Suggestions please

[shane]

Back in February I decided to dip my to into the world of streaming and bought a Chromecast Audio, which must be the smallest and least impressive looking bit of hifi gear I’ve ever come across. Initial thoughts were that sound quality is at least as good as my Squeezebox. A little more forward maybe, but clean and open, and astonishingly good for what looks like a miniature £30 hockey puck.

Six months down the road and the experience isn’t quite as shiny as it originally seemed. From the SQ point of view I still think it’s amazing for what it is, but I must have been a bit dissatisfied with it because I pushed the eBay button on a Beresford TC-7510, and now it’s a whole lot better. More organic, if you like.

What irks me is the usability of the thing. I’ve taken out subscriptions to Tidal and Idagio which are installed on my iPhone 7. I use FileBrowser to access my Jerry-built NAS which has about 400gb of assorted FLAC and MP3 stuff on it, and BBC iPlayer Radio.

The problem I have is that I don’t find any of those apps in the least bit user friendly. Firstly, they all continually revert back to the iPhone instead of the Chromecast, often on successive tracks, and by the time I’ve worked out how to switch back the track is half way through and the mood is broken.

Unless there’s a way to make everything permanently default to the Chromecast, I’m thinking that I need to find a device on which to run the apps to replace the Chromecast, which can be controlled remotely from the iPhone. Would a raspberry pi do that, and if so can it feed directly to the Beresford?

Ideas please....

[Sherwood]

Back in February I decided to dip my to into the world of streaming and bought a Chromecast Audio, which must be the smallest and least impressive looking bit of hifi gear I’ve ever come across. Initial thoughts were that sound quality is at least as good as my Squeezebox. A little more forward maybe, but clean and open, and astonishingly good for what looks like a miniature £30 hockey puck.

Six months down the road and the experience isn’t quite as shiny as it originally seemed. From the SQ point of view I still think it’s amazing for what it is, but I must have been a bit dissatisfied with it because I pushed the eBay button on a Beresford TC-7510, and now it’s a whole lot better. More organic, if you like.

What irks me is the usability of the thing. I’ve taken out subscriptions to Tidal and Idagio which are installed on my iPhone 7. I use FileBrowser to access my Jerry-built NAS which has about 400gb of assorted FLAC and MP3 stuff on it, and BBC iPlayer Radio.

The problem I have is that I don’t find any of those apps in the least bit user friendly. Firstly, they all continually revert back to the iPhone instead of the Chromecast, often on successive tracks, and by the time I’ve worked out how to switch back the track is half way through and the mood is broken.

Unless there’s a way to make everything permanently default to the Chromecast, I’m thinking that I need to find a device on which to run the apps to replace the Chromecast, which can be controlled remotely from the iPhone. Would a raspberry pi do that, and if so can it feed directly to the Beresford?

Ideas please....

Shane,

the front end on my main system now comprises a Raspberry Pi with Digione board into a Caiman Beresford DAC. My main listening is comprised of a mix of my own flac files, Tidal, and high bitrate internet radio. I have a Chromecast Audio too and whilst it is great value for money, it is not as good as the Pi. I use Volumio with the Pi. For only £2.99 Bubble PnP integrates well with Volumio and allows me to play my Tidal playlists on Volumio with ease.

Geoff

[shane]

Thanks Geoff, just the sort of info I was looking for!

[mikeyb]

Only drawback is Bubble uPnP is android only. I've searched and searched and never found an ios app that can do the same.

There are plenty of apps in the Apple store that can cast to the chromecast.

[struth]

yup an rpi is a good shout, either with a digi board out to your dac or use a dac hat and straight to amp, which is way i do it.
several os you can use... volumio2 is probably the easiest, plus you have moode 4.2 and the one im playing with at moment.. picoreplayer/logitech ms. it integrates well with most things i think. ive got spotify going including my albums there. looks like i will be able to run jriver to it too...
only current issue is samba share, which ive not cracked yet but its probably a win10 issue.

we need to get a how-to, done for these os for the guys and gals

[mikeyb]

I tried picoreplayer the other day and gave up, I went back to volumio 2 for ease of setup, takes less than 5 minutes from start to finish [emoji6]

The rpi isn't my main digital player that's reserved for my SoTm sms200 which is far superior but my dac is out on loan so the rpi is in play [emoji4]

[struth]

I tried picoreplayer the other day and gave up, I went back to volumio 2 for ease of setup, takes less than 5 minutes from start to finish [emoji6]

The rpi isn't my main digital player that's reserved for my SoTm sms200 which is far superior but my dac is out on loan so the rpi is in play [emoji4]

still fiddling with mine alas... cant help myself and I just know im going to screw it:eek: spotify is quite well done unlike volumio but its ui isnt too intuitive

[mikeyb]

still fiddling with mine alas... cant help myself and I just know im going to screw it:eek: spotify is quite well done unlike volumio but its ui isnt too intuitiveI've just posted about picoreplayer on the other thread, I'm going to give it another go just now [emoji23]