Hi Martin, JB,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, you caught me on a very busy weekend.
Martin,
I've not got any first-hand experience of the CXN streamer, in fact the first time I took streaming seriously was at the Bristol hi-fi show this past
February. My exposure to the medium is so far minimal, although I do have a couple of Google Chromecast - apart from a slightly annoying quirk when playing music from Spotify they seem to work well. Although they're not hi-fi as such they do sound surprisingly good through a decent DAC. Which, I guess, is fine if you already have the reasonable DAC...
I'll be looking at this more when the Leema Elements streamer surfaces (currently due in September) and I'll have a look at what services I might want for 'hi-resolution' audio. Typically that means around CD-levels of data rates whereas Spotify/Amazon seem to be somewhat lower. It'll certainly be worth checking what your data/network requirements would be and one of my concerns is having to get data to a streamer on the other side of the house from the main fixed telephone connection.
JB,
That's not a simple question to answer! Certainly bearings and rigidity would be considered very high up a designer's goals, but there are also a whole load of interactions with the turntable and cartridge that need managing - some would also argue the counterweight can have a disproportionate effect on the sound. The things that tend to make pricey tonearms both pricey and potentially worthwhile is that they'll use good bearings, be rigid, have low mass, be able to adjust some/most/all cartridge mounting parameters and (important but often ill-considered) be able to maintain those adjustments once set. The nice-to-have considerations that can help with tuning include paint or other finish, material used in wiring (and insulation), number of electrical/mechanical connections between cartridge and amplifier and so on. I'm not commenting on the potential psycho-acoustic sound improvements caused by stickers bearing pseudo-random monikers such as 'Linn', 'SME', etc, etc!
Steph