NAS -> Network hi-fi Server -> hi-fi ... sense check please

PaulButler

PaulButler

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Apologies in advance, this is a longish post ...

I am wanting to store all of my music digitally on a NAS, the NAS will also be used for other purposes such as file storage and short term backup etc ... It may also be used to stream video in due course, but this is way down the list of priorities.

I'll be using a QNAP TS-453A 4 bay device as the NAS and WD Red HDD's. The NAS itself is not where I need the sense check, though ... I intend to use ethernet btw, though won't entirely rule out wi-fi.

The main aim here is to be able to play the music initially in the living room through my existing hi-fi system.

I have a pretty good hi-fi system, a rega CD deck, rega pre-amp and 2 off rega Exon monoblock power amplifiers. In terms of controls, the pre-amp has an on/off button, an input selector and a volume control. The power amps only have an on/off button. The pre-amp only has RCA (I think that is what they are called) type inputs, but plenty of them, no usb, no network, no wireless/bluetooth ...

The digital music will be stored on the NAS, in the highest quality possible, which I may well need advice over too - think flac but is that the right way?

I would like to make use of the amplification so am looking to feed into the pre-amp so believe I will need a network hi-fi server to achieve this. I have seen all in one servers with amplification, but don't see the point in that as my amplification is proven and high quality. I'd be looking for one that basically acts as the go-between and from what I have read "upscales" appropriately, i.e. with suitable DACs ... From what I have read they all seem to have multiple options to control them from apps on the phone through to remote controls so am less concerned there.

The type of hi-fi server I'm looking at is Cambridge Audio CXN , ONKYO NS-6130 and Pioneer N-30AE .

So, the music would stream from the NAS to the server, by "Upscaled/DAC-ified, and fed into the pre-amp ...The question is would that work?

Thoughts and suggestions much appreciated as always.
 
neil_g said:
Ouch that's expensive.

Or spend £30 on a Chromecast Audio and link it to an existing optical input?

Qnap can apparently stream straight to chromecast.
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Sadly that won't work. Pre-amp doesn't have any optical inputs - in any case, not sure how I'd get the music to the chromecast nor what the quality would be like
 
Yes it would work. Given the quality of your Rega pre and power you might even want to look at higher end stuff such as Naim and Linn (also keeping with the British designed and built theme)
 
PaulButler said:
Sadly that won't work. Pre-amp doesn't have any optical inputs - in any case, not sure how I'd get the music to the chromecast nor what the quality would be like
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The Chromecast has an analogue output, but would recommend a separate DAC. The issue with the servers your thinking of using is that they can become obsolete very quickly. I use an old laptop, which streams to and controls the Chromecast, that goes into a Chord Hugo Dac and then into a 300b Amp. I do not have much digital music so do not use a NAS. I would be tempted to use a small form factor PC or a laptop with your NAS rather than a hifi server, this would allow you to stream any format.
 
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Agree with @Bearair, a standalone PC with a DAC in the middle would give you flexibility but isn't as polished as a standalone box. I use a dedicated media server, then a HTPC with an AMD 5650 card that bitstreams out to my Onkyo AMP via Winamp + YASAPI plugin and the AMP's DAC takes care of the conversion. In your case a PC to a Schitt DAC or something more exotic then to you pre-amp might be the order of the day. Again not as polished as a single box solution but ultimate flexibility.
 
Sharky said:
Agree with @Bearair, a standalone PC with a DAC in the middle would give you flexibility but isn't as polished as a standalone box. I use a dedicated media server, then a HTPC with an AMD 5650 card that bitstreams out to my Onkyo AMP via Winamp + YASAPI plugin and the AMP's DAC takes care of the conversion. In your case a PC to a Schitt DAC or something more exotic then to you pre-amp might be the order of the day. Again not as polished as a single box solution but ultimate flexibility.
Click to expand...

Shcitt do some very good DACs I agree a very good choice
 
There are quite a few ways of doing this and I have explored this quite a bit.
The quality/conversion bit is easy as like folk says lots of DACS available etc.

The main issue is getting the slick GUI so that playing your stuff is easy and haslse free.

as below my recent thread I have discussed some of the cheaper ways.
If i was looking at high quality as you are then I would use a small laptop with all your FLAC rips on it linked via USB to a good DAC then into your PRE-AMP.
I think finding a solution that involved streaming from the NAS will restrict your options.

however one thing I am using to great effect and quality is a Roberts Stream 93i line out to my AMP.

put a FAT32 formatted USB tick in the back with the FLACS and play through that to the AMP.
Very surprising quality for buttons with full remote.

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/connecting-old-school-amp-to-blutooth-or-wireless.646123/
 
Thanks everyone, food for thought :)


Eloise said:
Yes it would work. Given the quality of your Rega pre and power you might even want to look at higher end stuff such as Naim and Linn (also keeping with the British designed and built theme)
Click to expand...
I have looked at the Linn range, looks exceptional but very expensive - never even considered naim as usually they are double what I expect ;) (blinking good though).

