So line level passive XO? Smart. Still software XO and DSP could be even better with a multichannel DAC like the new Topping?
Yes, I've filled up more than half a 1TB drive with.... FLAC files! I have a LOT of music, most of it CD resolution, but much of it 'hi-res' (24/96k, 24/192k and even some DSD).
But it's true that a 4TB hard drive is not expensive, and that should be enough for a sanely sized uncompressed music collection.
I've been using a Raspberry Pi player for the last few years, running Moode Audio, with an Allo Boss 'HAT' (DAC daughtercard that connects on top of the Raspberry Pi mainboard). The music (mostly FLAC) is stored on a combination of a 2.5 inch 500GB hard drive and a couple of 256GB USB thumb drives connected to a powered USB hub, as the Raspberry Pi power circuit can't service the current demands of the hard drive without bogging down. The RPi connects to my home network by Ethernet cable, but you could use WiFi too. The RPi player is controlled from my networked computers, smartphone, etc. You could add a Pi touch screen to make the player self-contained.
I also use a Topping D10 DAC once in a while, and I swear that sounds really good too.
By "uncompressed" if you mean uncompressed WAV's - that's not a good idea, long term - as I suggested in an earlier post from 2021 -
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...-for-music-storage.377502/page-2#post-6799481
Currently have 600gb, I'd expect to be at or close to 1tb by the time my vinyl is completely digitised.
Some of us think there is a small reason. Nothing dramatic but worthwhile. For some reason pre-decoding in RAM as advertised by JRiver does not quite have the same effect.
Either APE or FLAC make sense as when a new format is invented one can convert to that without penalty. The worst choices are lossless and proprietary formats as they can be one way direction traffic. WAV is not reliable in the long term and it takes almost twice the space compared to FLAC. FLAC is the most accepted of lossless compressed formats and probably most accepted by audio players too. In the about 20 years I use FLAC I haven't had a single file corrupted. What I did have a few times is that folder names became nonsense but the contents was intact. Time goes too fast for us humans and a choice had to be made, it turned out to be a good choice as opposed to MP3 that was the defacto standard then.
BTW OP already made his choice for FLAC. It is kicking in an open door but in all cases a simple backup scenario must be followed. A simple way is to have the contents for coming month on a USB stick and the complete collection on a 2 disk NAS. One expects to prevent dataloss because of technical reasons but don't underestimate the impact of own errors!
BTW OP already made his choice for FLAC. It is kicking in an open door but in all cases a simple backup scenario must be followed. A simple way is to have the contents for coming month on a USB stick and the complete collection on a 2 disk NAS. One expects to prevent dataloss because of technical reasons but don't underestimate the impact of own errors!
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It checks a few boxes but they start to suffer from age. Prices are low though. Sony HAP devices are like classic audio devices and check all boxes but they're harder to find and they're not cheap. HAP-S1 is a nice device when an SSD is fitted. Built in Gain Clone as well.
Many elderly at first protest against smart phone control but get used to it real quick. The ones I know that were most reluctant do have devices with knobs and switches like Cambridge CXN V2 but they changed to smart phone control quite soon 😀
Cambridge CXN V2 checks a few boxes but it is not cheap and the DACs are so so. It is an excellent device with regards to persuading the user to switch over to smart phone control!
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I've been using Minimserver on a raspi serving flac on an SSD. It just sits there and does its job. If you have a processor that'll run Java it'll almost certainly run Minimserver and you can run it on a Pi that's also running Moode for a single box server/streamer if you don't fancy what Moode's built in music database does. I like minim because it owes nothing to anyone and there's no expectation of leveraging a corporates 'added value'.
Yup. Smartphones are the future for this sort of control. Night and day compared to IR remotes and screens on boxes. Mind you, finding an app that's got a UI that's not going to drive you up the wall can be a hard business. Eventually, I wrote my own. Partly out of frustration and partly out of a desire to return to programming. I found that as with all software it's a complicated business and that many commercial servers don't honour the open APIs they claim to support because (IMO) they'd prefer to tie users into their entire closed/licensed food chain.
Agreed. The "loss" is negligible. If you take an original wav file. invert it, convert to 320 mp3, convert that back to wav, and mix it back with the original that gives you the difference, or "loss" and its literally nothing. Just a tiny bit of noise in the high end.
It is loss, it is irreversible and it is also completely unnecessary so simply error by choice. It makes no sense to then look at minuscule details in the setup either.
FWIW: I use a 2010 MacBook Pro as my music server. Control it with the Apple Remote App running on my phone. The MBP has optical (TOSLINK) output via the 3.5 mm headphone jack. The newer MBPs don't. I seem to recall that 2017/18ish was the last time the MBP had optical out.
The older Mac minis have optical out as well.
Tom
The older Mac minis have optical out as well.
Tom
Hi
Given a personnal experience, to answer "My preference would be to have a standalone controller not linked to windows or similar operating system, FLAC files stored on memory cards,stick or other solid state memory, output from the controller as spdif to external dac. I can't seem to find anything", i would suggest
1. 1 Raspberry Pi 3 or 4.
2. Volumio operating system https://volumio.org/
3. Hat card on top with DAC and SPDIF output like https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...pi-2-3-4-digital-interface-spdif-p-12067.html or https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...interface-spdif-raspberry-pi-3-4-p-13275.html or cheaper https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...-for-raspberry-pi-spdif-i2s-tcxo-p-15821.html
Check if Hat is compatible with Volumio
4. Your FLAC can be on USB stick or Hardrive USB
2. and 3. can change depending on your experience / preference
Regards
Given a personnal experience, to answer "My preference would be to have a standalone controller not linked to windows or similar operating system, FLAC files stored on memory cards,stick or other solid state memory, output from the controller as spdif to external dac. I can't seem to find anything", i would suggest
1. 1 Raspberry Pi 3 or 4.
2. Volumio operating system https://volumio.org/
3. Hat card on top with DAC and SPDIF output like https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...pi-2-3-4-digital-interface-spdif-p-12067.html or https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...interface-spdif-raspberry-pi-3-4-p-13275.html or cheaper https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/dac-...-for-raspberry-pi-spdif-i2s-tcxo-p-15821.html
Check if Hat is compatible with Volumio
4. Your FLAC can be on USB stick or Hardrive USB
2. and 3. can change depending on your experience / preference
Regards
Yes, that's really interesting. I didn't mention the whole project I have been looking at.
It started as a digital filter replacement for my analogue 3 way unit, I intended to use the digital sound source via a 3 way DSP followed by digital attenuation on each channel and dac for each pair of channels prior to the amps.
I spent 12 months studying DSP and started with a teensy4.1 board to develop it, then I did a bit of work on FPGA units and thought this would be better as the DSP could be done in parallel. So that's where I am at the moment.
I like listening to my system, it has a great sound, I really just wanted to replace the cd player with audio files then concentrate on the DSP.
So I intend to design and build this myself, I could buy some of the equipment ready made but I like building it.
My triamp system took about 5 years to do but it was worth it.
Thanks for the info, very encouraging.