Audirvana, SACD ISO, Chromecast Audio streaming via Bubble UPNP

I am streaming successfully SACD ISO to Chromecast Audio via Bubble UPNP

Chromecast Audio is officially supported by Roon.
Roon do not play SACD ISO image and Audirvana as you know is playing this format, no need to extract to single DSD files.
Chromecast Audio is the cheapest and most versatile Dac Streamer ever built.
If you are Audirvana user on the budget than I would highly recommend this device as your streamer.
Chromecast audio was too good to be true and Google took this device out of the shelves over 2 years ago.
Instead they selling Chromecast technology to different audio and video companies building all kind of devices including more and more TVs that are coming out now.

It is still possible to buy Chromecast Audio new or used on Ebay or local trade websites
This device has analog out as well as optical and it is doing 24 bit 96 khz
I was doing sound quality comparison between Zen Dac connected to PC and Chromecast Audio dongle and I would say that Chromecast Audio is nice sounding excellent streamer for the money.
I know that we have rich community members that will laugh at this solution but for less fortunate financially my forum friends I would recommend this cheap way of streaming.
Yes Raspberry PI it is also not that expensive or other similar devices but they are more complicated to set up and run successfully.
Chromecast is more universal and is implemented also to expensive audio players.
For critical listening I am using Dac connected to pc and than to amp with cables but when cooking in the kitchen I am streaming Audirvana to Chromecast Audio.
If anyone has good experience with Chromecast please share.
Please be positive, we have enough negative posts on this forum !

Not for me and others as i know, unfortunately. And i don’t know why.

SACD ISO it is most complex and difficult format to play for any audio player.
It takes lot of RAM and CPU power at start to play it
There are just few players like Audirvana and Foobar 2000, Jriver Media Centre, Neutron Audio Player that can play it.

Also to stream this format thru home wi fi is very difficult task
I gave example of SACD ISO being used because of this fact
Any player can play Flac or Wav,Alac etc (simple easy to play formats)
I knew before starting this post that right away somebody will jump with negative post about SACD ISO and you are the first that speaking for others and don’t know even why ?
I am sorry that you do not have those SACD ISO images.
You are free to stream Flac or Alac, Ape, Wav DSD etc using ROON straight to any Chromecast enabled speaker or device but ROON do not play SACD ISO.
Why SACD it is important in audiophile world ?

Because you can buy SACD and rip to SACD ISO image to preserve original state of the disk.
Than you own this SACD Image.
SACD you can sell on eBay and still play that SACD ISO image.
Why not to extract to DSF ?
Because than you need additional space on your hard drive. What do you think ?
That I am going to waste hard drive space ?

Do you think that I am going to delete my original SACD ISO image and keep DSF, no way !

It takes lot of effort to rip SACD to ISO my friend.

For people that like sound of DSD this format is very important.

For people that do not care I would say Don’t Worry Be Happy play your own favorite formats and do not speak for others that you don’t even know !

Who cares if SACD ISO is not for you and others

Hi think you misunderstand my words.
I like very much SACD ISO and i have a lot of them.
What i try to tell is that with my Audirvana and my windows pc with 16GB of RAM, i can’t play my SACD ISO properly, my system hangs for a large amount of seconds and the blue round appears, theu start to play after more than 30 secs. And as i know other people have the same bad experience.
And i ask is what could be the problem as i can find any explanation.
I use JRiver to and to play SACD ISO is immediatly.
Cheers

I am sorry that you have problem to play SACD ISO using Audirvana.
I am playing them on old PC with Audirvana 3.5

For now I gave up to use Audirvana Studio to play any files.

I bought discounted 1 year subscription and I had problems to play DSD 128 file which is kind of big obviously. Also Radios vanished, only very few stations left being displayed in AS

AS I installed on Mac Mini and I don’t know what is happening now in Windows using Audirvana Studio.

I tried AS in windows for a month when just came out.

I do not what is happening with current version.

On Mac I have installed version 1.6.1 and it is not stable so I am back on Old PC with ver 3.5 which I bought just few days before its termination date in May I believe.

So I can speak only for 3.5.46 version behavior on Windows 10 Pro 21H1
My old pc built
Motherboard: Asus P5K
CPU Intel Q 6600
8 GB DDR 2 1066
Windows installed on 256 GB Kingston SSD
Audirvana library stored on 10 TB WD Elements external HD connected via USB 3 Vantec PCI express card mounted in PCI Express slot on motherboard.
Yesterday I was playing few different SACD ISO albums for testing purposes to different Chromecast Audio dongles and to Google Nest Mini 2 speakers configured in google home app as stereo pair.
I don’t have any idea how Bubble UPNP app is converting this files coming out of Audirvana in order to be streamed to Chromecast points.
I suspect that probably isn’t very high spec.
But it is important for me that I can play those files when I am falling asleep to Google Nest Mini and to garage when I am working there. At that point Sound Quality isn’t that important to me.
I noticed that my set up is not playing those SACD ISO immediately.
It takes some time to load them.
For streaming 44.1/16 Flac my old PC doesn’t work that hard and that process is much faster.
I guess Most of the chewing preparation for streaming Buble UPNP is doing.
I installed Bubble UPNP and I set my Chromecast END points as DLNA Renderer in Bubble Media Renderers settings.
I hope that this may help.
Normally I don’t have any problems to play SACD ISO in Audirvana 3.5 on this old PC
It takes maybe 15-20 seconds to load and start to play (maybe more time depends on the image)
Once it start to play than it would play whole album non stop no problems.
Streaming to Chromecast it is different story.
It takes more time to load and later between tracks there is long gap ( MEDITATION TIME for Bubble UPNP server)
Now for Audirvana settings I have Ifi Zen Dac connected to PC USB 3 and ASIO original Ifi 3.2 windows driver for that device is set up.

