Casting is the new way to stream

Early Access EA Open Discussion
#1

Is there any discussion about HiFi Rose moving from Streaming to Casting?
McIntosh has paved the way with its largely casting model which eschews streaming with no local storage. It seems to me that casting will be the future of music delivery and streaming will be relegated to a niche market.

I bring this up in Early Access because HiFi Rose has had a hard time keeping up with streaming sources and changes in how they interact with its streamers. HiFi Rose clearly lags behind the cheaper Chi-Fi devices which upgrade their software on a monthly basis (maybe just give up and subcontract with Linkplay). In some cases this lagging stretches out years. That’s unacceptable.

Casting would get rid of this problem.

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#2

Could you clarify what exactly you mean by “casting” in this context?

Are you referring to something like Qobuz Connect / Tidal Connect, where the playback is handed off directly to the device, or do you have another casting protocol in mind?

#3

An interesting consideration, but casting (unless you’re using a full featured front end like Roon or JPlay or the like) - at least right now - provides no way to combine local and online content.

#4

VIK,

That is exactly what I mean. Tidal Connect et al. The music comes directly from the streaming provider instead of being locally downloaded, processed and stored locally. Playback is handed off directly from the streaming server to the local DAC device. No local Server storage or processing is necessary. I think this is where HiFi Rose is having difficulty. They don’t seem to have the resources to keep up with the changing requirements of the streaming music sources. Perhaps if they focused on the simpler requirements of just streaming from a casting source they would have an easier (and quicker) time of it. Note that the McIntosh DS 200 streamer has NO app. It simply plays
the music source’s app.

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#5

And what would that casting source be exactly? Or are we supposed now to rely on both Rose as a casting receiver, and a Rose application that would have to stream music from the source, just like the unit already does today, AND cast it to the unit?

That’s… what streaming is.

#6

Exactly

It’s the proper of streaming. No storage, whether it comes from hifirose or Qobuz Connect

#7

I read the review of the McIntosh DS200 streaming DAC in the latest issue of Stereophile. I was particularly interested in it because my McIntosh C2800 preamp has the same DAC module as the DS200 and I wanted to see what he thought of it. I personally thought the author Tom Fine made too big a deal of the “casting” feature. Only difference I can see is that McIntosh does not have its own app, like Rose’s RoseConnect or dCS’s Mosaic, it implements and harnesses TidalConnect and QobuzConnect to control streaming music from those services. Saved themselves a lot of work and expense.

Rose already does this “casting” with QobuzConnect. I have loaded the app on my iPad and downloaded QobuzConnect from the Rose Store onto my 130. I can use the app on my iPad to select and control my Qobuz streaming on the 130. So to me the “casting” feature is not a big deal. Soon Rose will support Tidal Connect, or so I have read.

Now Rose seems to favor Rose Connect over “casting” to QobuzConnect. While I prefer the interface and layout of QobuzConnect’s (and Apple Music’s) apps over that of Rose Connect, they have problems in Rose’s implementation. Apple Music is not gapless and QobuzConnect cuts off the first bits of the songs. Both of these are unacceptable when listening to music so therefore I use RoseConnect to stream Qobuz. I have given up on Apple Music entirely.

I am confident Rose Connect will improve over time, they devote a lot of resources to it. In this regard I wish they did what McIntosh did and just optimize the unit for the streamer’s (Qobuz and Tidals) apps and forgo RoseConnect. They should spend more time and resources making the basic functions of the units work flawlessly rather than spend time cataloging my library and trying to provide artwork and other “features.” In the interim I am going to try Roon and have just ordered my Nucleus.

Now as far as the review of the DS200 I thought it rather lazy. Fine should have reviewed it like he would any other streamer DAC and forget about this cutting edge “casting” stuff. Tell me how you think it sounds compared to other DACs rather than say something like “it’s not better or worse than the dCS Bartok, just different.” Lazy review

#8

Eleven,

All good comments and I agree with them. It’s a steep hill to climb to produce a good app. Hardware and software people are two incompatible groups. They just don’t see things the same way. The hardware people don’t have any respect for the ultimate users and view them as dolts. They KNOW where things are and how to get to them because they put them there.

The hardware developers see no need for a manual.

So what is the definition of a good app? To me it is an app that guides the user to where 80% of the users want to go and gets the user there with the fewest “clicks”. Easy to say, not so easy to implement.

Rose needs to 1) bring software development in house and 2) hire some people how know how a Graphic User Interface is designed with best practices.

We should all learn by example from Steve Jobs. I bet not one person in a hundred using Apple knows that all Jobs ever did was add a GUI to Linux.

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#9

:man_facepalming:
As much as I dislike Jobs, or Apple products, for fairness sake, that’s completely not what Jobs did. And Apple products have absolutely nothing to do with Linux. Never did. Just like you never have any idea what you are talking about.

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