The German HiFi Academy has released new network players. These are the Stream6 and the Stream6 mini.
As the names may suggest, the Stream6 is larger than the Stream6 mini. So let’s start with the Stream6. This is a network player, with a modern Sabre-DAC ES9038 converter chip. The power supply is very low-noise and a very accurate clock generator should make jitter unmeasurable according to the manufacturer. The HiFi Stream6 has lots of inputs and outputs. Including a USB input on which, in addition to USB sticks and the like, a USB CD-ROM player can also be plugged in. From there, you can then rip CDs and save them to the internal hard drive. You can choose from variants with 64 GB to 2 TB storage, the starting price is €1890.
Mini
Don’t underestimate the smaller Stream6 mini either. Here again you will find the Sabre ES9038. The number of connections is a lot less. But you will not miss out on USB. That means that you can also rip CDs with this device. That’s great.
The price of the HiFi Stream6 mini is significantly lower with an amount of €795. Both devices can be operated via a web interface and are therefore accessible from just about any device equipped with a (modern) browser. If you wish, apps are also available. Recommended are mConnect (iOS) and BubbleUpnP (Android).