I will tell you a story of how I set myself a challenge to stream both Tidal, and internet radio to a small hifi system without a streamer. Maybe someone will find this a useful way for themselves also.
Background
I am an extensive user of ROON in my main system which has seperate core and endpoints etc, but I also have another system which only has an integrated amp and a universal blueray/CD player.
My goal was to try and implement streaming with good sound quality without putting any PCs or servers in place, so no intelligence in the network, just amplifier/speakers and one source. Yes you could use a Chromecast and stream directly from the Tidal app, and radio via the TuneIn app but that didn’t sound great to my ears.
So how did I do it?
So having just an old Blueray player meant there was no USB just some SPDIF/network inputs and luckily a build-in DLNA renderer (not a server) in the player, and it has a decent dac in it. So the player could take a stream, but I couldnt put a DLNA server on the network (self imposed limitation).
I looked around at some of the streaming apps but most needed a DLNA server (e.g. Minimserver) on the network.
Then I stumbled across 2 apps that could stream to a DLNA renderer (my blueray player) without a server on the Network. This was the breakthrough moment.
The first app is “mconnect”. I use this app to stream Tidal directly to the Blueray player. This app also is able to use iCloud or OneDrive to stream ripped music FLACs direct to my Blueray player, again without a DLNA server being involved. It hooks directly to Tidal and so far works very well. The downside is that it cant stream Internet Radio without additional hardware.
The second app is "C5+:. This app can do internet radio direct to a DLNA renderer. This one took a bit of experimenting to get right. Some of their pre-built radio stations that I listen to a lot would not cooperate with my DLNA blueray player via the app. Fortunately the app has a very cool feature that allows you to browse any web page, and is able to find any functions on the page that can play music, it then captures that function/stream and re-directs it to your chosen player (my DLNA blueray player).
So I now had a solution to play internet radio directly to my DLNA player.
Full streaming of Tidal/InternetRadio without any purpose built streamer or server on my local network. And only $22 spent on the two apps. And it sounds great. Job done!
Cheers
Colin