Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 50 total)
  • Computer audiophile help please!
  • captaindanger
    Full Member

    I need something to stream music from a NAS, with an optical out and ideally apple airplay

    I have a setup I am mostly pretty happy with:

    NAS drive > ethernet connection to a raspberry pi running volumio > optical out to a bel canto DAC 2.5 > BelCanto power amp and Ruark CL30 speakers

    The weak link is (unsurprisingly) the raspberry pi, I find the micro SD cards fail regularly normally after powering off, and I spend 2 hours flashing one. Volumio is great, decent library browsing of files on the NAS, apple airplay, and it has the optical out. I want the same functions in something reliable! Any ideas? I don’t mind spending money now, I’ve reached that point! I don’t want to rely on bluetooth or apple play either.

    Thanks!

    seosamh77
    Free Member

    I don’t get why people make something that’s so simple these days, so difficult!

    captaindanger
    Full Member

    you mean buying a streaming system? I would but have quite a lot of expensive equipment I don’t want to waste

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    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    I don’t get why people make something that’s so simple these days, so difficult!

    Reading that post makes my head hurt.

    Couldn’t you just get a spotify account?

    Or put the music on a hard drive on the computer?

    GlennQuagmire
    Free Member

    Plex?

    Like others have said, it needn’t be complicated!

    seosamh77
    Free Member

    captaindanger – Member
    you mean buying a streaming system? I would but have quite a lot of expensive equipment I don’t want to waste

    googleplaymusic>chromecast>decent hifi>happydays!

    captaindanger
    Full Member

    plex would have to be on the NAS wouldn’t it?

    GlennQuagmire
    Free Member

    I thought Plex was available for the Pi as well? I might be wrong – or it might be a paid for feature.

    monde
    Free Member

    Have you tried a squeezebox?

    twonks
    Full Member

    Bluesound node 2 might be worth a look.

    I’ve not played with one, but it is very well reviewed and one of my trusted interweb buddies loves his, and has a good system.

    gwaelod
    Free Member

    Don’t switch the pi off.

    delibury
    Full Member

    https://sites.google.com/site/picoreplayer/home

    It runs in memory so once it’s booted it doesn’t use the SD card,

    I’ve been running it for 2 years never had a SD card problem.

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Couldn’t you just get a spotify account?

    Why?

    googleplaymusic

    Again, why?
    If the OP is like me, he has a shitload of music in CD format, and much of that ripped onto a HDD.
    The bit causing the problem seems to be the interface between the NAS with the music on, and the amp.
    In my case, my Mac Mini is connected directly to my old Yamaha A/V amp via optical TOSLINK, and I control choice of playback via Remote on my pad or phone.
    It’s the lack of a direct optical link that seems to be the main problem, requiring the Pi, but as someone has suggested, keeping the Pi powered up continually could solve the issue with the cards failing.
    Worth doing that, and seeing if the issue goes away, thus making a cheap solution.
    To return to the first two questions, I refuse to have anything to do with streaming services until they pay artists the true value of the content that they stream. A million streams would pay an artist $900, or thereabouts, if those were downloads from iTunes the artist would earn $900,000,
    When I download a track the artist gets a proper royalty, and when I buy a CD, especially at a gig, the artist gets full payment for it, and in return I get a physical object that is a backup if the file gets corrupted, and has been signed by the artist as well.

    seosamh77
    Free Member

    googleplaymusic

    Again, why?Access any and everywhere mostly. Plus the availablity of music that isn’t in your library in an instant. Sitting and someone suggest a song album, bingo. sorted, i’m listening 2 seconds later.

    CDs, flaff with ripping, storage, organising your library, optical input, gold plated 40 quid cable.

    Why?

    captaindanger
    Full Member

    thanks countzero! Unfortunately it crashes occasionally hence needing to restart. The Node does the job, but it does a bit more than I need as it has the DAC in as well. Definitely an option if I cannot find anything cheaper

    SammyC
    Free Member

    Can the pi do pxe booting? It would basically load the boot image from the nas so no SD card needed

    captaindanger
    Full Member

    doesn’t look like it, enough to work anyway
    https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1444

    sirromj
    Full Member

    Have you tried buying a decent MicroSD card? ie spending more than a tenner? The decent cards are more reliable and have better r/w times as well. I regularly turn my Pi off and never had any problems other than with old MicroSD cards.

    captaindanger
    Full Member

    Am using a kingston at the moment so don’t think that can be the problem, assuming it is actually kingston

    sillysilly
    Free Member

    If you are In Bel Canto budget you have means to throw out the Pi and replace with a dedicated Macmini + Roon. This should work a treat with your current setup 🙂

    RichPenny
    Free Member

    Neet

    This is only £35 from Amazon and could work for you? There’s a cheaper one without a LAN connection for about £20.

    sirromj
    Full Member

    The Kingston cards aren’t great. Samsung EVO+ are decent.
    http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-microsd-card/

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    Buy decent SD card. We use SD cards in 24/7 machines in factories. Beckhoff as we use their plc but I bet there are other industrial branded SD cards.

