Developping a stereo system replacing spark + dialog

[streamy]

The Dialog connects with the Phantom through 3 possibilities: PLC (preferred), ethernet, or Wifi. In my setup absolutely no problem and stable through PLC. I was using an RPi2 with volumio, first, then a RPi2 with Moode, then RPi2 and now RPi3 with Roon. The RPi is connected to one of the Phantoms through optical. The Phantom sends this signal via PLC to the Dialog where it is distributed to all Phantoms in my rooms as I choose. No problems at at all with streams up to 24/192kHz hires music. Of course you can try to home-built something different that uses the Phantoms in direct mode without need of Devialet SW. But you can get around using Spark if you want by using UPNP commands to change the Phantom volume. I do this with the Roon extension ‘Roon Web Controller’ where I have added a volume slider that sets the Phantoms volume without need of Spark. So my Roon Phantom system is basically freed from Spark. But on the Ipad/IPhone Spark is still very convenient to use as volume controller because I can use the physical Ipad or Iphone buttons to change volume without acces of the Spark software as long as it is running in the background. I’m quite sure this also works with Adroid devices. So maybe a little bit of volumio tweaking could allow volume control of the Phantoms. In this case I would suggest you to buy the Dialog with more than one Phantom. It really does its job well for most users. Spark is ugly from the user experience compared to Roon, but it is theonly SW I know that plays reliably tracks from local folders, Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, Deezer, many internet radio stations, Upnp servers, all in hires. I still use it for Qobuz streaming since Roon only has Tidal. It allows to play all playlists etc. It has a search function. But then the problem is that search is not intelligent like google search and a bit laggy. These are the things people complain and are right. Also there is no folder structure and no view of meta data. There is a ‘similar artist’ function that I actually like. Sorry, maybe I’m getting too extensive.