Back to digital audio after long break - need advice

[raueda1]

Hi All,

 

Just found this board. Looks like a great resource! I'm in the process of jumping back into the audio waters after a long break. Unfortunately it's a kind of Rip Van Winkel story - the world has changed greatly! Any advice or suggestions would be very welcome. Here's my story, I think the background is probably helpful (sorry, long):

 

Phase I - primitive PC & digital audio, ca 2003 (?): Eons ago I set up a PC as a primitive digital source using a Card deLuxe. This fed an Assemblage D2D-1 and Sonic Frontiers SFD-2 (which was eventually upgraded to the MkIII version) into the rest of the system. I was also using a commercial DAT deck for recording vinyl. At this point streaming didn't exist and storage is expensive.

 

Phase 2 - video server ca. 2014: Attention shifts to video and I start playing with digital home theater. This eventually lead me set up a video server (HP DL380 G5 running W2008R2 and 8Tb RAID 10 storage array) on wired 1000mb network. It's a pretty kickass setup, but it's noisy and lives tucked away in the basement. It now feeds several TV's. Content is mostly enormous 1080p video files. I initially played with all kinds of DLNA streaming platforms (Plex, Mezzmo etc) but found them all very lacking - too much transcoding nonsense, poor performance, etc etc. I ended up with a few KDLinks HD720 boxes on respective TVs fed by the network (wired, not WiFi). The video performance is great, everything plays and the server is available to all the TVs. For distributed video it's easy, cheap and it just works. However, this is not a high end audio solution!

 

Phase 3 - the present & future: After a long break from audio I'm now back at it. I just replaced my amp with recapped ML No.332 and Maggie MG3a speakers are being rebuilt. The rest of the old hardware is fine (and would cost a lot to improve on) and I've got a very capable server/network in place. I have several goals (and might have more if I knew enough about what's now possible). Anyway what I'd like to be able to do is:

 

 

• Start ripping my CD's for network storage. I'd use a local desktop for this and move files to the server. (I started to do this in Phase 1 but dropped the project). Likewise vinyl collection.
  
• Continue to use server/network as file source for several TVs and expand it to several audio systems around the house. At least 1 audio system would be serious, the others just small kitchen and bedroom setups.
  

 

Questions: What's baffling me is the best way to somehow do for the audio what the KDLinks player does for video.

 

Maybe a streaming/DLNA solution would be OK for audio, files are tiny compared to video. Maybe networked laptops would be fine for the low-end systems. But are there more elegant solutions?

 

And what's the best way to feed the real audio system other than some kind of networked PC and a newer sound card? I'm not necessarily looking for specific hardware or software recommendations (though that would be great).

 

Any pointers on how to get up to speed on this stuff would be very helpful. I'd search, but not sure exactly what I'm looking for. It's worth mentioning that I've got more IT skills than $$$, so what can be done in software and computer equipment is more appealing than spending a fortune on more audio stuff. I'd like to find a configuration that gets the most out of the hardware I've already got.

 

Thanks for reading and sorry for being an idiot on this stuff. Any thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome Happy New Years!

[4est]

On some levels, not much has changed other than USB devices are now the norm as opposed to PCI. There is a myriad of networkable devices that can be sent music, the cheapest and simplest of which might be the Chromecast device on the front page of this site at the moment. Then there are the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Blacks. Other cheap computers that have USB could be used as an MPD (Music Player Daemon) device like a Vortexbox. Then there is what many(me!) consider the pinnacle of network audio, the Signalyst HQPlayer NAA (network audio adapter).

 

HomePage

My Media - Welcome to mysqueezebox.com!

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

Signalyst

[One and a half]

Member Wappinghigh has ventured to multi-room streaming perhaps he can chime in. If you look up his profile, there are a few nuggets.

 

JRiver has the ability to create different zones around the house all controllable with different music playing at the same time using ipads as the controls. JRiver sits on a server and doesn't need to be on every pc.

[raueda1]

Thanks much, this was very helpful. Part of my problem was not knowing where to start searching. You guys jump-started me.