Recommendation for playing FLAC files - computer, music server, network player/streamer etc.

Can someone help me understand the Raspberry pi thing. I am not getting how to use it without having the computer on. I have a router so do you have an external drive hooked to the router via ethernet, then say the Raspberry hooked to the router ethernet on one end and USB etc. into the dac on the other? Then over wireless you can control the whole thing with a phone? As you can gather I am pretty worthless with this stuff.

 

The raspberry pi is a brain that grabs your music from wherever you have it stored, either a drive connected to the device itself or a drive on the network. The pi itself is on your network and this other devices on the network can talk to it via a browser (it has a little web server built into it). Anything on your home network with a browser- computer, phone, tablet, console, whatever - can connect to the device and you can control it from anywhere.

Basically, the pi *is* a computer, and anything you want to use is a remote control, except you're sending commands via network/web interface instead of IR.

 

I have yet to invest in a DAC. I burn CDs to my Mac in iTunes, download it to my iPod & iPhone and they both sound great at home, in the car, or with headphones. Currently I am listening to my 80gb iPod hooked up (via cable) to my vintage Marantz Receiver and it sounds fantastic. Good speakers are also a must.

That's it, that's all.

 

I assume you're trying to get it working using DLNA/UPnP, rather than Plex or other proprietary protocol.

How you described it is exactly what I do, using the headless Volumio OS on the Raspberry Pi. You also will need two things you didn't mention: a DLNA server running on the NAS and a DLNA control-point app running on the phone.

Pretty much every NAS comes with its own server, and there are zillions of them out there. The one I prefer is MinimServer, which is ideal for large music libraries, but is a little techy to set up. There are plenty of other good ones. It might make sense to start with a simple one, like the ones that come with a NAS, then add MinimServer later if you're interested. (You can run more than one at a time.)

There also are many control-point apps. For Android, I think BubbleUPnP is head and shoulders above the others I've tried. For iOS, you'll have to ask around -- I have no experience.

HTH

 

Ok, sorry I am slow but you got me one step closer I hope. So are you saying I can hook a Pi up to an external SSD via USB I suppose. Then have the Pi connect to wifi so that it can be controlled with a phone. Then I hook that Pi set up into a DAC?

If I am getting closer on that front, I am considering an Ayre Codex and would prefer to not need a computer-- I am going to call Ayre Monday and see if any DAPs might work-- but sticking with PI, so I have USB or toslink as an option on the Codex. Ayre says USB is better because of the asynchronous I suppose, but is one better than the other on the Pi side? Also it would be nice to have the mac mini hooked up USB since it does not have toslink output, say for quick and easy operation, web videos etc.; then something like the Pi via toslink when you want dead silence in the room. Thanks for the help.

I am about as clueless as they come, my thing works but I frankly don't know how 3/4 of the time. Per just above if the Pi can connect right to an external SSD that is what I'd do for simplicity rather than operating a NAS. I come from a side load micro sd card world for DAPs; that and backing up stuff on external drives, but that is about the extent of it.

 

Yes, the RPi connects via USB to an external storage drive. No NAS needed. The RPi itself boots and runs its OS from its own microSD card.

I'd recommend a powered external drive as there have been some past issues with the RPi USB providing sufficient power but maybe someone with more recent experience can comment.

Per my earlier post both Logitech Media Server and piCorePlayer are free. piCorePlayer OS for the RPi can act as both a player and server.

 

Yep, you could hook the pi directly to a USB drive, and then use another USB out on the pi to hook to whatever dac your heart desires.
Software-wise, you've got RuneAudio and Volumio, both free, and Moode, which is now $10 or so (I paid it because I like how it works, but you have options), and they all work pretty much the same.

 

Ok another dumb Pi question, what the heck boards do you have to buy? Every time I try to figure out what hardware you need I get completely lost. So something that hooks an External SSD on one end, USB or Toslink out on the other, then that can connect to the wireless network, hopefully in a little black box so the wife doesn't hate it. Thanks.

 

That makes a lot of sense as a less technical way to go. One word of advice: keep doing your backups -- every disk fails eventually.

 

I was also very clueless and intimidated with the Pi + DAC thing to play 24/96 lossless hi-rez music files, but I took the plunge -- it was a learning process - a bit confusing at times, but fun to learn and works great.

You can get a kit that has everything you need - I went with this popular one:
/www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Complete-Starter-Kit/dp/B01C6Q2GSY/

The OS I use on the Pi3 is MoOde Audio Player:
moodeaudio.org

The process for me was:
1) Using a Windows computer, download the MoOde Audio Player OS linked above, install it on the MicroSD card, put that card in the Pi.
2) Set up the Pi+MoOde via a laptop/iPhone/iPad/etc. so it is wireless by connecting the Pi via a ethernet cable and changing the OS to use wifi on boot-up, and put my router and password settings in the OS.
3) Disconnect the ethernet, move the Pi to my stereo system.
4) Connect an USB drive (unpowered Seagate 2TB USB3 drive works fine in my setup) with all my hi-rez lossless and some lossy music to the Pi.
5) Connect the Pi to my Musical Fidelity V90-DAC, which is also connected to my stereo setup.
6) Power up the Pi, and using a laptop/iPhone/iPad, etc., configure MoOde to use the DAC and read the music library on the USB drive.
7) Control MoOde on the Pi via the network with the laptop/iPhone/iPad/whatever to select albums, artists, stations, or whatever you want on the stereo.

