Cheapest way to store/play music files

[restorer-john]

Or do you indeed have an unworthy laptop on top of your amp anyways?

See my updated post above.

 

[restorer-john]

My main server is a plain/silent black box and my NAS boxes are in another room

My NAS is fanless and sits in another room underneath the main router for the house.

Power amps are clustered around the front of the room with the speakers.

'clustered' sounds much nicer than my arrangement. There's 'rows' lined up on their sides (transformers down) either awaiting their time in the sun or awaiting their time on my bench.

It's all fun.

 

[Sin Hizer]

See my updated post above.

LOL ^ This guy.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

My NAS is fanless and sits in another room underneath the main router for the house.

Fanless? I don't find the fan an issue because the HD drives are louder.

'clustered' sounds much nicer than my arrangement.

Artistic license. 2 sets of 3 monoblocks each and 2 3-channel amps......................and I have another house with more stuff.

 

[restorer-john]

Fanless? I don't find the fan an issue because the HD drives are louder.

The first one was a Synology 5 bay NAS with two fans. I gave up on it, it was overkill for a domestic situation and excessively noisy. I went with a couple of single drive fanless units and a 10 minute hard disk spindown on idle.

...and I have another house with more stuff...

I'll see your 'other house' and raise you two large offsite storerooms - (a bone of contention at our place due to the ongoing cost). We actually joke we should buy the house next door and use it for storage...

 

[Kal Rubinson]

The first one was a Synology 5 bay NAS with two fans. I gave up on it, it was overkill for a domestic situation and excessively noisy. I went with a couple of single drive fanless units and a 10 minute hard disk spindown on idle.

I needed a bigger boat.

I'll see your 'other house' and raise you two large offsite storerooms - (a bone of contention at our place due to the ongoing cost). We actually joke we should buy the house next door and use it for storage...

Uncle! One of these years, we are going to sell the weekend place and we will be forced to rent local storage space. Not happy about that.

 

[Markg0528]

Last I looked, Plex didn’t offer gapless playback over a network. I’d love to hear that’s changed, but I can’t live with spaces between tracks, when they shouldn’t be there. I do use and like Plex for movies.

Gapless: For you Dave Matthews, Phish and EDM fans, you can now have seamless transitions between tracks.

That’s from their latest update.

 

[bravomail]

go all-in-one without dx3pro - get LG G7 or v10/20/30/40 u will have all the music with Tidal or similar service, they offer FLAC quality. U can run torrent client and get all the music on the interwebs, including your coveted CD-rips. u can expand ur collection storage with microSD, u can still output USB to to your DX3Pro. possibilities are endless

 

[bravomail]

another option is to use higher scale AV receiver, they all support streaming, or do AV receiver with ChromeCast dongle. There is no storage option or management with receiver though.

 

[somebodyelse]

The LG phones and higher scale receivers aren't exactly 'cheapest' unless you already have one. My guess is people are more likely to have an old, unused PC or laptop than either of those, and if you do need to buy hardware a used thin client is very cheap - often less than a Raspberry Pi - and usually fanless. Add Daphile, Volumio or similar and you've got streaming and storage covered. If you've got a cd drive connected Daphile will do the ripping for you too. There are a number of similar free software packages (PiCorePlayer, Rune, Moode, etc.), so try them until you find one that fits your needs. The community support is often better than from manufacturers.

 

[Rock Rabbit]

IMHO a laptop is too noisy, better a small NAS (2 TB at least) and a Raspberry Pi 3 with Volumio, and the DX3 by usb or SPDIF (with a Berry hat like “digi pro”), small and quiet, total power consumption (NAS+ berry) less than 20 watts...to run 24/7 ;-)

 

[Sal1950]

So many awful bits of complication for what should be a simple, direct process with a PC or Laptop.
Silent running is desirable but there are many workarounds available.
But in the big picture I'm sitting here typing on my laptop's keyboard right now and I can't hear the damn thing running.