Sharky said:
Typo on my part *Schiit

http://schiit.eu.com/
Click to expand...
I'll take a peek at that site, much appreciated - there may be more questions though :)


Mr Bump said:
There are quite a few ways of doing this and I have explored this quite a bit.
The quality/conversion bit is easy as like folk says lots of DACS available etc.

The main issue is getting the slick GUI so that playing your stuff is easy and haslse free.

as below my recent thread I have discussed some of the cheaper ways.
If i was looking at high quality as you are then I would use a small laptop with all your FLAC rips on it linked via USB to a good DAC then into your PRE-AMP.
I think finding a solution that involved streaming from the NAS will restrict your options.

however one thing I am using to great effect and quality is a Roberts Stream 93i line out to my AMP.

put a FAT32 formatted USB tick in the back with the FLACS and play through that to the AMP.
Very surprising quality for buttons with full remote.

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/connecting-old-school-amp-to-blutooth-or-wireless.646123/
Click to expand...
Yep, read that thread and it was that thread that reminded me I need to crack on and get my music sorted!
 
Hardest part is doing great FLAC rips.
I use EAC and have also had to clean some of my old CDs to get the best rips.

Last week in my spare time I did my first 100 albums which have come in at abou 80gb.
 
Mr Bump said:
Hardest part is doing great FLAC rips.
I use EAC and have also had to clean some of my old CDs to get the best rips.

Last week in my spare time I did my first 100 albums which have come in at abou 80gb.
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity how long did that take?
 
Each CD probably took about 15 to 20 mins.
EAC is very pedandtic is only spinds the CD up to 2.4x max it can even be told to run in real time at 1x.
 
Mr Bump said:
Hardest part is doing great FLAC rips.
I use EAC and have also had to clean some of my old CDs to get the best rips.

Last week in my spare time I did my first 100 albums which have come in at abou 80gb.
Click to expand...
Might want to try dbPowerAmp as an alternative. Ripping CDs isn't a hard task for a computer... dbPowerAmp (EAC might too now) can check the result (using a checksum) and compare it to other people's ripping... gives you confidence that the rip is done correctly.

Once you have the CD as a FLAC file then, assuming no corruption happens, you can copy and move from device to device and no degradation happens.

100 albums should be closer to 75GB uncompressed and around 1/2-2/3 that size using FLAC compression.
 
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Eloise said:
Might want to try dbPowerAmp as an alternative. Ripping CDs isn't a hard task for a computer... dbPowerAmp (EAC might too now) can check the result (using a checksum) and compare it to other people's ripping... gives you confidence that the rip is done correctly.

Once you have the CD as a FLAC file then, assuming no corruption happens, you can copy and move from device to device and no degradation happens.

100 albums should be closer to 75GB uncompressed and around 1/2-2/3 that size using FLAC compression.
Click to expand...

its called accurip and EAC has done it for years
 
The dedicated players look lovely but the cost is crazy. You can get a Raspberry Pi with a HiFiBerry DAC and case for <£100 all in. Software is free - e.g. RuneAudio.

For ripping, you could add a USB drive to the Pi plus software/script to detect when a CD Audio disc is inserted, retrieve CD information, rip the tracks in the format of your choice, verify, copy to the NAS and eject the disc. Once set up, you'd just need to feed it discs.
 
I stream my audio (mainly CDs ripped to FLAC) from a HP Miniserver rather than NAS, to a number of Logitech Squezebox Touch players around the house. The main system is moderately high end, if aging, with Kef Reference speakers.

The Squeezeboxes' were discontinued about 4 years ago, but my three all still work brilliantly. Excellent interface, controllable using remote, touchscreen or phone apps. Displays album art and track info. Also utilise a decent Burr Brown internal DAC, and have both digital optical and analogue phono outputs. The sound quality compares very favourably to high end CD players to my sadly ageing ears. I haven't found a comparable product yet to replace them. Also useful for internet radio and for streaming Spotify (in a respectable 320kb Ogg Vorbis format) if you have a Spotify Premium account.

Often available second hand on eBay and AV Forums classifieds. Mine are mint but not for sale!

I use EAC to rip CDs to lossless FLAC, and as previously stated above it will both error check and compare your rip to other peoples in the Accurip database to ensure it is bit perfect.

The time to rip depends on the properties of your optical drive, and your rip and error checking settings within EAC. The higher the compression ratio set, the smaller the resultant file, but the longer the rip takes to perform.
 
PaulButler said:
in any case, not sure how I'd get the music to the chromecast nor what the quality would be like
Click to expand...
Qnap like synology allow streaming direct from nas to chromecast from their built in media server. So you download the qnap app to you mobile/tab and connect to the nas and just cast it from there as normal.

Audio quality from the chromecast via optical is good, spec is 96 KHz/24 bit. Obviously depends on the source files too. Even flac from my phone to my £40 smsl dac via the chromecast sounds very nice.
 
neil_g said:
Qnap like synology allow streaming direct from nas to chromecast from their built in media server. So you download the qnap app to you mobile/tab and connect to the nas and just cast it from there as normal.

