Does B-2 support lossless streaming?

[Thomas Brown]

I currently stream from Tidal and other services from an iPhone or iPad with a cable through a Yamaha CDS300 as a dac (and also as a CD player) and a Woo WA-7 tube amp through Sennheiser HD800S headphones. I would love to put all of my CDs on a B-2 and eliminate the need for the CD player. Can the B-2 stream Tidal, Primephonic and other services directly, like the Bluesound Vault? The Bluesound is vastly too expensive for me, but the B-2 would be perfect if it can replace the CD player and the need to stream through an iOS device.

[Graham Smout]

Essentially as I understabd it the B2 does not offer an in- built streaming abilty except Spotify which I refuse to use so have not tried it. 

You can use the B2 to rip all your CD's in lossless FLAC format and play then either using the internal amplifier or an external analogue or digital amplifier.

You can control a B2 from your iPad or iPhone using the B2 Apple app or the web User Interface.

If you were to stream using either the iPad or iphone, then you could pair either apple device using Bluetooth with the B2 . The B2 would then play the bluetooth signal. This would not be the very best quality due to the limitations of Bluetooth, and that means the benefit of any lossless stream would not be retained . I find Bluetooth flaky at best and have only once used it with the B2. It wasn't worth  it in my opinion.

The B2 only has analogue audio auxilary input for any kind of signal so again a lossless input would be degraded. I am not sure if the Bluetooth pathway is entirely digital or a mix of analogue

The B2 has a two options for digital audio outputs: Optical via TOSlink and HDMI so it can drive a high quality digital amplifier.

I hope this answersme of your questions.

Good luck!

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

I am not familiar with the technologies you are using, but I would also point out in addition to the reply above the B2 can also do two more things.

1) it can drive a Sonos system. From the Web User interface (or App) of the B2 you can send music to Sonos speakers.

2) the B2 can generate a NAS on your house LAN. The CDs you have ripped are therefor visible as a file system to applications or devices you have in your house - For instance a Sonos system can see the B2 NAS as a music library and play this music 

using the Sonos App.

However please note that the B2 does not "tag" music or use music "tags".

Hope this helps.

[Daniel Taylor]

teb...

If you are using your Yamaha CD player as a DAC, you will want to retain that for use with a B2.  You'll get the best sound from a B2 with an external DAC.

As I read your post, I got the impression that hi res sound quality is important to you.  The B2 cannot stream from any service other than Spotify and it does not play hi res files at their native resolution - it downsamples them to 16/44 if it's able to play them at all.  Based on that little bit I know from you, I'd recommend that you get the Bluesound vault.