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I THINK I FINALLY FOUND A SOLUTION! dts PLAY-FI


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I have to do a lot more research, but I think this is it!

 

I haven't decided on the hardware yet, but this software seems to be gaining support from a lot of big players (Mcintosh, Arcam, Amazon Alexa, Rotel, Sonus Faber, Anthem and more signing on).

 

I may start with the arcam just to toy with....and alexa is coming soon.

 

I think the Arcam product (rplay $599)  with a QNAP NAS may be a good place to start.

Tired of messing with usb dacs.

 

https://play-fi.com/technology/

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19 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

DSD appears to be only supported as a PCM conversion:

 

https://play-fi.com/news/true-lossless-hi-res-audio-comes-to-dts-play-fi

 

still researching...does below mean DOP?

 

Justin 03-28-17

Hey Seb, DSD isn’t directly supported in the app, but many media servers will unwrap the format to LPCM or similar (without changing quality settings) for playback on our platform.

 

I am not sure I need native dsd as a "hard requirement" anymore.  To me 192K pcm over optical sounded better than DSD256 over usb.

 

I like the idea of play-fi being able to be controlled from a web based browser.

I suppose roon does that too....

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Beer,

 

IME you are attaching way too much significance to the perceived (and possibly over-hyped) downsides of USB.

 

Alongside other sources, I've been using Bryston players for the last  3 years.  The Brystons have USB, AES and BNC SPDif outputs.  I don't own any of the USB "toys", and my USB cable is a modest Supra. AFAIK the Brystons just use standard PC hardware for USB output.

 

Used with various DACs the audible differences between the interfaces are either very subtle or non existent.  Hugo 1 (no galvanic isolation) - SPDif was marginally preferable over USB, Esoteric - no audible difference, Mirus - if anything USB sounds better than AES or SPDif. I don't think you are  going to achieve "readily apparent" improvements in SQ simply by moving away from  USB DACs within your budget.  Admittedly  I have no experience with audio over Ethernet  systems (Dante?), but I guess they would be outside your allotted budget and IME network replay does bring its own downsides to SQ.

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, Norton said:

Beer,

 

IME you are attaching way too much significance to the perceived (and possibly over-hyped) downsides of USB.

 

Alongside other sources, I've been using Bryston players for the last  3 years.  The Brystons have USB, AES and BNC SPDif outputs.  I don't own any of the USB "toys", and my USB cable is a modest Supra. AFAIK the Brystons just use standard PC hardware for USB output.

 

Used with various DACs the audible differences between the interfaces are either very subtle or non existent.  Hugo 1 (no galvanic isolation) - SPDif was marginally preferable over USB, Esoteric - no audible difference, Mirus - if anything USB sounds better than AES or SPDif. I don't think you are  going to achieve "readily apparent" improvements in SQ simply by moving away from  USB DACs within your budget.  Admittedly  I have no experience with audio over Ethernet  systems (Dante?), but I guess they would be outside your allotted budget and IME network replay does bring its own downsides to SQ.

 

 

 

Thanks...I hear you, but i hear others opinions as well...So do you not believe the people that suggest usb toys or special cables make usb sound better?  I do believe that s/pdif sounds better in my setup, even after buying a galvanically isolated DAC.  I have heard good things about bryston.  To "me", i still have not heard ANY usb dac that sounds "immediately apparent" better than a $300 ifi...If i tried another usb dac, it would probably be a schiit yggi or gungnir...but after over a dozen attempts to get better sq by swapping out usb dacs have proved fruitless, just not sure i care to try anymore.  I actually think s/pdif sounds pretty good right now and hard to beat, but if i want dsd, i will have to go ethernet...so i am willing to go down that path again...not going down the usb path anymore.  I have the ability and it sounds decent, but just not convinced that throwing more money or time at it will gain me anything anymore.

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On 9/17/2017 at 2:03 AM, beerandmusic said:

I have to do a lot more research, but I think this is it!

 

I haven't decided on the hardware yet, but this software seems to be gaining support from a lot of big players (Mcintosh, Arcam, Amazon Alexa, Rotel, Sonus Faber, Anthem and more signing on).

 

I may start with the arcam just to toy with....and alexa is coming soon.

 

I think the Arcam product (rplay $599)  with a QNAP NAS may be a good place to start.

Tired of messing with usb dacs.

 

https://play-fi.com/technology/

Er, I wouldn't bother with DTS Play-Fi streaming technology as it's flawed and you don't have to go far to do your research:

CA Article: DTS Play-Fi Has Major Design Flaws

 

Anyway, what's wrong with using any of the many DAC cum network audio file players aka renderers aka streamers out there that use bog standard UPnP/DLNA streaming?

 

OpenHome (aka UPnP with Linn extensions) streaming devices have a particularly good reputation.

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

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11 hours ago, beerandmusic said:

So do you not believe the people that suggest usb toys or special cables make usb sound better?  

I didn't say that, I have no experience to comment on their effectiveness.  The point I was making was that in my system I can hear next to no difference  between USB, SPDif and AES interfaces,.  This suggests to me that the downsides of USB are exaggerated and that avoiding USB as a primary  requirement in choosing a DAC is likely to be a bit of a blind alley.