It's not hard, but there's a pretty big learning process involved for the uninitiated. For example, learning how to install the Pi's OS on the SD card took a little bit of research and some Windows software. Each of the above steps might have something that's confusing, but once you learn it, it becomes no big deal. And the Pi draws very little power, so I leave it on (plugged in) all the time to have access to the music whenever the MoOde hits me.

Good luck if you decide to try this. It's an inexpensive and great way to play hi-rez music files on your stereo system!

 

If you already have a DAC that can handle a USB input, you're home free with one little black box and a USB drive. The kit Daver listed would have you up and running straight away if you've got a drive already (might as well get the drive first and start dumping music on it).

 

Awesome help everyone and special thanks to @DaverJ for writing that up, I can see giving this a crack pretty soon.

 

Just curious, maybe someone knows more about this - is there such thing as a board that adds an AES/EBU output?

 

Do you currently have a DAC? Picking out one is probably one of the biggest hurdles.

 

I am considering an Ayre Codex balanced into some Focal monitors or I just stick with my Pono.

 

Ah, that Ayre is high-end product... or at least upper end.

I originally just had my Pono connected to the Yamaha stereo amp unbalanced, which started me into high-res music. From there I moved to the Pi + external DAC, which was more flexible, plus sounds a bit better than the Pono IMO. I love the Ayre DAC in the Pono, but to my ears the V90 has a tad more space in the upper end. Maybe if I had gone balanced from the Pono to the amp I would think different, but my Yammy doesn't have balanced inputs. It's too bad the Pono can't be used as an external DAC.

One nice thing about a quality external DAC is you can also connect it to any CD player via optical and get very good-sounding Redbook from standard CDs, too.

 

I think you're right on the signature as I could see the Ayre/Pono as being a shade rolled off. I don't know why but I've come to love the sound of it; but it has been used as a fun office alternative to the main stereo, but dealing with the files and storage is getting more cumbersome and I'm only using single ended.

 

My music and AV setup is mostly based on a QNAP NAS connected by wired Ethernet to several HTPCs running J-River Media Center and network Streamers.

HTPCs in general and music station PCs in particular don't require a lot of CPU processing power and even an old ATOM based PC or one of the newer Intel NUC will do the job, no fuss and no whirring fan noise involved. I know that J-River is selling a Pi based computer that can be used as a DNLA renderer or headless music server. The short of it: Computing power is a non-issue for audio.

Output from the PC to an amplifier usually is best when going through a DAC and today they are becoming a commodity. It's becoming extremely difficult of finding a bad DAC. What't important is deciding if this is going to be a headphone mostly setup or will you need an amplifier and speakers too. This is a decision that will influence the purchase of the DAC/Amplifier and where you will spend the most of your budget.

Software is more a matter of personal preference. For example, I can't stand using Apple products and years of AIX cured me of any sympathy toward UNIX and LINUX. So all my PCs at home are Windows based, but I know that everything can also be done on a mac or Linux PC, so it's a matter of picking what one feels the most comfortable with. I chose J-River because I found using Foobar a bit awkward and I like the sophistication ( or what other calls the complexity) of J-River. I know that it's not free, but lets put things in perspective: It's cheaper than what I buy in music at HD-Tracks and it's surely cheaper than one tank of gas for the car. It also help that it was one of the first audio solutions on the PC able to output bit-perfect and that their audio quality is still superb.

 

Quick random question but you folks seem to know this stuff. If I wanted to use a player like Audirvana on a mac mini pointing to an external USB HD, would I be better hooking that HD up to the USB in of my router then getting it via the network as the mac is hooked to the router ethernet? I ask because it seems having an HD hooked USB of the mac while having the mac hooked USB to an external dac is a lot of traffic maybe causing issues. I assume I avoid that as I would be getting access to the HD into the mac mini ethernet? Man this makes my head hurt.

 

Plug it in and let it roll. I use a NAS on one system and an internal drive in my office system (Mac Pro). However, I have rarely encountered USB problems. Twice, they were problems with a cable. Throw that cable away and hook up another one. Data transfer rate for USB 2 is a lot higher than the data being transferred.

 

Then the top two media players should suffice -- JRiver or Foobar!!!

 

I can not confirm this. I use a RPi 3 connected to the USB DAC of my Oppo 105, playing FLAC files from my NAS (NAS and RPi 3 both hard wired to my router). The player is Volumio (and Kodi for multi-channel). I have used this set up for a couple of months now and have had no problems whatsoever, playing files up to 24/192 and multi-channel up to 24/96. Very rarely I have the player stopping for a second or so, but that might be a buffer problem.

 

The quote from me was from April of last year, so it took a while for the guys who write the Pi MPDs to catch up to the newer hardware. Rune used to be my favorite, but they dropped support for the Pi3 in the beta stage and I remember having some issues. Only MoOde seem to be advancing their MPD on Pi3, and still continues to update often. I've found the MoOde DAP and OS to be the most trouble-free full featured player for RPi3.

When I posted what you quoted, Volumio had nothing working on Pi3, and support seemed to have died off. But I see there's been very recent updates to Volumio lately, so it's good to hear it's working on Pi3. I might give it a try this weekend to see how it compares to MoOde.

 

Last time I played with Volumio, streaming radio was dead. Admittedly, it's been a while.

Agreed, though, that Moode is far and away the leader from a currency and functionality standpoint. I didn't even bat an eye when it went from free to $10 because A) $10 isn't that much and B) there's no question where the money's going, plus his support is excellent.

 

I do have Volumio working on Pi3 -- it was trivial to get it going. However, I'm using the Pi only as a DLNA renderer for files from Tidal and my own library, so I can't say anything about streaming radio.