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In Reply to: RE: Newbie here - Basic question posted by Phil_S on April 05, 2021 at 03:30:31
Cutthroat,
Good questions, I have an old 10+ years old Apple network. It's slow. No music streaming. No DAC.
I'm using a new Van Alstine 120 control amp and Vision phono phono pre. It only has 4 inputs, 1 for phono, CD/DVD player, Tuner, & TV box.
The DAC would be necessary to handle the CD/DVD player (audio only, probably use the optical input) and the network device to handle the audio playback on the CD files.
FlaCharlie, We've had issues with itunes in the past so may not want to go that route. Good to know about the Express, have one or two at the moment.
Follow Ups:
OK, you mentioned the 'Network Device', which would be a Music Streamer. This was not on your list... But if you want quality within a tight Budget, I would recommend a Raspberry Pi with some free Streaming Software such as PiCorePlayer... this will run you under a $100 (It is what I use) and will have a USB input to your Schiit DAC.Then to 'connect' the rest of the Dots, you should
1.) get someone over to your house (A knowledgeable friend) to help you get your Home Network Set up. Once that is set up and working. You can get the Music working. Get it set up right to avoid problems down the road.
2.) Then It is a matter of getting your CD's to disk... You need some software such as DBPowerAmp to do the copying (Ripping as it is referred to here).
3.) Get a Raspberry Pi to stream the CDs on your NAS to your Schiit DAC.
4.) Then you can add a Music Streaming Service for around $10-$15 and have access to about 50 Million Tracks of Music..
Edits: 04/05/21
Cut-Throat gives good advice. Pay attention to Cut-Throat's posts.
In the meantime, understand that modern audio streams are far beyond what people used to listen to and thought were magnificent. While you continue your pursuit to hear the sounds that Angels enjoy, remember that there is even more music encoded in good enough for humans format that you can enjoy and indeed have an absolute ball with.
JE
I agree. The Raspberry Pi is the best way to go.
might be an issue for the OP...
. I judge any sound system by how tiring it is to listen to.
Linkwitz
+1. C-T knows whereof he speaks. Raspberry Pi is a great solution.
I agree on the Pi, but I'd skip putting the CDs to a hard drive and go straight to streaming. Once you are on a service you'll never play them. There is so much music out there in all genres, and it will include everything that has ever been popular. Of the top 1000 classic rock songs I have found only one artist that isn't on Qobuz. And then there is new music Friday. Every Friday there will be a slew of new releases by artists old and new, "some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of" (Celluloid Heroes by The Kinks, which I easily found on Qobuz)
I still regularly use my local collection. There are two reasons for that. First, I have a some material that was never released -- stuff that I recorded, demo/promo material that I received, LPs that I transferred that were never released on CD (or the CD wasn't as good) along with a fair amount of open reel material that I digitized. Qobuz is no help with that.
Second, my familiarity with my own collection makes browsing easier there than Qobuz. I often pick what I want to hear via folder browsing. The stuff may still be available on Qobuz but looking for songs there is a different experience. (In fact, the loss of folder browsing was one of the reasons I didn't stick with Roon after trying it.)
I'd guess I'm at 50:50 local v. streaming right now. The Qobuz percentage will probably creep up over time, but the local collection isn't going anywhere.
I guess one reason I never use my local collection is that I never really bought that many CDs. And of what I have maybe 5-10% would ever be played again and only a handful were ever put on iTunes. My LP collection is different and a lot would get played if I weren't lazy about putting them on and taking them off. I'll play one or two and go back to Qobuz. I tried digitizing a few LPs but it was too much trouble.
Here's a funny thing though. I played one of my digitized LPs and then pulled out the original LP and played it. The LP sounded better not because of the digitization but because I'd improved my LP playback! I could hear all the flaws of my TT that I'd tweaked out. The Rega Planar 3 that I use had the motor mounted to the plinth, and I remounted it to an isolation board and it became much quieter. I also have a much better cartridge, better dual belts, better bearing, stable reclocked power, etc... It all adds up to much better analog.
So few that I don't even bother with an NAS, just a small hard drive plugged into the USB port on the RPi.
Qobuz does all the rest of the work.
But a newbie to streaming is almost impossible to convince of this, so I give the 'solution'. That's what they ask for, They are convinced they need it, and it is almost impossible to argue with them... So, I don't.
And once they do they'll wonder why they bothered spinning all those disks. If I put all of my CDs into a box and put it out on the street for people to take I wouldn't miss them. In fact, now that I say it, maybe I'll at least get rid of the display racks and just put them away. I've played one, just one, in the last year and that was to check out the new DAC. After 6 months of owning it and using it exclusively for streaming I thought I should at least try it on CD. Streaming sounded better since it was hi-res and that was that.
I kept a small handful of CD's mainly to test the Blu-Ray player and my old Pioneer Elite PDR-19RW CD player/writer. I plan to sell the Pioneer soon.All of my music now resides on the NAS and on a couple backup disk drives, plus I stream Tidal & Qobuz.
Edits: 04/12/21
Disc either SACD Blu-ray or dvd audio the rest have been in a box for 6 years
All my SACD, BD and DVD-A are on my server for streaming and all the discs are in deep storage with the CDs.
Edits: 04/09/21
Now all 5,000 CDs fit in my shirt pocket, just in case I need to play one.
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