STREAMERS

Bring your existing hi-fi kit right up to date by adding one of these ten great streamers to your system

There can be little doubt that streaming is the future of our music listening. Indeed, for many of us, it’s very much the present.

The compact disc is by no means dead yet, of course (as one of the products we highlight here shows), but the smart money is on the many streaming and download services out there to be taking our subscriptions and providing our music for the foreseeable future.

And we can now truly say that we don’t have to sacrifice quality to listen to our digital tunes. A decade or more ago, there was no doubt that the best way to listen to music was at home by compact disc. No longer: now we can get music files down our ever-broadening broadband feed at resolutions that put the humble CD to shame.

Get your digital music singing

What we have on the following pages is a fine selection of products you can buy to take advantage of digital music, whether by streaming it directly from your favourite streaming service (see our round-up on page 44), or by taking digital music you already own from your NAS (network-attached storage) device, and passing it on to your stereo amplifier.

And there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater; plenty of these products will allow you to connect any equipment you already own, from a turntable to, you’ve guessed it, a CD player.

Great music? Priceless…

Whether you have a few hundred pounds to invest in your 21st century hi-fi system, or can spring for the delightful Linn Selekt DSM’S rather more substantial asking price, there should be something here that will do your digital music proud and serve it up sounding its best. You’ll see that the top brands in the hi-fi and streaming business are represented here, so there really should be something for everyone.