Streaming is All New to Me, I'm Requiring Guidance.

[JohnG]

I know streaming as a means of delivering digital data to a device.
I know there are partnering devices and software to make the set up function.
I have witnessed a Concept Multi Media Player at work many months ago for a replay of a few tracks.
I have never had a hands on experience, with a streaming device or had any communication about the basics in integrating a Streamer and DAC into a HiFi System.
The Valve Based DAC is now in the UK, awaiting my picking it up.
So now I am intrigued by how to use it, initially it will be put with the computer, but I still have to get familiar with any accessories if this to be used to make this set up work ?

If this is deemed a insufficient method of getting a good Sound Quality and a Dedicated Streaming Device is going to be the suggested method the get the best SQ, then I am already requiring assistance in steering through the maze.
I am not adverse to any model, DIY Produced (already built ) or Branded Model
If I were to lay out my wishes for a streamer, it would be a stand alone streamer (no inbuilt DAC), it would ideally be able to produce a display on a monitor, possibly rip a CD,
and have the ability to replay the FLAC files I have stored on my Laptop.
If a streamer is believed to have a effect on the SQ, then a device with a reported good SQ will be preferable.
I know there are devices or software referred to create a functioning streaming set up, but again I am not familiar with their usage.
As a further wish, a hands on experience would be great, to help get on my way.

[Mand]

Do you intend to back up your flac on the laptop?
I like the innous zen. It can rip cd, stores flac and be used as a player via usb into your dac if that has usb input.
Control is via various apps on tablet or phone, or their own app on the latest zen boxes.
It has no screen.
I went from cd to streaming 3 yrs ago with no previous knowledge. Bought a zen to rip and store, sim audio moon mind 180 to access flac on the zen and stream on line. Connected to router with Ethernet cables via a switch.
Lots of devices to do the job these days, some with screens, some cheap, some mega bucks.

[struth]

Connect a usb cable to pc and dac. download a trial of something like tidal hifi or one of the other s.. see what you think of it.
Im using Audirvana at moment on a trial with both my flac and tidal's which works within it nicely. if your happy then your set unless you want a tailor made streamer unit. only thing about many is they can potentially become redundant if things change, and they are not cheap

[JohnG]

I have seen a similar device to a Innuous Zen, a DIY build based on Roon.
It had my attention , hence my advice sought here, as I am not fluent in the devices being used.

[Manicatel]

For the last few years I have been using a MacMini, with usb HD containing my ripped cd library, plus another one as a back up, going into a Jolida DAC & then into my amp.
I use Audirvana software & Tidal for streaming & an iPad to select music with the Audirvana app.
I’m certainly not a computer whizz, so for me any system & software I use has to be easy, stable & reliable, as well as sounding very good.
Whilst there are alternatives such as Bluesound, Aurelic etc etc, I’m more than happy that my set up ticks all the boxes for me & so therefore I can heartily recommend it as a great way to get into streaming music.

[JohnG]

Thank you for the supplied information, not wanting to jump into this method of replaying music with little experience and purchasing supporting devices I am not familiar with. This is a method of replay I shall aspire to as my experience and understanding grows.
The DAC arrived in my home on Friday Night, it is extremely impressive and has had a very positive effect on my leanings toward CD as I am of a Vinyl background.
I would like to think, any moves I make in my digital advancement, is based on getting the best out of this DAC,
with the convenience of Digital Media being the secondary reward.
I am going to begin with the Laptop as base to begin streaming and as a addition to this create a Stand alone storage set up for CD Rips and FLAC File Downloads.
I have enquired about this set up on the Ripping Thread. Any further support will be happily received.

[Shropshire Lad]

Thinking of doing the same , however living in the sticks my download speed is about 6 Meg max, I've looked on the sites of some of the streaming services but can't find any minimum download speed information. Any advice on the impact such low broadband speeds would have on normal or higher resolution streaming ?

Thanks

[twotone]

Thinking of doing the same , however living in the sticks my download speed is about 6 Meg max, I've looked on the sites of some of the streaming services but can't find any minimum download speed information. Any advice on the impact such low broadband speeds would have on normal or higher resolution streaming ?

