The Songbird held up quite well against these much more expensive competitors. I listened to Keith Jarrett’s revealing My Song set (my reference standby) Dua Lipa’s pop smash Future Nostalgia Kings of Leon’s newbie When You See Yourself and a sterling set of high-res Beethoven and Brahms: Violin Concertos, spotlighting Gil Shaham and the Brooklyn-based ensemble The Knights. All were whistling the same happy tunes through their internal DACs and analog outputs. I performed A/B comparisons of this and several competing streamers with the Yamaha/B&W rig, switching first between the Songbird and the likewise connected Sonos Port ($449), and then the higher-striving Russound MBX-PRE ($399) and Bluesound Node 2i ($549). ![]() The combo makes for a great little personal audio system useable wherever Wi-Fi and AC power are available. This little bird also tweets sweet when plugged into self-powered headphones, such as the recently reviewed Bose QC 35 II. The Songbird doesn’t have a headphone amp, but it should sound great with any self-powered set of cans that accommodates a cable, such as the Bose QC-35 II shown here. And for good measure, I also auditioned this sweet little box with a recent-vintage high-end Yamaha RX-A3060 A/V receiver playing through big-bubba Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus 803 floor-standing speakers. ![]() That pick-me-up differential even proved potent when I compared the streams playing on a 15-year-old Bose Acoustic Wave Music System II and a pre-digital-age Sansui RZ-9500AV receiver (connected to ADS and Niles Audio in-wall speakers). This included well-recorded new releases by Lake Street Dive ( Obviously) and Willie Nelson ( That’s Life), which I didn’t mind hearing multiple times over. With the aid of a clean power supply and a good output buffer, I had no problem at all detecting the difference between 320Kbps Napster streams and the dramatically richer, livelier, CD-quality or better renderings of the same material from Qobuz and Tidal. This includes a Cirrus Logic DAC that can convert up to 24-bit/192kHz digital audio to a full-throated analog rendering through the Songbird’s RCA stereo outputs. Chromecast is not supported.Īndover’s expertise comes to the fore in the selection of components-and the tweaking thereof-that process those incoming streams. To land those services on Songbird today, you’ll need to throw them to the player via Bluetooth (2.1 + EDR) or Airplay (version 1) from your mobile device or computer. Linkplay also is contemplating Andover’s request to add onboard app access for Pandora, SiriusXM, and Apple Music. The Songbird app-shown here in three views-is easy to use and attractive to look at. While the app doesn’t provide any visual confirmation that I’m getting the bumped-up Amazon HD content I’m paying extra for, the software team promises I’m receiving CD-quality streams from that source, and that support for Amazon’s ultra high-res content is coming soon. The streaming platform, also from Linkplay, currently supports the high-res music services Qobuz and Tidal (although not the latter’s MQA-encoded Masters tier), as well as the more plebian services Spotify, Napster, TuneIn Radio, iHeart Radio, and Amazon Music. I love the rotating album covers that spin as the music plays. The iOS/Android streaming app-licensed from Linkplay Technology-is stable, responsive, intuitive to operate, and nice to look at. ![]() The Songbird really delivers once connected to your home network via ethernet or Wi-Fi (2.4GHz only).
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