    P.s. friend has had trouble trying to cheap out on Kingston and other consumer grade sd cards.

    disco_stu
    Free Member

    How are you powering off the Pi? If your just unplugging them then that will be the cause of the SD card corruption.

    sirromj
    Full Member

    How are you powering off the Pi? If your just unplugging them then that will be the cause of the SD card corruption.

    Yeah and there’s that 🙂
    I always shutdown my Pi via the remote control – my motivation is the IR remote stops working if I don’t shut it down properly.

    Xylene
    Free Member

    You can upload about 59,000 sings to Google music now as well and access them anywhere

    batfink
    Free Member

    What NAS have you got? if it’s synology, their music steaming app is pretty good.

    kcr
    Free Member

    Chromecast Audio will give you an optical out which I assume you can just plug into your amp. Stream to it from Plex or similar on your NAS?

    coolhandluke
    Free Member

    I use a sonos Connect. Connected optically to my Creek dac and cd player.

    eltonerino
    Full Member

    My raspberry pi would corrupt SD cards every other boot. I was powering it off the usb port on my TV. It was enough to run it, but would corrupt the card too often. I gave it a better power supply and it is fine.

    traildog
    Free Member

    I would get something like a SMS-200 or a microrendu.

    My experience of computer audio is that it’s anything but simple. Trying to get a decent sound out of an electrically noisy computer is a minefield.

    GlennQuagmire
    Free Member

    As suggested, try a better quality SD card or leave the Pi powered on. Mine is left on 24/7 as it doesn’t use a lot of power. I use OpenElec but the Volumio looks pretty good so I might give that a blast.

    And avoid powering off the Pi without shutting down cleanly – Unix things don’t like that and most Pi distros are based on Linux/Unix kernels.

    dmorts
    Full Member

    Just out of interest, how do you get the optical out from the Pi?

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Again, why?

    What seosamh77 said, I can ‘stream’ music to anywhere in the world. For less than the cost of NAS/pi/cables etc. A chromecast deals with the hardware side of things for about £15.

    I have hundreds of CD’s, they’re in the loft gathering dust.

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    my home cinema amp connects direct to my network either via wifi or ethernet and can access my NAS, or my computer for that matter. from there i can play via the system or to anything else via optical or coax out, bluetooth on on the more expensive versions of my amp Apple Airplay.

    Not sure what the need for Raspberry Pi’s and other devices is for. I would have thought all the functionality i’ve described above that my low to mid level amp I can do should be pretty much standard features with most HiFi gear these days?

    Or that connect to your NAS via a smart device via the many apps out there, and from your smart device connect to a playback device via BlueTooth/WiFi/Apple Airplay.

    bigjim
    Full Member

    I don’t get why people make something that’s so simple these days, so difficult!

    you should know by now that as soon as you see the word “audiophile” you have to disengage all logic, sensibility and reasoning 😉

    andyg1966
    Full Member

    + for picore player here on rpi runs from RAM so no writes to SD card or corruption on power off. USB to ARCAM DAC.

    Squeezebox server running on my Synology NAS, all music ripped as FLAC.

    I use the orange squeeze app to control the player.

    gwaelod
    Free Member

    while we are talking about this sort of thing – have all the Chromecast audio £15 deals dried up?

    DezB
    Free Member

    My QNap NAS has it’s own QMusic or Qfile apps. Play on any device using those.
    Don’t know why you need the Raspberry thing.
    Use Chromecast Audio if I want to play through the hi-fi.
    (Note: I’m not an audiophile, I like music)
    Plex I just use for films.

    disco_stu
    Free Member

    while we are talking about this sort of thing – have all the Chromecast audio £15 deals dried up?

    Out of curiosity what’s the benefit of using Chromecast audio over Bluetooth? I’ve got a Q Acoustics soundbar with Bluetooth on it but it can be a bit glitchy sometimes.

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