? I have an old iPod classic that I transferred a folder of tracks to on a USB drive. Formatted them in FAT32 and the tracks are in m4a format. Plug in to the 1120 and select the USB Input and nothing - no options appear for playing or tracks. Does anyone know if further formatting of my USB drive are needed? Thank you.

EDIT: I am an idiot - read the instructions in the manual and realized I needed to navigate via my streaming audio options and use as a player.

I can now play my ancient iPod tracks AND see the album art on my Lyngdorf app. This is such a magical device!!!!