Old skool dude needs advice on this digital stuff

[joz]

Hecks, see if an visit a few people with these setups.

That way you can see and hear them operating.

Also it may give you some insight into what may actually suit your situation.

A lot of this talk may all sound like gobly **** so better to experience some of this stuff.

[Jventer]

Thanks folks.

 

Information overload now but you have all helped me in one way or another.

 

I'm leaning towards

• utilising my Apple/Mac products that I have better
• getting a DAC (no my amps are old and don't have DACs built in)  - hook that up to my mac mini in my main system
• sorting out my cd's whether it is to rip them or just get them in alphabetical order
• listening to some good tunes
• catching up with some helpful old mates

Might leave streaming until later.

Almost what I have done. 

Ripping take some time, but it is just so convenient when you are sitting on the couch in front of the TV  .

For this you need only one dac. Rip your CD's with EAC or dbpoweramp, have it on the mac mini or an external drive connected to the mac mini. 

Use say Audirvana, JRiver or if you must iTunes 

App on phone or wireles keyboard

Relax and listen to music.

[Freedom]

After reading through this thread, whatever happened to the 'KISS' approach?

[keyse1]

Change the settings in iTunes to lossless burn the CDs connect the dac and it's done

iTunes is that simple and larger album covers so they can be seen from a perfectly located comfortable chair

And Bob's your uncle

[Andrew S.]

Sonos (Cullen mods if you want) + Tidal/Spotify + dac de jour. Make life easy for yourself. I wouldn't rip anything these days. Pretty much everything is available via streaming. 

 

Kept it extremely simple. And as user friendly as you can get. Which means Sonos. 

 

Good luck.

[Kaynin]

Often the problem with digital networks is the ability for each device in the chain to "talk" to each other - this can be buggy.  As you previously said, you don't want to stuff around fiddling with something that's just meant to play...

 

As you have Apple products, if you get any new products I'd consider those with the Airplay feature.  It works exceptionally well with Apple devices (iMacs, iPhones etc.) because Airplay is made by Apple.

[Peter Sherriff]

There's quite a few people here that, understandably given the Apple components at play are recommending iTunes... My experience of it with a digital library running into the tens of thousands of tracks is that it's a very cumbersome way to manage and access my music compared to some of the other media management tools.

A little off topic perhaps but because often once you're "in the Apple ecosystem, you're in the Apple ecosystem" and it can be very time consumng to migrate a large library at a later date - I'd be interested to hear how other people with large libraries use iTunes effectively. I'm thinking of how to do things like browse their library to find something that catches their eye, then potentially start a "random" playlist based on a particular song, album or artist.

I appreciate if you want a random selection of music you can use a streaming service but I have a music collection I enjoy listening to, that is why I bought it after all, so I like to 'rediscover' things I've not listened to for a while by having them brought to my attention this way. (I used to use Groove Smart Music Player on an iPod because I found that Genius Playlists didn't do a good job...)

Sent from my SM-T705 using Tapatalk

[keyse1]

There's quite a few people here that, understandably given the Apple components at play are recommending iTunes... My experience of it with a digital library running into the tens of thousands of tracks is that it's a very cumbersome way to manage and access my music compared to some of the other media management tools.

A little off topic perhaps but because often once you're "in the Apple ecosystem, you're in the Apple ecosystem" and it can be very time consumng to migrate a large library at a later date - I'd be interested to hear how other people with large libraries use iTunes effectively. I'm thinking of how to do things like browse their library to find something that catches their eye, then potentially start a "random" playlist based on a particular song, album or artist.

I appreciate if you want a random selection of music you can use a streaming service but I have a music collection I enjoy listening to, that is why I bought it after all, so I like to 'rediscover' things I've not listened to for a while by having them brought to my attention this way. (I used to use Groove Smart Music Player on an iPod because I found that Genius Playlists didn't do a good job...)

Sent from my SM-T705 using Tapatalk

I have about 20000 songs 1800 CDs

Everything is alphabetical

Type in help straight to the song

If I want a playlist I make it myself

There are no circumstances under which I would allow a computer to make a playlist for me other than random play

From what I read there are better ways but for me very very simple to use and I like the display of album art or a couple of downloads to improve the iTunes graphics

Downloaded an app to get the lyrics have about 13000 a lot searched manually

iTunes is good for learners but I think you need to know what you are doing before using other systems especially on Apple products

[gcgreg]

For pure simplicity, integration and depth of music discovery I am a fan of Roon + Tidal. You only need to rip CDs that aren't in the Tidal catalogue, so you probably don't need a NAS (this will depend on your particular collection of course). Roon will seamlessly string together your existing iTunes purchases, CD rips and Tidal. It also adds your existing collection to you Tidal favourites, making it available on any device you access Tidal from (such as a smartphone). Roon does however cost about $170 for a year's subscription. If something else comes along, migration will be as simple as entering your Tidal login details.

