Atonemo Streamplayer Review: Make Old Speakers New Again

Plugged into my father’s 20-year-old Arcam amplifier, powering a brace of arsenic vintage Mordaunt Short floorstanding speakers, the Streamplayer works smoothly. It did necessitate a 3.5mm to RCA cablegram (more successful this below) but dad’s container of aged cables is simply a tech treasure trove. On archetypal perceive I was impressed by the easiness of it all, and switching betwixt Qobuz and Spotify Lossless surely didn’t offend. But erstwhile playing the aforesaid opus side-by-side utilizing a mid-range Cambridge Audio CD player, the quality was obvious.

Playing the medium “Music from Big Pink” by The Band, and the powerfulness and standard from the CD mentation easy eclipsed that of the Streamplayer. Rick Danko’s bass lines soared and the layering of the instruments was wonderfully pronounced via CD, portion they were noticeably subdued erstwhile streaming. Same speakers, aforesaid amplifier, precise antithetic DACs.

It’s by nary means a disaster, and the streaming convenience—in lieu of a ample CD collection—is hard to reason with. Even with prime components, the show is lone ever going to beryllium arsenic bully arsenic the audio prime played.

Cables and Connectivity

Atonemo makes a large woody implicit being capable to powerfulness “all” bequest speakers. Included successful the container is simply a azygous 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio jack, giving the quality to plug into progressive speakers, aged radios, cassette players, boomboxes, and thing with a 3.5mm aux-in port.

But to powerfulness analogue speakers, you volition request a abstracted amplifier and alternate cables, whether that’s a 3.5mm to RCA oregon SPDIF RCA to 3.5mm jack cable. Atonemo told WIRED they toyed with the thought of including aggregate cables successful the box, but opted for the 3.5mm audio jack due to the fact that astir hi-fi radical would person 1 already. They besides program to merchantability a scope of cables to suit “all” bequest speakers. I deliberation including a mates of cablegram options would person been a bully idea, particularly astatine launch, conscionable to debar immoderate friction points with first-time installation, arsenic not everyone has a container of aged cables arsenic broad arsenic my Dad.

Competition

Atonemo isn’t the lone enactment erstwhile it comes to breathing caller beingness into older hi-fi components. The WiiM Mini Music Streamer ($89) is cheaper, offers AirPlay/Chromecast/Spotify Connect streaming capabilities and a XX DAC. Similarly the FiiO SR11 Desktop Streaming Music Receiver ($110) besides copes with Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, FiiO Music and PCM 768 kHz/32 Bit and DSD256 (DOP) quality. And for a further boost successful audio prime positive 1 of the finest hi-res streaming multiroom platforms, the $379 Bluesound Node nano streamer is hard to ignore. There are besides plentifulness of basal Bluetooth dongles disposable excessively if audio quality, oregon the quality to bask multi-room audio, isn’t important to you.

But what Atonemo has done good is region immoderate method barriers to use. The app is incredibly simple—in a bully way—with nary bloat, oregon pretence it is doing thing different than facilitating streaming betwixt your aged speakers and a modern streaming platform.

Yes, it could (and astir apt should) compression successful a amended DAC, and a much broad postulation of cables, but these are deliberate omissions, not glaring mistakes. Anyone looking to tweak and tune, and mostly nerd-out astir spot rates, are already good served elsewhere.