With my set up I have no problems but yours could be completely different and that may change the whole picture to negative experience.

Are you relating your bad SACD ISO play to older Audirvana versions or to new Audirvana Studio ?

My PC is playing SACD ISO using Jriver Media Centre 26 also almost imediately but sound quality isnt that good as in Audirvana.
Audirvana always is loading every file to its buffer in order to perform perfect playback (maybe that time is needed to apply that special tweak for sound quality which I don’t mind as long as I have satisfying sound) SACD ISO is complex so that time is longer. I got use to it with my old gear.
I prefer JRiver interface and easy of use and other aspects but using Jriver and Jriver built inn DLNA server I couldn’t stream to Chromecast.
I used Bubble UPNP and also bad results with Jriver to streem large files to Chromecast.
SACD ISO was completely out of question to be streamed over my home network.
For playing files instantly off course Jriver is better.
Neutron Player $ 10 in Microsoft store is playing SACD ISO almost instantly also on my PC and sound is much better than Jriver. There is one week free trial
Maybe sound quality it is comparable to Audirvana ?
Tried to play same file just now Audirvana vs Neutron on same PC set up.
And winner is Audirvana 3.5 big time !

If you didn’t try I would recommend to install in spare time
It has very strange interface but it is playing anything with ease and it automatically recognized my DAC

Neutron Player it has its own DLNA/UPnP server built inn and it can output to Chromecast most files but no sound when SACD ISO image is loaded .Maybe something has to be changed in settings. Other files is streaming to Chromecast instantly.
It is Superb cheap Player on steroids’ and our Forum Member Doudou told me about it !

I tried Roon few times and it is streaming files including DSD instantly on its own to Chromecast Audio but sound quality is more neutral like in Jriver and not as good as Audirvana .
We know that you have 16 GB of RAM that is way more than enough.
I am wondering what are the remaining components on your pc ?

Your PC must be newer than mine because my motherboard is taking 8GB of RAM max.

Sometimes just for fun I would play SACD ISO image burned to blank DVD media disc using Sony Blue Ray Player BDP-BX 58 or Sony BDP-S580 which is identical to BX 58
This is list of compatible players if somebody is interested in this subject :

https://github.com/sacd-ripper/sacd-ripper/wiki/A-list-of-SACD-R-compatible-players.

This 2 Sony Blue Ray Players have very precise analytical sound compare to play same image using Audirvana thru Zen DAC ver 1
I prefer Audirvana and Zen Dac
I had chance to hear Denon DVD-3910 side by side with Sony BX 58 and Denon won in my opinion and my friends.
Denon has more warm, more pleasant sound to our ears.
Well Denon new cost almost $2000 and Sony retail price was maximum $ 250
Better Dac and other electronics on Denon.

i have a Intel Core i7-8565U with 16GB RAM on W10 64 bits.

it takes between 30 seconds to 1 minute, sometimes more to open a SACD ISO and meanwhile in this process the Audirvana crash with the blue round ribbon and then come to life to play the file.

The reason of my post is that are any reason why this happen?

Do you have the same issue when you play your ISO SATA with JRiver or Neutron or A3.5?

No problem at all, JRiver opens the SACD ISO on the click of my mouse, let’s say immediately.

So there’s nothing wrong with the file. The problem comes from AS.
Report the issue to support.

Audirvana Studio opens SACD ISO very fast now.

Today I reset my old WD TV Live media player to factory settings and connected to modem/router with network cable.
Audirvana is playing SACD ISO over network to WD TV Live no problem when in audio settings for WD Media player I have set audio to 16 bit 44.1 Khz
I can go up with this setting like 24/48 which is fine with me.
WD media player is connected with HDMI cable to older Pioneer VSX 1020 K AV Receiver.
Sound Quality is perfect,
My point here is that you don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to stream music over network to your audio amplifier etc, buying expensive streamers unless you have lot of money and you can afford it
WD media player has also optical out and it has AV audio out with included rca cable so you can connect analog way to any system.
You can buy one of those players for little money used.
I have also older model which I didn’t try to use it yet.

Just little info here about WD media player.
There is no need to do any set up on media player.
You have to make sure that WD Media player is connected to your home network
All control functions you doing either on Audirvana app or Audirvana remote.
Your WD media player is starting to play automatically no need to do anything on player side.
Zero maintenance.
Magic is done by Audirvana.
I didn’t try other cheap media boxes.
I have Minix 8H Plus sitting somewhere on the shelf doing nothing.
All these players playing lossless Flac and other formats.
Audirvana is doing all conversions and sound quality is perfect.
Audirvana is seeing these devices no problem.
To have Chromecast support will be nice but having other cheap UPNP solutions is always ok