[Jventer]

For pure simplicity, integration and depth of music discovery I am a fan of Roon + Tidal. You only need to rip CDs that aren't in the Tidal catalogue, so you probably don't need a NAS (this will depend on your particular collection of course). Roon will seamlessly string together your existing iTunes purchases, CD rips and Tidal. It also adds your existing collection to you Tidal favourites, making it available on any device you access Tidal from (such as a smartphone). Roon does however cost about $170 for a year's subscription. If something else comes along, migration will be as simple as entering your Tidal login details.

This is quite a good post.

The amount of time I have spent ripping and re ripping cd's as I did not do it correctly the first time,setting up networks, migrating to a NAS and maintaining computers are massive. 

It does depend on one's collection.

I think we need to compare the costs of NAS, backups, hard drives, software, buying cd's to the cost of Tidal and Roon and then the latter may not look expensive.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Jventer

[gcgreg]

As @ pointed out, pretty much everything is available via streaming. Ripping a collection gives you, at best, a convenient way to play it. Streaming offers that PLUS access to another 25,000,000 tracks you don't own. I'm using Tidal as an example because that is what I'm familiar with, Spotify and others probably offer much the same.

A really cheap and quick way to connect a mac mini to a stereo is via a cable into your Aux input. Don't expect sonic excellence, but it gives you time to organise a DAC. I just tested this from an iMac to an AVR. Let's just say it didn't make my AVR sound any worse.

[Andrew S.]

if you are a little bit of a technophobe, keep it simple - like really really simple. Sonos is really user friendly. Roon is really user friendly. You can use Roon on your Mac Mini without issue. Sine you have a Mac Mini already, go the Roon + Tidal route and don't waste your life ripping. Spend some money on a half decent dac - or use the headphone out of your Mac Mini - you won't hear much difference under 1k or so.

[Tony M]

G'day Rod

 

Good to hear from you. 

 

Lots of good info here for you to digest and I don't think I can add much except to say I have Sonos in 4 rooms and like it a lot 99% of the time.  The other 1% relates to rare glitches with the network to the shed (usually when demoing streaming to someone! )  In the locations where I rely on the Sonos network rather than the computer network, it seems bullet-proof.

 

A couple of nifty points that I think can often be overlooked:

• The Sonos network can actually be used to extent your computer network as each Sonos unit has in/out ethernet sockets.  And yes, this does work in practice.
• Each Sonos unit has a "line-in" and the input to this can be selectively sent to any other unit.
• Digital radio can be very useful at times, even for local AM stations.

Regardless of anything else, the thing I love most about computer audio is the ability to dial up just about any track in existence whenever.  This lets me flit from track to track, artist to artist, genre to genre depending on mood.  In practice, I find listening to a track almost invariably reminds me of other tracks I want to hear.  It's just so easy to dial them up rather than searching out the disc (if I even have it) to play.  Lazy, I know, but it's a big part of the reason a brief listening session routinely extends to several hours.

 

So, I think your idea is well worth pursuing, regardless of the actual implementation.  Personally, I feel better about having the music I like on disc rather than relying on streaming, but that's mainly a function of our crap phone line and the frequency of outages including internet. 

 

Drop in whenever you're up this way and have a play with the Sonos stuff.

[Kaynin]

...the Sonos stuff.

 

 

I never really got into Sonos, so haven't kept up to speed with it to be honest, although I do think it's an excellent product for the quality vs price point.

 

 

Is there still an issue with limitation on the library size?  I recall something a few years ago that it capped out at a certain size...

 

 

Ripping a collection gives you, at best, a convenient way to play it. Streaming offers that PLUS access to another 25,000,000 tracks you don't own. 

 

 

You're forgetting that ripping also gives you lossless quality without the bugginess of the internet, which so many Australians experience - especially with Tidal, too.  Also, in my opinion, Tidal is quite expensive at $24 p.m.  I have superb internet, but am waiting to see how Tidal goes with their server issues, something the O.P. really doesn't want to have to deal with. 

 

I agree 100% with the second part of your post where you mention Spotify as an alternative, but it obviously doesn't carry the quality.  Having said that - I run Spotify through my Reference 7 and, TBO, it sounds fantastic!  Just not critical listening, is all...

[gcgreg]

You're forgetting that ripping also gives you lossless quality without the bugginess of the internet, which so many Australians experience - especially with Tidal, too. Also, in my opinion, Tidal is quite expensive at $24 p.m. I have superb internet, but am waiting to see how Tidal goes with their server issues, something the O.P. really doesn't want to have to deal with.

A month's free trial will answer that question. Tidal has been flawless for me for some time now, so server issues may not be the actual problem. I suspect running it via Roon may be helping, perhaps some buffering going on.

