tokyo_blues
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- Jun 30, 2022
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Hello everyone,
First post here (please MODs move my thread elsewhere if chosen section not appropriate) So I'm trying to reorganise my hi-fi listening setup around the sources we most often use around the house. Like for many people, my old setup can play CDs and records but it's blind to the increasingly large amounts of digital music we've amassed in the house.
We would both like to seamlessly play the above content on my home standmount living room speakers, which are active speakers. I do have an old-ish DAC preamp already: a Benchmark DAC with volume control.
I DID try to have a go at playing my FLAC files on my speakers: I put together a Raspberry Pie 3 with an Allo SPDIF board feeding digital signal into my Benchmark Dac and then into the speakers. Library management via Volumio. Awesome sound, but in general not impressed with usability. The little brick would overheat, sometimes it wouldn't boot, sometimes you needed lengthy updates, and importantly there was no bluetooth and my CD collection sat dead. WAF also super low. So no Raspberry.
So yes, any thoughts on how to harmonise all this with a relatively plug-and-play, wife-friendly solution? Just to be clear, by 'plug and play' I mean 'plug and play when all set up and in operation. I'm happy to tinker and setup a bit initially, but once the initial stuff is done, it should be as easy as popping a CD in the tray and pressing play.
To summarise, music will come from tagged FLACs on a hard drive, CDs, phone files via bluetooth, into active speakers. I don't need tidal, anything apple, radios, internet streaming etc. It won't necessarily need to be a one-box thing, but one box would be nice.
I'm thinking some sort of network streamer able to browse my FLAC files and able to be controlled via the Foobar2000 app on our phones. It if had an integrated CD player and a bluetooth module it would be perfect. Otherwise how about a CD transport feeding digital into a streamer/preamp solution. The preamp would have volume control and allow me to switch between CD/HD flac library/bluetooth and output 2x RCA into my active speakers.
Anything like the above on the market or am I asking too much? Many thanks in advance.
First post here (please MODs move my thread elsewhere if chosen section not appropriate) So I'm trying to reorganise my hi-fi listening setup around the sources we most often use around the house. Like for many people, my old setup can play CDs and records but it's blind to the increasingly large amounts of digital music we've amassed in the house.
- I have ~1500CDs ripped to FLAC, properly tagged with artist/album/disc/title/composer etc, and kept on (backed up) hard drives. I mostly listen to this music when at the computer, via headphones and a headphone amp. I use Foobar2000+Wasapi.
- My wife listens to music via her Android phone, mostly ripped mp3s/ogg vorbis. She plays it using the foobar2000 phone app
- Both of us still have a large CD collection. We play this using an old CD player
We would both like to seamlessly play the above content on my home standmount living room speakers, which are active speakers. I do have an old-ish DAC preamp already: a Benchmark DAC with volume control.
I DID try to have a go at playing my FLAC files on my speakers: I put together a Raspberry Pie 3 with an Allo SPDIF board feeding digital signal into my Benchmark Dac and then into the speakers. Library management via Volumio. Awesome sound, but in general not impressed with usability. The little brick would overheat, sometimes it wouldn't boot, sometimes you needed lengthy updates, and importantly there was no bluetooth and my CD collection sat dead. WAF also super low. So no Raspberry.
So yes, any thoughts on how to harmonise all this with a relatively plug-and-play, wife-friendly solution? Just to be clear, by 'plug and play' I mean 'plug and play when all set up and in operation. I'm happy to tinker and setup a bit initially, but once the initial stuff is done, it should be as easy as popping a CD in the tray and pressing play.
To summarise, music will come from tagged FLACs on a hard drive, CDs, phone files via bluetooth, into active speakers. I don't need tidal, anything apple, radios, internet streaming etc. It won't necessarily need to be a one-box thing, but one box would be nice.
I'm thinking some sort of network streamer able to browse my FLAC files and able to be controlled via the Foobar2000 app on our phones. It if had an integrated CD player and a bluetooth module it would be perfect. Otherwise how about a CD transport feeding digital into a streamer/preamp solution. The preamp would have volume control and allow me to switch between CD/HD flac library/bluetooth and output 2x RCA into my active speakers.
Anything like the above on the market or am I asking too much? Many thanks in advance.
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