Thanks

There's a similar thread on PFM and the OP in that thread has more or less the same issues the solution was to either change to Virgin (if possible) or buy a better router such as a Draytek Vigor 2862 AC which allows you to throttle bandwidth for multiple users, think from memory Netflix min download requirements are 5MB for example, so the advice was to limit Netflix user streams to say 3MB or similar.

I'll try to find the thread and post here.

Tony

https://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/ive-had-enough-of-bt-broadband.218789/

[Shropshire Lad]

There's a similar thread on PFM and the OP in that thread has more or less the same issues the solution was to either change to Virgin (if possible) or buy a better router such as a Draytek Vigor 2862 AC which allows you to throttle bandwidth for multiple users, think from memory Netflix min download requirements are 5MB for example, so the advice was to limit Netflix user streams to say 3MB or similar.

I'll try to find the thread and post here.

Tony

https://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/ive-had-enough-of-bt-broadband.218789/

Thanks I'll have a read

[anandhad]

Thousands of television channels and internet channels including Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Sling TV and the like can be uploaded to Roku streaming device box. These channels provide extra time to the Roku users to view the programs from the initial streaming time.

[Sherwood]

Thinking of doing the same , however living in the sticks my download speed is about 6 Meg max, I've looked on the sites of some of the streaming services but can't find any minimum download speed information. Any advice on the impact such low broadband speeds would have on normal or higher resolution streaming ?

Thanks

Most streaming services have a premium membership that allows you to download files to your device for later playback. Although 6mb should be sufficient even for HD music, this way you avoid any buffering problems. You can download a batch of music (say overnight) and listen offline, even on a phone or tablet.

Geoff

[AJSki2fly]

Thank you for the supplied information, not wanting to jump into this method of replaying music with little experience and purchasing supporting devices I am not familiar with. This is a method of replay I shall aspire to as my experience and understanding grows.
The DAC arrived in my home on Friday Night, it is extremely impressive and has had a very positive effect on my leanings toward CD as I am of a Vinyl background.
I would like to think, any moves I make in my digital advancement, is based on getting the best out of this DAC,
with the convenience of Digital Media being the secondary reward.
I am going to begin with the Laptop as base to begin streaming and as a addition to this create a Stand alone storage set up for CD Rips and FLAC File Downloads.
I have enquired about this set up on the Ripping Thread. Any further support will be happily received.

Hello John

I have been in the digital world for quite a few years now, having got sucked into CD's early on and then into mp3 and AAC which I quickly discovered was a step into compressed music and questionable replay quality. I should have known better as I work in the IT industry. One thing to remember here is that music that was digitised and put on CD or a digital file back in the 80's and even the 90's is not necessarily going to be of great quality due to the limitations of the technology at the time, and even new music may not be great. This also is influenced by the care taken when doing so and the equipment used.

Anyway I ripped my CD's to AIF or WAV format and put the whole lot onto a NAS Drive in an iTunes library, Buffalo do some good and cost effective ones. iTunes I find is a reasonably good tool for organising your music and ripping CD's although if want FLAC or equivalent M4P then you would need to rip using some other software and then import M4P files into the iTunes library. I would go for at least a 2 terrabyte one and also purchase a 2TB drive to plug into the back of it to back it all up. For FLAC and other formats that iTunes does not handle I put undo into a folder of that name on the same server organised by sub-directories by Artist and within that by album. https://www.ebuyer.com/620414-buffalo-linkstation-210-2tb-1-bay-1-x-2tb-nas-drive-ls210d0201-eu?mkwid=seZSVThd6_dc&pcrid=51482423219&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=CjwKCAjwmJbeBRBCEiwAAY4VVUD-IkM4uzBQMF91RCTig7S_ZLJcJ-1nqOiSLZ_-UHT_wbYB8BvucxoCBGEQAvD_BwE By doing this all my digital music is sited on a drive that several devices can access, MAC, iPhone, iPad etc basically anything that is able to connect to an iTunes library, and there is lots of software and hardware that can. Once you have this setup up you can copy from your computer(note COPY not move, so if it all goes wrong you still have it) your existing iTunes library from your computer to the NAS drive. Once it is there you can got to preferences in iTunes, select advanced and then select the iTunes library on your NAS drive (note the drive has to be on your network and you have to be mapped to it from you computer first). You also need to ensure that "Copy files to iTunes media folder is selected when adding to library" is on so that any future music is automatically put in the library on the server.

