Chromecast Audio (Analog and Digital Outputs) $35

[jeffmudrick]

I know it is but thought Chris said over CCA it's bp.

 

Sorry, yes.

[Snowmonkey]

Can Plex be installed on a Synology (412+) does anyone know ? Or can Minimserver be used ?

According to their blogs, both Plex and Minimserver are supported on Synology.

[master]

Can Plex be installed on a Synology (412+) does anyone know ? Or can Minimserver be used ?

 

Do I understand correctly streaming Spotify is bit perfect redbook ?

 

Please check MinimServer here - MinimServer downloads.

 

Regarding Spotify pretty sure its only limited to 320 kbps at the highest setting.

 

BP only means no processing whatsoever and that's a yes with CCA (as long as you are using optical and not analog output).

 

But in this context that would be BP for 320 kbps and not redbook.

[Snowmonkey]

Presumably the CCA's lack of gapless playback support is ok for you? Certainly made my CCA 'choke'. May be I should start listening to mixed playlists, rather than going through those old concept albums!

I guess by "old concept albums" you mean something like Dark Side of the Moon and I can see your point there. I suppose I'll have to resort to using my laptop for such occasions.

Further to our dialogue, I fired up my copy of DSOTM for the first time in yonks, cranked the amp up to ear-splitting and cast it to the CCA. Of course, the gaps between the tracks were totally unacceptable - makes you wonder why it was split into separate tracks in the first place. Anyway, I had another listen using JRiver set to gapless, via USB to the same DAC. What blew me away was how much better the sound quality was with no PC in the equation. The PC is a Macbook Air, using JRiver and the WASAPI driver and an Audioquest Cinnamon USB cable, so not rubbish. I've realised why I am so enthused by the CCA - my music just sounds better - noticeably clearer and richer,to the point where I am going through lots of my old favourites to hear how they sound. I don't think it's a volume artefact, since in both situations I was playing the music at the maximum level that I find enjoyable/tolerable. I know it doesn't make sense that a $35 component could make such a difference, but I guess every component you eliminate from the chain is one less source of sonic degradation.

[master]

What blew me away was how much better the sound quality was with no PC in the equation. The PC is a Macbook Air, using JRiver and the WASAPI driver and an Audioquest Cinnamon USB cable, so not rubbish. I've realised why I am so enthused by the CCA - my music just sounds better - noticeably clearer and richer,to the point where I am going through lots of my old favourites to hear how they sound. I don't think it's a volume artefact, since in both situations I was playing the music at the maximum level that I find enjoyable/tolerable. I know it doesn't make sense that a $35 component could make such a difference, but I guess every component you eliminate from the chain is one less source of sonic degradation.

 

Had the very same experience getting my PC out of the chain.

 

Lots of detail and hearing things I've not heard before, more balanced overall, placement and separation have more detail, and the speakers have completely disappeared.

 

I'm listening to more music, in fact hours on end and rediscovering (or rather discovering) details I did not know existed in my music collection.

 

Hard to believe something so small/cheap can make such a huge difference, but there it is.

 

Folks really need to give the CCA a try before wasting any more $$$ on USB cleaners, power conditioners, and other snake oil claims.

[rogerdn]

Please check MinimServer here - MinimServer downloads.

 

Regarding Spotify pretty sure its only limited to 320 kbps at the highest setting.

 

BP only means no processing whatsoever and that's a yes with CCA (as long as you are using optical and not analog output).

 

But in this context that would be BP for 320 kbps and not redbook.

 

Makes sence, mine sounds very nice but not redbook.

[JBNY]

Had the very same experience getting my PC out of the chain.

 

Lots of detail and hearing things I've not heard before, more balanced overall, placement and separation have more detail, and the speakers have completely disappeared.

 

I'm listening to more music, in fact hours on end and rediscovering (or rather discovering) details I did not know existed in my music collection.

 

Hard to believe something so small/cheap can make such a huge difference, but there it is.

 

Folks really need to give the CCA a try before wasting any more $$$ on USB cleaners, power conditioners, and other snake oil claims.

 

Completely agree. I have not had a full blown PC or laptop hooked into my system for almost 5 years. Small appliances that are devoted to running just one thing is really the way to go. I spent some decent time the other day listening to the CCA and comparing it to other sources. The CCA sounds good, really good. If I was not keeping track of what sources I was listening to I can not tell the difference between the CCA and any other good source.

[jeffmudrick]

It seems the meme "what I like about vinyl is the expense and the inconvenience" might now be applied to file based USB audio. When I start reading about the need to spend $$$ for the power supply for a USB regenerator I know I'm sticking with the Chromecast and Tidal.

