Not had much chance to play about with the Platina streamer yet as it didn’t arrive till 5pm yesterday, but early impressions straight out the box are it’s an absolute beast! Weighs a ton, which I’m not used to over the last decade or so of having a few Cambridge Audio players such as 851N, CXN100 and until recently EXN100. These streamers are light as a feather in comparison. Played a few tracks back on Roon, then Qobuz Connect and then songs from a hard drive. Stuff such as Underworld, Pavement, Aphex Twin and Miles Davis, and I’ll have a better chance to crank up tomorrow but it all sounded absolutely terrific. Bass deep and tuneful, trebles not harsh in any way and soundstage very focused.The app seems relatively basic, not a patch on Cambridges Stream Magic. Today I’ll try playing songs using USB cable from my iPad.
Very happy so far, definitely worth an audition if anybody is curious.
Thanks for posting, nice to see the inside. The picture doesn’t give any indication of how heavy this thing is, I can only imagine how heavy the Platina integrated amp is. I have had Rotel and Arcam power amps from 20 plus years ago that were far less heavy. That said, the build quality is absolutely superb.
If this is just a streamer, what are the massive heatsinks for?
To keep it cool baby!
Hmm - I see that Quad are saying “native support for Roon Ready” - is it there yet?
I might finally get what I had hoped for with the Quad Artera Link.
Specs say 11.8 kg. The amp is 17.1 kg
That suggests they have already started the journey, which is good.
Looking forward to sampling how the amplifiers sound in the new year
The case is a shared design with the amplifier in the same range. Here, they are purely aesthetic and serve no purpose.
A good looking device.
Wow, that is heavy.
I’ve no idea how these devices are constructed, but on the surface of it the CA EXN100 which I previously owned is as light as a feather in comparison to the Quad Platina Stream at 4.1 kg. Functionally they do exactly the same thing so the difference in weight is surprising.
Is the correct answer. I read that the innards are identical to the Audiolab 9000 streamer. They do look similar to a large degree internally, but the Audiolab doesn’t have the heatsinks.
Indeed - the main PCB looks to be the same design…
Audiolab and Quad are both part of the IAG group…
£500 more for the Quad name/case 
Thats the cool factor baby!
Quads own marketing says that the streamer “is powered by Lumin”, who are also part of the IAG group.
A few weeks ago Darko wrote an article about the similarities of the Platina Stream and the Audiolab 9000N.
Maybe just a small thing, but I wish they had made the silver Platina that I have the same colour and texture as the Quad 33 and 303 amps they released last year. The picture doesn’t quite show the difference, especially in daylight. The amps are much darker in tone
Forgive me, @Kev67 - but I replaced your paste of Darko’s article with a link to it, to conform with our Community Guidelines…
Can you provide a link to this? I didn’t think that Lumin were owned by IAG?
IAG’s page doesn’t list Lumin (but maybe confused with Luxman?).