You obviously don't need to have a NAS drive but you will be limited by the size of the computers hard drive and may end up having to plug an external one into to it in any case, especially if you are going to have CD and above quality data files. Remember each CD will take around 450-650mb of storage as pure CD quality, the same in Flac will be around 1.2-3.0GB of storage so you can quickly gobble up 1 Terrabyte of storage if you have lots of music.

As others have pointed out there is a variety of software/hardware out there to access your music which is better than iTunes on playback and is in fact necessary if in formats that iTunes cannot handle. I like others are trying out Audirvana and so far I am quite impressed with it in terms of replay quality, plus it also supports streaming from various high quality sites. Personally I would tend to purchase and download what I like and store on the NAS drive, but that personal choice, however it does mean that if you cannot get a high mbps(internet speed) to support high quality music streaming you can download and then play later.

So it sounds you have the DAC sorted, and I presume this will have USB capability, so you can connect it to the USB on your computer, and so once you have the above set up in the manner you opt for you need to choose the software you want to use and install it on your computer, map it to the NAS drive or wherever you have the music library and to any folders where you have FLAC etc stored and off you go.

You raised the question of using a Streamer, well its a tricky one to answer and it really depends on how deep your pocket is, for my money if you do not want to use a computer then I would opt for an INNOUS ZEN, from what I can determine for sound quality the ZEN MK.II STD is the one to go for, the ZENMINI is £700 cheaper and has its limitations in processing capability, also to get the best out of it you either need to power is with a battery or an expensive £200-300 power supply. There are many other streamers out there and I am sure others on here can give advice on this. The thing is whilst a streamer is a neat and clean solution the question is how long before it becomes redundant or it fails. Most come with Solid State Drives(SSD) that's basically computer chips used to store data, no matter what anyone tells you they fail and they have a life and will fail. So another key question if the SSD fails can it be easily replaced/repaired, most manufacturers charge quite a lot above the actual SSD cost, and some won't even repair. Innous recommend have a USB drive plugged into a ZEN so it is backed up, as most others do. so the points I make here not only apply to a Innous ZEN but any other make of streaming device. If you look at other streamers then you need to consider what level of quality it can handle in terms of types of data formats and very importantly how high in Hz it can go.

KEY POINT no matter where your music is stored, Streamer with storage, NAS drive, external drive plugged into a computer or on the computers physical hard drive BACK IT UP regularly, at least once a week. Hard Drives fail whether spinning disk ones or SSD's. You should be backing up your computer at least once a week to an external hard drive mo matter what.

I have considered the ZEN at length but have concluded that using my MAC with a good Beresford SEG DAC and putting my digital music on a NAS drive is the most cost effective and leaves for future flexibility and change.

I am sure there are a host of other solutions out there but perhaps this might address some of the key issues, at least as far as I see and understand them.

Good luck

Adrian

[Sherwood]

Hello John

I have been in the digital world for quite a few years now, having got sucked into CD's early on and then into mp3 and AAC which I quickly discovered was a step into compressed music and questionable replay quality. I should have known better as I work in the IT industry. One thing to remember here is that music that was digitised and put on CD or a digital file back in the 80's and even the 90's is not necessarily going to be of great quality due to the limitations of the technology at the time, and even new music may not be great. This also is influenced by the care taken when doing so and the equipment used.

Anyway I ripped my CD's to AIF or WAV format and put the whole lot onto a NAS Drive in an iTunes library, Buffalo do some good and cost effective ones. iTunes I find is a reasonably good tool for organising your music and ripping CD's although if want FLAC or equivalent M4P then you would need to rip using some other software and then import M4P files into the iTunes library. I would go for at least a 2 terrabyte one and also purchase a 2TB drive to plug into the back of it to back it all up. For FLAC and other formats that iTunes does not handle I put undo into a folder of that name on the same server organised by sub-directories by Artist and within that by album. https://www.ebuyer.com/620414-buffalo-linkstation-210-2tb-1-bay-1-x-2tb-nas-drive-ls210d0201-eu?mkwid=seZSVThd6_dc&pcrid=51482423219&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=CjwKCAjwmJbeBRBCEiwAAY4VVUD-IkM4uzBQMF91RCTig7S_ZLJcJ-1nqOiSLZ_-UHT_wbYB8BvucxoCBGEQAvD_BwE By doing this all my digital music is sited on a drive that several devices can access, MAC, iPhone, iPad etc basically anything that is able to connect to an iTunes library, and there is lots of software and hardware that can. Once you have this setup up you can copy from your computer(note COPY not move, so if it all goes wrong you still have it) your existing iTunes library from your computer to the NAS drive. Once it is there you can got to preferences in iTunes, select advanced and then select the iTunes library on your NAS drive (note the drive has to be on your network and you have to be mapped to it from you computer first). You also need to ensure that "Copy files to iTunes media folder is selected when adding to library" is on so that any future music is automatically put in the library on the server.

