Setup for best audio quality? (google music in particular)

[Guest Philipp Keller]

I bought my Advent Vega to be a jukebox for my stereo.

Now: My stereo is half decent: My speakers are pretty ok and mounted on the wall and the sound is pretty nice.

But when I stream music from Music Beta the sound quality is remarkably better than when I burn the same mp3 on CD and listen on it on my CD player.

The difference is quite high:

- When playing from my Vega I can barely hear the the "s" of the singer.

- When listening to "loud" music, the sound just gets a "soup".

I wonder what would be the best setup?

Possibility 1: Better ROM

I've tried with VegaComb and Cyanogen, I couldn't hear any difference.

Or is there a ROM with especially good audio quality (must be able to the music app to stream from Google Music).

Personally I don't trust my vega to produce very good audio quality so I think the D/A converter should be outside the tablet. That's why I think the next 2 possibilities are better.

Possiblity 2: Streaming via Bluetooth

I think I could stream Google Music over bluetooth to my stereo (would need a A2DP receiver for my stereo). I think that setup would be quite optimal. But I didn't read from anyone getting this setup to work for everyday use. Seems that bluetooth and Wifi bite eachother (e.g. this thread: http://android.modac...page__hl__audio). Tried it with bluetooth speakers and I could reproduce: When the tablet receives from Wifi the bluetooth sound is disrupted.

Possibility 3: Streaming via Wifi (e.g. using Twonky or AirPlay)

If the bluetooth and Wifi signals cannot work together: Why not stream the audio over Wifi?

- using a Twonky server on my Advent Vega and then a DLNA receiver on my stereo.

- using e.g. DoubleTwist to stream the music via Airplay

I wonder if this would work with Google Music though as it looks like with Twonky and DoubleTwist have its own UI and wouldn't let me just "stream what's playing on my tablet". Or is there an App that lets me do that?

Possibility 4: Use HDMI

I think using the HDMI port the audio signal would be transmitted digitally to my stereo - I would then just need an adapter to use my current stereo input ports (e.g. digital or analog)

Possibility 5: Use USB audio interface

The Vega supports USB host mode. If I could plug in e.g. this that would be marvelous. Is any of these USB audio interfaces supported by Vega?

I'd be very happy to hear of some experiences.

Edited September 26, 2011 by Philipp Keller

[Guest Philipp Keller]

Some days later I found out that it actually matters if I plug the vega to my stereo over the dock or directly on the vega.

I think the dock has a DAC that is inferior to the one in the Vega.

My wife and me did a blind test: Play song from CD, play same song from Vega. She couldn't find out -> case closed :-)