UPnP & macOS / iOS recommendations?

[seb]

Found a big difference in sound quality between Spark & Tidal and MinimServer with convolution room correction. Even without convolution, the differences were audible. Same music, my NAS copy may have different master to Tidal CD quality track.  The differences were heard by friends as well.

Looking forward to reading about your comparisons.

Insights after day two:

Today I had a little time to compare. Unfortunately, my Phantoms are not placed in an acoustically optimized situation. I tested Spark from my server with TIDAL as well as HiRes files stored on the server vs. Twonky/Bubble UPnP/Lumin&Linn Kazoo from the very same server. I have to admit I have trouble recognizing any discernible difference. There might be some, but right now I could not tell if it is an illusion. Would need to do blind tests with calibrated /measured volume levels. I think it is a good start however.

Regarding stability I have some issues with playlists stopping between songs or Lumin losing the connection to OpenHome->Phantom when opened (music would still play though). This only happened when I did not attend my iPad for a while. These issues are more software related (Linn Kazoo and the "new" Linn app which is in Beta test are even more reliable) and I guess they will be resolved over time (some people reported issues with Lumin as well, but many others could not reproduce the "disconnect"). The solution for Lumin is simply to "swipe up" = close the app and reopen it and it works again. Linn Kazoo as well as Lumin have their merits. If you have a large music library I would tend to go for Lumin which is faster (it caches the library structure) while the Linn interface is a bit cleaner. But I guess it is a matter of taste. The good thing with an OpenHome server solution, as I learned, is that the stream is managed at the server level. Playlists are shared, you can access from whatever control point (comparable to Spark) and Tidal/Qobuz are streamed from the server (comparable to Spark and not ping-ponged to/from a mobile device). At least we have these options available which are for free! So I am grateful that other manufacturers share the work they put into the development of these apps.

I am really tempted to switch to DOS2 (especially as I have two Phantom White which would gain a power boost via firmware upgrade), but I guess it is smarter to hold on for a while.