alper_yilmaz
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Hey Raymond,
Welcome to the Forum! I hope you will enjoy tube amps, particularly the ones designed by Steve. Just keep in mind that you need to give it a decent few hundred hours before it finally settles in and sound spectacular! Sometimes, they are great right out of the box as well, but till they break in fully, you might experience quite some inconsistency.
As far as streaming goes, I subscribe to Tidal and Spotify. Tidal is CD quality but it is not as rich as Spotify in its collection as of yet. I am not a big fan of streaming, but at the same time, it is a great source for checking out new or interesting stuff.
I use a very simple system in my bedroom where I do the streaming. The signal chain is as follows:
Streaming by iPhone or iPad --> Apple TV --> Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100 (into its optical input) --> Decware TABOO mkIII --> Rega RS-1 speakers (all the cables are by DH Labs)
If you would like to put together a similar system, you should make sure the DAC has to have an optical input (as Apple TV has only optical output). At the budget level, DacMagic 100, Musical Fidelity's V90-DAC and Peachtree Audio's DAC-IT are the ones I am familiar with. These are around $300 and they sound quite fine. Of course, if you would like to go higher, I love DAC's by Hegel, a small Norwegian company.
Anyway, enjoy! Happy holidays!
Alper
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