Audio quality from the chromecast via optical is good, spec is 96 KHz/24 bit. Obviously depends on the source files too. Even flac from my phone to my £40 smsl dac via the chromecast sounds very nice.
Click to expand...

so the chromecast audio has a tosling digi out then?
 
Mr Bump said:
oh wow, so if i stream flacs to it i assume it will just pass the digital signal straight though?
Click to expand...

Yes, straight into whatever Dac you purchase.
 
I can recommend the Pioneer N series, as I personally use an N50-A and the inbuilt DAC it's half bad at all.
Your input choice from the NAS would really be either USB-DAC or DLNA via ethernet. Myself I use Serviio as my DNLA client, which is available in the Qnap app store
 
Bearair said:
Yes, straight into whatever Dac you purchase.
Click to expand...

well the current test items i have are a pair of TIBO Plus 3 speakers and a Denom Micro which both have optical ins.
 
Mr Bump said:
well the current test items i have are a pair of TIBO Plus 3 speakers and a Denom Micro which both have optical ins.
Click to expand...

You should be good to go then.:)
 
Archie747 said:
Have either of you used these DACs and if so which model(s) as their range covers low prices to expensive?
Click to expand...

Yes, I had the Modi 2 which was very very good. In my opinion it was as good as the Q Dac for a lot less money. I have had/used a Dragonfly, Qdac, V Dac, Modi 2, and the Hugo. I should state that I prefer a warmer analogue sound that majors on PRAT rather than the ultimate resolution. I was quite happy with the Modi until the Hugo came along at a very silly price.
 
Archie747 said:
Can you still buy the Modi 2 in the U.K.? I cannot find retailers.
Click to expand...

As far as I know this site is still suppying but they are out of stock. I bought a phono stage from them, very good service and telephone advice. Might be worth asking them when it is back in stock.
http://schiit.eu.com/dacs
 
Asynchronous USB DAC? - the clock from the source works with the clock on the DAC which is fine when say a CD transport is used. But the clock on a PC is not very good so chips have been developed which allow for a new master clock to be established and that passes on far better quality info to the DAC. You can get stand alone USB to S/Pdif converters which then feed into your DAC or an all-in-one box of tricks.

Check what chip the Sciit DAC's use - CM6631 for eg doesn't support some of the higher sampling rates.

eg http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f...onic-devices-spdif-converters-shootout-15327/
or a DIY option which will probably be better than most of those if you can build a low noise regulator
http://luckit.biz/
 
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Bearair said:
Yes, I had the Modi 2 which was very very good. In my opinion it was as good as the Q Dac for a lot less money. I have had/used a Dragonfly, Qdac, V Dac, Modi 2, and the Hugo. I should state that I prefer a warmer analogue sound that majors on PRAT rather than the ultimate resolution. I was quite happy with the Modi until the Hugo came along at a very silly price.
Click to expand...

I appreciate this is not my thread but I have bought a Dragonfly and I like the sound quality but it does suffer from background noise which I undertand is from the USB. They sell a jitterbug which reduces this noise but are there any other solutions? I'm a bit annoyed at having to pay for another component even if it is relative cheap.
 
Archie747 said:
I appreciate this is not my thread but I have bought a Dragonfly and I like the sound quality but it does suffer from background noise which I undertand is from the USB. They sell a jitterbug which reduces this noise but are there any other solutions? I'm a bit annoyed at having to pay for another component even if it is relative cheap.
Click to expand...

i have a jitterbug which i use for my laptop to my astell and kern and it is a nice peice of kit.
I don't use it so much now though so if you are interest i can pop a thread up.
 
Mr Bump said:
i have a jitterbug which i use for my laptop to my astell and kern and it is a nice peice of kit.
I don't use it so much now though so if you are interest i can pop a thread up.
Click to expand...

I am interested so please start a thread or pm me if that is allowed. Amazon price is £39. Thanks.
 
Archie747 said:
I appreciate this is not my thread but I have bought a Dragonfly and I like the sound quality but it does suffer from background noise which I undertand is from the USB. They sell a jitterbug which reduces this noise but are there any other solutions? I'm a bit annoyed at having to pay for another component even if it is relative cheap.
Click to expand...
do you have optical output?

maybe an external dac like the smsl sd793-ii. prices seem to have gone up a bit since i got mine but really good little headphone amp and RCA passthrough.

would replace the dragonfly, maybe sell that on to recoup some cost.
 
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AVForums will suggest even more options, but this works really well for me and my tech-averse other half. It can include as much or as little DIY as you want. I'm a cheapskate but wanted to maximise quality.
  • VortexBox NAS running Logitech Media Server - also runs iPlayer Radio and numerous other plugins, streams FLACs perfectly and gaplessly
  • O2 joggler running SqueezePlay OS - functions as a client to the server and a UI for the system, as well as supporting Apple Airplay
  • Audiolab MDAC d-a converter, preamp & volume control
  • Homebrew Hypex power amp
  • iPeng on iPhone and iPad to act as a remote for the system, as well as a second client.
 
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