You obviously don't need to have a NAS drive but you will be limited by the size of the computers hard drive and may end up having to plug an external one into to it in any case, especially if you are going to have CD and above quality data files. Remember each CD will take around 450-650mb of storage as pure CD quality, the same in Flac will be around 1.2-3.0GB of storage so you can quickly gobble up 1 Terrabyte of storage if you have lots of music.

As others have pointed out there is a variety of software/hardware out there to access your music which is better than iTunes on playback and is in fact necessary if in formats that iTunes cannot handle. I like others are trying out Audirvana and so far I am quite impressed with it in terms of replay quality, plus it also supports streaming from various high quality sites. Personally I would tend to purchase and download what I like and store on the NAS drive, but that personal choice, however it does mean that if you cannot get a high mbps(internet speed) to support high quality music streaming you can download and then play later.

So it sounds you have the DAC sorted, and I presume this will have USB capability, so you can connect it to the USB on your computer, and so once you have the above set up in the manner you opt for you need to choose the software you want to use and install it on your computer, map it to the NAS drive or wherever you have the music library and to any folders where you have FLAC etc stored and off you go.

You raised the question of using a Streamer, well its a tricky one to answer and it really depends on how deep your pocket is, for my money if you do not want to use a computer then I would opt for an INNOUS ZEN, from what I can determine for sound quality the ZEN MK.II STD is the one to go for, the ZENMINI is £700 cheaper and has its limitations in processing capability, also to get the best out of it you either need to power is with a battery or an expensive £200-300 power supply. There are many other streamers out there and I am sure others on here can give advice on this. The thing is whilst a streamer is a neat and clean solution the question is how long before it becomes redundant or it fails. Most come with Solid State Drives(SSD) that's basically computer chips used to store data, no matter what anyone tells you they fail and they have a life and will fail. So another key question if the SSD fails can it be easily replaced/repaired, most manufacturers charge quite a lot above the actual SSD cost, and some won't even repair. Innous recommend have a USB drive plugged into a ZEN so it is backed up, as most others do. so the points I make here not only apply to a Innous ZEN but any other make of streaming device. If you look at other streamers then you need to consider what level of quality it can handle in terms of types of data formats and very importantly how high in Hz it can go.

KEY POINT no matter where your music is stored, Streamer with storage, NAS drive, external drive plugged into a computer or on the computers physical hard drive BACK IT UP regularly, at least once a week. Hard Drives fail whether spinning disk ones or SSD's. You should be backing up your computer at least once a week to an external hard drive mo matter what.

I have considered the ZEN at length but have concluded that using my MAC with a good Beresford SEG DAC and putting my digital music on a NAS drive is the most cost effective and leaves for future flexibility and change.

I am sure there are a host of other solutions out there but perhaps this might address some of the key issues, at least as far as I see and understand them.

Good luck

Adrian

FLAC is a lossless compression format so takes up less space than CD or wav format. Typically around a half the space though this depends on the music and the compression rate used.

Geoff

[struth]

my flac files vary between 250 and 450mb on average, judging by the ones ive looked at. A pc with external hdd and some software to run it all, and say a streaming service like tidal, then out to a decent dac is plenty good for most folk as doesnt cost too much. every stage onward adds a bit to it, and may or may not improve things. ease of use and back ups are also a consideration

[Sherwood]

my flac files vary between 250 and 450mb on average, judging by the ones ive looked at. A pc with external hdd and some software to run it all, and say a streaming service like tidal, then out to a decent dac is plenty good for most folk as doesnt cost too much. every stage onward adds a bit to it, and may or may not improve things. ease of use and back ups are also a consideration

I would say that you can get about 3 (ordinary) albums in FLAC format per 1gb of storage. That's about 3,000 albums per 1tb of storage. Or it would be, if I didn't have so many duplicates.

