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Digital media server/players for a Skeptic?

I have all my music on a windows pc running itunes.  I mainly use airplay to listen on my apple TV connected to my receiver.  I then often use an ipad to change tunes and such.  My receiver also has airplay and sometimes I use that but can't really tell any difference between it and itunes. 

I do hate itunes though.  Slow, crashes a lot, hard to really manage a lot of files (~35,000 songs).  My music is mostly coded using whatever the highest rates of MP3 are. VBR 320 or something.  And I've given up on the various tools that try to fill in missing tags.

My current system is Ascend Sierra 2 mains, orb sides, Marantz 5009 receiver, Rega TT, nad preamp, nad cd player.  I will probably upgrade the marantz next year.  Don't even ask me about my interconnects.  I am not a belieber in the audio hoodoo. I use good cheap wire and cables.

So how much sound quality difference and usability/convenience do some of these music servers, decoders, whatever the heck they are really offer over using apple TV? 

Thx!



wolfernyc
wolfernyc OP
41 posts
 
Hmm, RE a Pi -  I could do that. How does the scanning part work - hook up a USB type CD reader?

What do you use as a DAC?

Thx!
wolfernyc OP
41 posts
 
Re Bluesound - so I'd still need a computer to rip CD's and NAS or something to store the music?  


mapman's avatar
mapman
21,887 posts
 
FWIW,

I use older Squeezebox and newer Plex systems to stream wirelessly from my laptop music server.

dbpoweramp to rip and tag. Picard to autotag files after when needed

This is very cost effective and works and sounds great. Once you get used to it and learn how to use the tools. Not for the computer illiterate though.

I also use Seagate Dashboard (included with most Seagate disk drives) for backups. I use one live and two backup external USB drives.

Can’t express enough the importance of proper backups with this stuff though. Worst thing is to spend time ripping and tagging and losing files when the drive eventually goes.

I had my live drive go about a year back and another just this past weekend. I recovered first time but had lost a lot of album art not stored directly in (.wav) music files at the time. That was a setback that took a while to fully recover from.

This last time restore from backup went 100% smoothly as it should. Seagate was able to restore almost 1TB of tagged flac files including album art. I was back up and running as before in just a few hours.

erik_squires
15,875 posts
 
So while I do use Linux to play my music, and movies, and Hulu, etc. in my living room, I often rip with MediaMonkey because it's just more convenient.  It has better / easier autotagging than I have found on Linux so far.

If I'm ripping 1 CD at a time, I'll go ahead and have MM write straight to the Linux server.  This is accomplished by sharing the Music directory out to my PC.

However since my PC is using Wifi, for ripping large quantities of files I use a thumb drive. I just got a 60 CD classical music set, and ripped 20 CD's at a time to a thumb drive.  Walked the drive over, dragged and dropped, then had LMS re-scan.  Easy.

Best,


Erik
sbank's avatar
sbank
3,378 posts
 
Whether it's Pi, microRendu(my fav, but $650 + power supply cost) or other server, in most cases you will want to rip the music files to a NAS and send the digital output of the server/streamer to a separate dac. Yes, you can get a cheap built-in sac on Pi or many other low cost servers but as many have suggested, a separate dac is going to give you much better sonics and ability to upgrade/change later without having to  change the server.
Some servers have internal hard disc that can store a fair amount, but many have argued(including me) that putting the files on a NAS in another room and connecting ideally via ethernet is generally the way to go. Top $ Aurenders being an exception. Cheers,
Spencer 
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