[Kaynin]

A month's free trial will answer that question. Tidal has been flawless for me for some time now, so server issues may not be the actual problem. I suspect running it via Roon may be helping, perhaps some buffering going on.

 

Yeah, I'm sitting on my month's free trial like a Wonka Golden ticket...

[Freedom]

My 'KISS' approach is the following.

 

'Rip' all CD's to FLAC. (EAC or Poweramp). The cardinal rule is to rip 'lossless' so you'll never need to re-rip again)!

 

Store them all on a hard drive in one big 'Music' folder with sub-folders for each band or artist. KISS (Simple straight forward catagories).

 

Then BACK-UP the hard drive (2 MORE TIMES) (actually do constantly the whole time you are ripping) !!

 

Play them through 'any' music player of your choice (I use Mediamonkey, as it plays all 'formats').

 

The rest is up to you, for alternative streaming methods and players etc etc.

 

I rip all my CDs manually, and catagorise them into bands on my hard drive, which means I know exactly what and where all my files are.

 

I don't rely on Apple or any other music player to sort my files, like genres etc as it just gets messy and in accurate.

[essem]

Welcome to a world where "too much choice" is the understatement of the century. I'm with surfpurple; I keep my music in a very simple directory hierarchy that makes sense to me and that anything on any platform can play (used EAC to WAV; would use FLAC if starting again). This data lives on a nas and is backed up on a portable usb drive. At home I run a low power arm-based Cubox i4-pro (quad core 2gb ram really tiny 2" cube, lives in a cupboard). This is on 24/7 on an Eaton 3S UPS powerboard, uses just a few watts and runs a minimal Linux (Debian stable 8.3) with mpd as the music player. It also happens to be the nas (a single 1TB portable drive is all I need right now). Usb out from the cubox carries the music to a standalone usb to spdif converter (Yulong U18; this simultaneously outputs (a) via a long aes-ebu digital cable to my good dac/hifi; and b) digital coax to a cheap old digital receiver which can run 2 sets of speakers which I use for internet radio and decent audio when watching telly). So I have 3 systems going from the 1 digital player. Cabling is probably unacceptable for most normal people. Its also limited to playing back one thing at a time. I can remote control the mpd server using a myriad of mpd clients e.g. mpdroid on an android tablet or auremeo on a windows laptop. I have system admin skills and setting up all the above was a long process of trial and error and quite good fun. Its very reliable now and just works. If I were you in planning this out I'd be reflecting on just what it was you didn't like about the Squeezebox experience. 

[Ahh- Schnoo Schnoo]

(used EAC to WAV; would use FLAC if starting again)

 

 

@@essem Can i ask why you would use FLAC?

[Peter Sherriff]

I have about 20000 songs 1800 CDs

Everything is alphabetical

Type in help straight to the song

If I want a playlist I make it myself

There are no circumstances under which I would allow a computer to make a playlist for me other than random play

From what I read there are better ways but for me very very simple to use and I like the display of album art or a couple of downloads to improve the iTunes graphics

Downloaded an app to get the lyrics have about 13000 a lot searched manually

iTunes is good for learners but I think you need to know what you are doing before using other systems especially on Apple products

Thanks @@keyse1 for the response.

I guess what you've described is why it doesn't work well for me. If I know exactly what I want to listen to then more often than not I'd still reach for the CD or LP as I enjoy the tactile side of listening as well.

I tend to use the computer audio more when I'm in the mood for 'rediscovering' my collection and an alphabetical list isn't conducive to that. My music collection is very "all over the place" so a normal Random play jumps from Rachmaninov to Pantera to The Stones Roses to T99 and back again - generally not an enjoyable listening experience for me. That's why I depend heavily on 'Smart Playlist' type capability that keeps the music somewhat related - I don't keep these and re-use them, I just say "Play me 50 songs like Step On by the Happy Mondays" and get a one-time playlist that pulls in a bunch of Madchester sounds I forget are hiding in the corners of the collection.

Thanks again!

Sent from my SM-T705 using Tapatalk

[Jventer]

@@essem Can i ask why you would use FLAC?

Flac uses less space and lose no quality.

AIFF is the same.

WAV uses a lot of space.

[Batty]

Space is cheap these days, I used to rip to FLAC, then as Hard Drive prices dropped to around $60/Tb I started ripping to WAV.

[Kaynin]

I started out ripping to WAV years ago and so have stuck with the format.  About 1% of my files would be FLAC, the rest WAV.  I know FLAC is lossless, but I've always worried that sometime in the future someone will come along and say, "I've just discovered that FLAC actually isn't a 100% accurate copy"....or worse still "it's possibly inferior". 

 

If that happened, I'd have to rip my collection, yet again...I trust WAV.

[gcgreg]

FLAC has better metadata support and is usually about 40% smaller. There is no advantage using WAV in most setups.

[Batty]

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