Luckily storage is so cheap these days. A 4tb WD Passport external usb drive is just over a hundred quid these days. No excuse for not having multiple library backups!

Geoff

[AJSki2fly]

FLAC is a lossless compression format so takes up less space than CD or wav format. Typically around a half the space though this depends on the music and the compression rate used.

Geoff

Yes FLAC files can be smaller than a CD in physical size, due to its method of compression. I remember a long argument with Bowers and Wilkins and their Sound Society site from quite a few members when B&W stopped supplying the original FLAC files over this very topic. B&W in the end relented and still make high quality FLAC available to download that has higher sampling rates.

Most of my FLAC albums are over 1.2Gb, at least double the data of a CD, which is where I was coming from. Strictly speaking CD's are not a lossless format either, as any Analogue to Digital conversion will result in loss of some information, how much is dependant on the sampling rate, the more samples taken the more data and the more accurate it becomes. But this is a whole can of worms debate that has been around for a long time. I however would say that high quality FLAC that is at a high sampling rate like those used in a recording studios is for all intent and purpose lossless, primarily because if replayed on equipment that is able to do resolve it back at the same sampling rates then human ear will not be able to detect the difference from the original analog that was played.

Just for clarity I should add this

"In professional studios, 24-bit PCM, at either 88.2 or 96 KHz is common. Recently, studios have been offering higher rates, too. If the studio does high-end or audiophile recording, you may see DSD files (specifically DSD-Wide).

In a small studio, you should be able to get CD resolution PCM (WAV) files. (16 bits at 44.1 KHz) However, you may want to record in something higher, like the 2x sample rate (88.2) at 24 bits. The 24 bits is handy if you'll be doing a lot of post-processing on the files before producing the CDs or the downloads."

[struth]

flac isnt lossy.

[AJSki2fly]

flac isnt lossy.

Apologies Grant, I have corrected my post I am confusing myself. It is and interesting topic though.

[Audio Al]

I tried and gave up , nightmare :eek:

[Yomanze]

I used to think FLAC and WAV files sounded different, until I did a real and properly controlled test using Foobar2000’s ABX plugin, and my STAX headphones. There was no difference, try as I might.

However, I did hear a difference between LAME ‘Extreme’ encoded 320kbps and FLAC. It must be said, you’d need a very high resolution system to spot it blind.

[StanleyB]

I can clearly hear a difference between FLAC and WAV. It's especially noticeable in the bass region. WAV goes far deeper.

[Yomanze]

I can clearly hear a difference between FLAC and WAV. It's especially noticeable in the bass region. WAV goes far deeper.

I used to as well, until I ABX tested it. :P

There’s a study somewhere showing that the output from FLAC is bit-perfect identical to the WAV file.

[struth]

i cant hear any difference either, but flac is better for metadata and uses less space

[jandl100]

Thinking of doing the same , however living in the sticks my download speed is about 6 Meg max, I've looked on the sites of some of the streaming services but can't find any minimum download speed information. Any advice on the impact such low broadband speeds would have on normal or higher resolution streaming ?

Thanks

I'm out in the sticks as well with about 6 meg speed at best.

I can stream 16/44 Qobuz and CD quality Tidal without any problems most of the time.
Sometimes in the evening the speed drops down or the internet grinds to a complete halt - and out come the CDs and DVDs!

System-wise, I do as Grant/struth suggested at the start of this thread and hook up my PC to my DAC with a USB cable. It sounds fab. I don't believe in streamer boxes - just another way to add colourations according to a friend of mine who tried many. They all sound different, apparently.

[Yomanze]

Satellite broadband is nowhere near as expensive as it used to be, £35 a month appears a good sweet spot. Worth it for those out in the sticks, 10 or 20mbps at these prices.

There is also the option of a 4G booster instead of cable, 4G is at least 15mbps averages across the UK, can get data only packages. Some serious antenna based setups here.

[anandhad]

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