 

[Krunok]

IMHO a laptop is too noisy, better a small NAS (2 TB at least) and a Raspberry Pi 3 with Volumio, and the DX3 by usb or SPDIF (with a Berry hat like “digi pro”), small and quiet, total power consumption (NAS+ berry) less than 20 watts...to run 24/7 ;-)

Replace RPI with a small fanless PC with small SSD drive and you've got yourself a winner.

Something like this. If that is above budget there are cheaper alternatives from China.

 

[Rock Rabbit]

So many awful bits of complication for what should be a simple, direct process with a PC or Laptop.
Silent running is desirable but there are many workarounds available.
But in the big picture I'm sitting here typing on my laptop's keyboard right now and I can't hear the damn thing running.

An OS trimmed for playing music (server and web client) running in a box without SSD/HD/screen is a real simple and energy efficient solution. And if you want a reliable storage a NAS is imbatible.
On the other side if you have a free laptop laying around (and don’t mind SSD/HD reliability), add foobar2000 with plugins for server, iso and sacd reading. In your cellphone install foobar remote controller, ...and relax

 

[Audioagnostic]

Replace RPI with a small fanless PC with small SSD drive and you've got yourself a winner.

Something like this. If that is above budget there are cheaper alternatives from China.

If you go for the raspberry pi and volumio option the advantage is that you can use your smartphone to control everything, even in the absence of wifi.
Volumio is able to create a wifi hotspot. I do have to admit that I have not used this feature though. In this scenario you just hookup a portable drive through usb to the pi.
If you get the hifiberry amp, total cost for pi, dac and amp is well below 200 euro.

 

[Rock Rabbit]

If you go for the raspberry pi and volumio option the advantage is that you can use your smartphone to control everything, even in the absence of wifi.
Volumio is able to create a wifi hotspot. I do have to admit that I have not used this feature though. In this scenario you just hookup a portable drive through usb to the pi.
If you get the hifiberry amp, total cost for pi, dac and amp is well below 200 euro.

Remote control with a smartphone or any WiFi device pointing to Volumio webpage, optional usb or hdmi dac

 

[Shadrach]

I'm not really sure I really want to 'reform my concept'. I like the way quality gear looks, feels, performs and obviously, how it is constructed. Call it conditioning if you will. HiFi restoration, rebuilding, collecting, auditioning and testing is my passion and the good stuff comes in boxes I like the shape of.

Young people particularly, don't have the same attachment to 'stuff' that my father and I have, including the desire to make informed decisions on quality gear that will stand the test of time. You know, the old "The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.". Hence my disdain for the endless caravan of little Chinese gypsy boxes passing across poor Amir's bench.

So the laptop is a tool to me, and not a very well designed one at that. Cheap (now) maybe, but we all know it will fail (batteries/HDD/OS/CCFL or LED inverter backlight etc) in a relatively short period of time. It obsoletes itself, and requires maintenance in terms of data migration, upgrades and general tweaking as time goes on.

The laptop is just not worthy to be hanging out with my HiFi gear, with its lightweight plastic keyboard and short-lived lithium-ion heart, let alone assuming pride of place on top of a 65 pound amplifier that has steadfastly served me for ~30 years without even a glitch. It has earned its place, along with many others.

But, in the spirit of having fun, here's one for you Kal:

View attachment 22224

Ah, well, there's a thing....really don't want your laptop on top of your kit.
Make a nice looking laptop lid cover with some black anodized ally, you could even cut a couple of holes in the front so the wee lights on the laptop can be seen. Pick your playlist, set the screen to go off after a few seconds and close the lid. No one will know and they'll think you've got a really cool looking music server..
It will be just like using a record player but without the scratches.

 

[Sal1950]

Replace RPI with a small fanless PC with small SSD drive and you've got yourself a winner.

Something like this. If that is above budget there are cheaper alternatives from China.

Like that Compulab Airtop PC but it's awful pricey. Would like to do a DIY option.

 

[Krunok]

Like that Compulab Airtop PC but it's awful pricey. Would like to do a DIY option.

I'm currently using refurbished PC like this. I bought it for $46 for testing but it's working so good I just let it be.