[Closed] Computer audiophile help please!

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

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

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?

Plex?

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

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!

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

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

Have you tried a squeezebox?

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.

Don't switch the pi off.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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 🙂

[url= https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neet-Airstream-Wifi-Music-Receiver/dp/B010DM7M8W ]Neet[/url]

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 😉

+ 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I think........

Chromecast streams the file to the chromecast which uses it's own DAC (and it's a good one) to play it.

BlueTooth speakers are relatively dumb and rely on the DAC at the transmitter end to play the file then transmit the signal to them, so it's only as good as your phone or whatever. The upside of that is that if your phone can play it the bluetooth speaker can play it. whereas chromecast relies on a compatible app being available.

oops double post

Thanks chaps, sounds like I should try some new SD cards first off.

I use a Hifiberry Digi to get optical out of the pi, works well and means the USB is free, as the USB can get a bit overworked with a wifi dongle ini it leading to track stopping. There are alternatives available now.

I have to power off the pi by unplugging, I only do it when it crashes so there is no software off!

Thanks for those suggestions traildog, I was wondering if that kind of thing existed, an option if I cannot get better memory cards to work.

Oh and it's a WDMyCloud, has a DLNA server but that's all.

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.

Which presupposes having at least a 4G network with solid signal strength wherever you happen to be.
In my personal everyday experience, it's a royal pita just getting a sodding phone call to work when I'm out working, anything that requires data is just useless.
I've spent thirty minutes driving across parts of the south of England with no service, you seriously expect me to think about using a service that is totally reliant on solid data connections?
I DON'T WANT my music stored in a cloud somewhere that compromises quality, 320Kb is the absolute minimum I'll accept, and as I've already got the cd's, I'd have to rip them onto my computer to get them to upload to Google music anyway, so what's the point when I can just pick and choose tracks while I'm listening on my home system then copy them onto my phone.
I can already get a song or album off of iTunes, any time I want, Shazam it, bingo, it's on my phone seconds later.
Except the same caveat applies: you can't when there's no bloody network or wifi!
Christ, we don't all live in a technological paradise where there's ubiquitous high-speed data available 24/7, everywhere you go, many of us live where just getting a decent broadband speed at home is a struggle, I can promise you that it's nearly impossible to get even a 3G phone signal in the centre of the city of Bath!
Don't even think of trying to google something, or use google maps, unless you don't mind standing around for ten minutes whil it loads.
4G is available over most of Chippenham, amazingly, but venture half a mile outside of the main outskirts and you're screwed.
I want to listen to my music when I want to, not when dictated to by the whims of the telecommunications industry - I respectfully suggest you get out of your technological nirvana and discover just how poor the networks really are.

download for offline use.

If you can hear a difference in quality above 320, all the very best of luck to ye! 😆

Spotify will connect to your existing NAS and let you control and stream that audio though their player to Chromecast etc.

CZ is the exception to any music thread 😉

Spotify will connect to your existing NAS and let you control and stream that audio though their player to Chromecast etc.

Is that including android or just windows/mac? got a 4tb NAS with some mp3s I cant get on spotify.

I like using my tablet for spotify and streaming to hifi.

Why are you switching off your Pi NAS? The whole idea of a NAS is to be kept on 24/7. I would check the command it is using for Shutdown, SD's do corrupt if the Pi is not shutdown correctly.

I am using LMS & PiCorePlayers (they have Airplay and a few other features) around the house. I then use a VPN to connect to the house network to access all the music.

I also use Plex for video, but this requires a decent machine to transcode on the fly.

I read it as he has a nAS and a PI running Voluminous as a separate client, and it was this client he kills power to in order to switch it off.

There is a software power off in Volumio ... You don't need to just pull plug. Alternatively get one of the various PIUPS bits that cleanly power down PI when it loses the 5v, although maybe tricky if you have a DACHAT on the pins. Also Volumio has a GPIO plugin....can that be configured to a physical switch that triggers the Volumio Software Off.

theres a long thread on one of the audio groups i'm on with facebook about the latest pi as a player using a plug in dac (hi fi berry or something, i'd have to look) and its really rated.

but if you want a cheap and cheerful dac a behringer uca202 is what i was recommended on here and i really can't fault it.