Goodbye Sonos, hello ????


I've been a happy Sonos user for over 10 years and will continue to use it in my casual listening areas in my house. However I dont think I am doing my dedicated 2 channel system justice streaming from the ZP-90. In addition, Sonos does not do high resolution. Therefore I am looking for a high quality digital transport/streamer that can replace the Sonos. Here are my requirements:

1. High quality, low jitter digital output
2. Awesome user interface with remote control via IPAD, ANDROID, iphone, etc
3. Wireless and wired digital streaming from music stored on a NAS
4. No built in DAC as I prefer to mix and match
5. Ability to handle various audio formats including high resolution.

So far it looks like my options are the Bryston BDP-2 or DIY my own streamer. I have built several low powered (ATOM) HTPC in my home to stream 1080p movies so this is definitely an option but I am not too sure about how to get the best possible, low jitter digital output from a PC so this would be something I need to investigate. I can build an ATOM based, fanless system running Jriver and my IPAD to remotely control my music. I know there are products from Linn and Accustic Arts but these all come with either a DAC or an amp.

So are there any other audiophile quality products on the market that fit my need or should I just go the DIY route?

Thank you.
128x128tboooe
I agree with williewonka. I go Mac mini (out via usb) to Berkeley USB SPDIF converter (out via AES-EBU) to Berkeley DAC to preamp. I use iTunes with Audiovarna on the mini. Very very good.
I use a MacBook Air and Audirvana Plus via a MF V-Link then Toslink to a Krell HTS 7.1 for D/A decoding. The results, to me ears, playing HD FLAC files are nothing short of amazing. See my previous post on this subject:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1364947210&openmine&zzMgattmch&4&5#Mgattmch

I can also use the MacBook Air to stream directly, via iTunes, to an AirPort express for slightly lower quality audio anywhere in the home.
Forgot to clarify - when using Audirvana without iTunes integration it plays flac files from anywhere - even NAS drives - it's only when you integrate it with iTunes that it creates the proxy files and needs them both on the computer

I think Damien may be looking at this issue.

In "stand-alone mode" (i.e. without itunes) you can create multiple playlists of your music and recall them - from there you can filter the content of the playlist to refine a search.

The nice thing with itunes is that artist, album and genre categories are created automatically
- you can the create new genre's
- e.g. I listen to a lot of classical - itunes assigns this genre to a cd when loaded or a track when downloaded
- I then change the genre for a track or album
- e.g. I assign a genre of "Classical Woodwind" to woodwind tracks

Another nice thing about itunes is that it allows you to select multiple tracks to assign a genre to - even across albums - but this freedom can lead to icorrect assignment, so be careful.

I am not an Apple/iTunes bigot - quite the opposite - I just moved all my major apps back to a windows platform after a trying an iMac, which failed me miserably, but I will concede that even with it's warts - iTunes has one of the best interfaces out there for flexibility - even the Windows version performs very well and links to my iMac/iTunes and since installing Audirvana the playback is very impressive

Winamp - i tried it early on - is the closest I've seen to iTunes in flexibility, but I don't know about it's audio performance

Audirvana (native mode) would take a lot of effort to get the flexibility of iTunes - but it could be done

Windows Media Player - I gave up on after trying to import cd's - it's just not intuitive to me

Amarra seems to have a solid following and quite a nice interface - but the cost is too high and I think Audirvana has better quality playback - but if you want to taylor the sound it is probably the most flexible in that regard.

I guess now I have discovered the iTunes/iMac warts and overcome them I will stick with it - but if something else comes along I might be persuaded to change .

my requirement was to get the audio file data to my dac without upsampling - Audirvana does that extremely well

I have tried USB and Optical outputs and they sound identical - I think [this is due to the DH Labs cables, which I have found to perform the best - even better than Van den Hul - my next prefference.

hope this helps
Willie, I have a large lossless .wav music server file library. Do you know an easy way to get itunes to pick the .wav files up and auto convert files to compressed format for synching with an Ipod? Can Itunes do the conversion needed on teh fly as part of teh synch? OR even if Itunes alone (or with some freeby third party Apple plugin or add on perhaps) could batch convert the .wav files up front prior, I could live with that.

Bottom line I would like to be able to synch my .wav files up to an ipod in compressed format with as few clicks as possible. How to do that?

Thanks.
IF the converted files could be retagged as needed in real time as well as part of the itunes load/ipod synch, that would be really nice. I do not expect that Itunes will be able to convert the .wav metadata, but hey, I'll wish for that too if it can be done.