[rogerdn]

According to their blogs, both Plex and Minimserver are supported on Synology.

 

Didn't make my question clear, I have MS on my synology, was wondering if it worked with CCA, prob not.

[master]

Didn't make my question clear, I have MS on my synology, was wondering if it worked with CCA, prob not.

 

It works, but you'll need a control point/app (BubbleUPnP) to send the music the CCA way.

 

MS > BubbleUPnP > CCA > DAC

[rogerdn]

That's android only right ? I'm using iPad

[jeffmudrick]

Hans Beekhuyzen doesn't much like the CCA. Unfortunately I find the review sloppy and ultimately uninformatve (he doesn't even indicate what DAC he used to evaluate the toslink output). I don't hear the problems he does.

 

[JBNY]

I didn't hear any those problems either. Yeah he obviously had issues with his setup and thought it was the CCA, probably if he spent more time with it he would have figured it out. None of those issues exits IME when using it. Soundstage is just a wide and dynamics are the same as more expensive sources IME.

[Snowmonkey]

That's android only right ? I'm using iPad

Well Plex is available for iPad and and Plex Server claims to be compatible with Synology.

[Snowmonkey]

Solved the Dark Side of the Moon problem - I merged all the tracks using Foobar2000 (well actually into Side 1 and Side 2, to preserve the integrity of the original vinyl). The performance of the CCA is good enough that I'm happy to do that with the odd concept or opera/musical album that really needs gapless playback. For the vast majority of albums, I don't find the gap between tracks excessive.

[alligatorman]

I've been playing around with the CCA since I got it last night and have settled on Bubbleupnp Premium as a control point (android remote control) for my Qnap TS-212P NAS. I'm running Bubbleupnp Server on the NAS as a media server with Qnap's Media Streamer add-on.

 

The responsiveness is pretty slow 3-5 seconds but the quality of the sound is indistinguishable from the asynch USB on my laptop, if the song is encoded to the CCA's liking. Some of my files don't play so I'm hoping Google has an update that will be compatible with more encoding algos.

 

Here is my setup: R7000 Router> Qnap TS-212P> BubbleUpnP Server > CCA > NuPrime IDA-16 ~ BubbleUpnP Android Control

 

Let me know if any of you have found a better way, or if I should try minimserver instead of Bubbleupnp.

[master]

That's android only right ? I'm using iPad

 

Try PlugPlayer.

 

BubbleUPnP is Android only, but I'm sure there exist control point apps for the iPhone, iPad.

 

You might want to check these out... 12 Best Alternatives to BubbleUPnP UPnP/DLNA (iPhone)

 

Or you can get a cheap Android smartphone for the remote/controller.

[master]

I've been playing around with the CCA since I got it last night and have settled on Bubbleupnp Premium as a control point (android remote control) for my Qnap TS-212P NAS. I'm running Bubbleupnp Server on the NAS as a media server with Qnap's Media Streamer add-on.

 

The responsiveness is pretty slow 3-5 seconds but the quality of the sound is indistinguishable from the asynch USB on my laptop, if the song is encoded to the CCA's liking. Some of my files don't play so I'm hoping Google has an update that will be compatible with more encoding algos.

 

Here is my setup: R7000 Router> Qnap TS-212P> BubbleUpnP Server > CCA > NuPrime IDA-16 ~ BubbleUpnP Android Control

 

Let me know if any of you have found a better way, or if I should try minimserver instead of Bubbleupnp.

 

I use MinimServer (love it) and MinimStreamer does help with on the fly transcoding if needed.

 

Or you can take the transcoding external by adding in a Raspberry Pi (install MinimServer on the Pi).

 

Honestly I cannot say I hear things differently with the addition of the Pi. I've tried both, DLNA server on the NAS (Synology) and DLNA server on the Pi, and to me both sound the same (and great). I've also tried Pi only with various audio only Linux distros like Rune, moOde, Volumio, etc. and again the sound was excellent, but nothing different from DLNA streaming. The biggest gain was in eliminating the PC, and it hands down beats the likes of JRiver and Foobar.

 

I prefer the Pi because it gives me more options to play with, like streaming from Spotify, but that is easily done via Chromecast Audio too.

[Cebolla]

I've been playing around with the CCA since I got it last night and have settled on Bubbleupnp Premium as a control point (android remote control) for my Qnap TS-212P NAS. I'm running Bubbleupnp Server on the NAS as a media server with Qnap's Media Streamer add-on.