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3 hours ago, Norton said:

I didn't say that, I have no experience to comment on their effectiveness.  The point I was making was that in my system I can hear next to no difference  between USB, SPDif and AES interfaces,.  This suggests to me that the downsides of USB are exaggerated and that avoiding USB as a primary  requirement in choosing a DAC is likely to be a bit of a blind alley.

Are you using a pc as a source?  Do you have s/pdif out of your pc as an option that you can compare to?

 

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4 hours ago, Cebolla said:

Er, I wouldn't bother with DTS Play-Fi streaming technology as it's flawed and you don't have to go far to do your research:

CA Article: DTS Play-Fi Has Major Design Flaws

 

Anyway, what's wrong with using any of the many DAC cum network audio file players aka renderers aka streamers out there that use bog standard UPnP/DLNA streaming?

 

OpenHome (aka UPnP with Linn extensions) streaming devices have a particularly good reputation.

 

I haven't read Chri's atticle yet, but i will, so thanks.

 

The dts website said they have corrected many issues in the past months, so maybe Chris's article is outdated now...i am still in research phase, but also looking now at plex.

 

You and I had discussions years ago, and you helped me out a lot, and i got pretty far in those adventures.  You even mentioned UPPLAY but said you didn't have much experience at that time.  I actually used it as my main means of playing music for a couple months.   Since my eyes aren't so good, but refuse to wear glasses, i like the idea to control my player from a web browser rather than from a smart phone...that is why I like the idea of play-fi.  UPPLAY isn't well supported and it has some bugs.  I would love to find any device or software supporting playing music via ethernet that can be controlled from a pc vs smartphone...and the added benefit of alexa capability is a plus.

 

1. Can Jriver be used to access a minim server and play to a marantz receiver, or do you need to use marantz gui? 

 

2. Do you know of any device (like auralic needs apple) music server, that can be controlled from a web browser?  Or any windows software like UPPLAY but better supported, that will play directly to any device that has network in and rca out?

 

note: the arcam rplay with play-fi, i think will do what i want....but if there is something that has better d-a or decent gui i would be interested...

 

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It's unlikely that DTS have tackled Play-Fi's issue of always routing the audio stream to the Play-Fi controller app and then onto the network player (as opposed to the network player directly accessing the audio stream), given that it's pretty much fundamental to its design. The corrected problems mentioned on its website are probably just more general 'bug fixes'.

 

Are you certain you can use a web browser to control DTS Play-Fi devices? Last time I looked into it, a web browser can be used to initially set up the DTS Play-Fi devices on the network, but not for actually controlling the music playback. For that you still need to use the DTS Play-Fi app, available for iOS, Android and Windows devices.

 

Yes, indeed, the UPPlay UPnP controller app for Windows (& Linux). I couldn't remember what standard UPnP/DLNA streaming device you mentioned using with it, so I've just done a quick search: the TEAC NT-503 - a pretty decent sounding DAC streamer, by all accounts. Yes, I did mention then that the earlier version of the UPPlay controller was a bit buggy, so I sort of gave up on it and hence my lack of experience of the newer version you mentioned. So the UPPlay controller still has some problems and you are looking for something similar. BTW, any reason for you not continuing with the NT-503 (assumption based on you still searching for a DAC streamer)?

 

1. Assuming your Marantz receiver is not ancient, so does at least support UPnP/DLNA streaming, then yes JRiver Media Center can be used 'just' as a UPnP/DLNA controller for it: so control the playback of any UPnP/DLNA streamer (eg your Marantz) streaming files from any UPnP/DLNA media server (eg MinimServer), though it's a bit of a waste of JMC's other functions!

 

Basically, you need to enable DLNA in JRiver, ie, the "Use Media Network to share this library and enable DLNA" option in Tools > Options > Media Network and then select the "DLNA Controller (control other DLNA devices)" option in Advanced. Don't bother selecting the other DLNA options in Advanced, as you won't be using JRiver's own UPnP/DLNA media server (ie, you mentioned using MinimServer instead) and you don't require JRiver's own UPnP/DLNA renderer.

 

Once you've enabled JRiver's (built-in) UPnP/DLNA controller, all available UPnP/DLNA renderers on your network, including the Marantz receiver, should appear as a selectable player under "Playing Now". Also, MinimServer and all other UPnP/DLNA media servers on your network should be available in a list to select & load as your current JRiver library under Playing Now > Playing from current library name. If you don't load MinimServer as JRiver's current library, then it'll continue using its own internal library as the one to use to select audio files to play from. Once you've loaded MinimServer, it should indicated as Playing Now > Playing from MinimServer.

 

2. Unfortunately, I don't know of any UPnP/DLNA streaming DAC devices that can be controlled by a web browser, so in addition to a UPnP/DLNA controller.

 

The Linn Kazoo controller is pretty decent and has a version that you can run on Windows. However, it is an OpenHome streamer controller, so cannot normally be used to control standard UPnP/DLNA streamers. The way around this is to run the BubbleUPnP Server helper software (preferably on the same device as MinimServer), which provides a standard UPnP/DLNA to OpenHome bridge via its Create an OpenHome renderer function:

BubbleUPnP Server - Creating OpenHome renderers

image.thumb.png.7ecf2508643cf6369560416d02eef0e0.png

We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.

-- Jo Cox

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