 

The responsiveness is pretty slow 3-5 seconds but the quality of the sound is indistinguishable from the asynch USB on my laptop, if the song is encoded to the CCA's liking. Some of my files don't play so I'm hoping Google has an update that will be compatible with more encoding algos.

 

Here is my setup: R7000 Router> Qnap TS-212P> BubbleUpnP Server > CCA > NuPrime IDA-16 ~ BubbleUpnP Android Control

 

Let me know if any of you have found a better way, or if I should try minimserver instead of Bubbleupnp.

I think you may have the wrong end of the stick here. Quote from the BubbleUPnP Server site, "BUBBLEUPNP SERVER IS NOT AN UPNP AV MEDIA SERVER", see:

BubbleUPnP Server

 

Its purpose is to provide a set of special functions to help with UPnP/DLNA streaming. It can be used with the BubbleUPnP Android app to help with using Chromecast with some transcoding functions, but these are currently mainly intended to be used with the original Chromecast device for video and not the Chromecast Audio. I don't think you actually need it for your purposes and it certainly isn't the UPnP media server you think you are using. That's bound to be the QNAP's own UPnP media server provided by the Music Station app, unless you unnecessarily used one of the BubbleUPnP Server's other helper functions by setting it up to create a proxy for Music Station's UPnP media server.

 

Certainly try MinimServer on the QNAP instead of the QNAP Music Station's media server. If you also install MinimServer's optional transcoder component, MinimStreamer, you may even get it transcode the files the CCA can't play into a format it can play. For example if the CCA is havimg problems playing some of your FLAC files, you can get MinimServer via MinimStreamer to transcode them to WAV:

MinimStreamer

[alligatorman]

You're quite right, cebolla. I'm using plex , not bubble as server. Thanks for the clarification and recommendations!

[alligatorman]

Got Tidal working with minimserver on NAS and bubbleupnp (bup) on android tab.

Here's how:

Go to Settings in bup

Local media servers

Scroll down to "cloud"

Tidal >Enter login info and enable

Go to Main drop down menu in bup

Local Media >bup (yellow symbol)

Cloud

Tidal

 

Enjoy!

[rogerdn]

Please check MinimServer here - MinimServer downloads.

 

Regarding Spotify pretty sure its only limited to 320 kbps at the highest setting.

 

BP only means no processing whatsoever and that's a yes with CCA (as long as you are using optical and not analog output).

 

But in this context that would be BP for 320 kbps and not redbook.

 

Here's what Chris said in his review,

 

My first test was to stream Spotify to see if the audio was no longer converted from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz. This was a success. Spotify streams at the correct sample rate of 44.1 kHz.

 

What am I'm missing, not disagreeing trying to understand. And as i said it doesn't sound like RB.

[alligatorman]

"Red book" is an audio CD. Spotify is a streaming service at less than CD quality. I would google it if you need further clarification.

[Snowmonkey]

Here's what Chris said in his review,

 

My first test was to stream Spotify to see if the audio was no longer converted from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz. This was a success. Spotify streams at the correct sample rate of 44.1 kHz.

 

What am I'm missing, not disagreeing trying to understand. And as i said it doesn't sound like RB.

As alligatorman says, Redbook is a format specification for audio CD's. The specified sample rate for Redbook is 44,100 samples per second. Even if a file is ripped from a CD and compressed to MP3 or AAC, that sample rate will be unaltered. The compression is achieved by different methods, such as eliminating data from a track which is thought to not contribute to the audible experience of users. Of course, the more data which is eliminated, the more that audible experience starts to be degraded. Spotify chooses to stream at a maximum of 320 kilobits per second, which is not fast enough to carry uncompressed data sampled according to the Redbook specification (that would require 1141 kilobits per second). This means the data needs to be compressed. 320 kbps actually allows quite good sound quality, but not quite as good as a CD, as you are noticing.

BTW, have you specified 320 kbps streaming from Spotify? It requires a premium (paid) account and you need to opt in.

[jeffmudrick]

I added a, Wyred 4 Sound Remedy between the Chromecast Audio and my Audio-GD Reference 5 DAC this afternoon and heard the improvement in about 5 seconds playing Miles' Jack Johnson. Switching to Sketches of Spain which can sound quite harsh on my system (JBL compression drivers are not forgiving ) sounded much smoother, brushes, cymbals, castanets more natural, greater separation of layers of sound. A very worthwhile improvement. Not a small chunk of change for casual listening but if the CCA is used for serious listening my vote is try one out.