Educate me please , Who has a quality dac / streeming setup ?

[mikeyb]

Fair enough. Like I say, I'll probably give it a whirl but not for a few weeks yet. How bad can it be???????

You can borrow my Pi/Allo Boss DAC combo once I get my SEG back from loan.

It’s what I’ve been using whilst the SEG is away.

Has Volumio 2 on it just now but I also have a mSD card with MoOde 4.2 on it to play with too.

[Bigman80]

You can borrow my Pi/Allo Boss DAC combo once I get my SEG back from loan.

It’s what I’ve been using whilst the SEG is away.

Has Volumio 2 on it just now but I also have a mSD card with MoOde 4.2 on it to play with too.

Cheers Mikey, ill grab a temp ethernet cable to make life easy.

Let me know when you're ready!

[Frazeur1]

I agree on the Innuos units, be it the Zen mini or up, one of the most easy units to get up and running, and providing you have an iPad or the like for the interface, simple to rip your cd’s, listen to Tidal, Radio Paradise or other internet radio stations.

I bought the Zen MK2 and haven’t looked back, after about 5 years of endless frustration with a laptop, NAS drive and iTunes. Every time something got buggered or hung up, it would be frustration for hours trying to figure it out. No more! Haven’t had a hiccup since the Innuos was slotted into the system. I am not saying it is the only way by far, yet it certainly is one of the better options, especially if you are not real computer savvy, or care not to become that way!

Like anything, one can chose to make things as easy or as difficult as possible....

[Edward]

Takes less than 15 minutes to put your Pi and dac together. Less if you don't have a case for it and Volumio 2 can be set up in 5 minutes once you've put it on a mSD card.

I really must do a video to show how simple it is, it's less fiddly than setting up a TT and less to break too

That would be great. Links to parts would be useful as well.

[Stratmangler]

Takes less than 15 minutes to put your Pi and dac together. Less if you don't have a case for it and Volumio 2 can be set up in 5 minutes once you've put it on a mSD card.

I really must do a video to show how simple it is, it's less fiddly than setting up a TT and less to break too

My Pi is just running LMS for me, so no DAC involved - putting one on would be another 5 minutes worth of work.
Just 15 minutes before I had a functioning unit is accurate - I could get BBC iPlayer radio channels playing, as well as the Radio Paradise FLAC stream. Getting it to read my NAS box was a right royal pain, and that took a good few hours of head scratching.
It goes without saying that I eventually worked out what was going on.

[struth]

Volumio2 read my network pretty quick surprisingly and I accidentally added my pc drive to the hdd on pi. Both has same music on. Doh. Still it doesn't seem to have caused conflict The spotty addin really only can be used as a play to In connect. It's supposed to show your playlists but doesn't work disappointingly as is the metadata usage. Shame as it could be great if fixed

[Stratmangler]

The Spotty app in LMS logs up "follow artist" in the web browser, and vice versa.
I don't use playlists, so I couldn't tell you how they react.

[struth]

Well I tried I got squeezelite running. downloaded and got lms running but that was all. couldnt get it to do anything else..

what we need is a blow by blow account of setup, including explanations of what the boxes mean.

[Jimbo]

🤣.

No way, I'd like a cheap solution like I did with the vinyl to phonostage link.

All that faffing with SUTs and Headamps made me want to jack it in. The mod Alan did to my MM phonostage, with the FETS, worked perfectly. Cheapest solution and simple in terms of my input. Sounds the best out of everything i tried too. And some of it was quite excellent.

Don't want to hear about XYZ being better. Been there, tried it.

Things may have been different if I hadn't misunderstood Tom and got that Bobs device Cinemag SUT.

That was excellent.

Anyway, I may try a pi.

I like your ethos mate and agree but I really don't think the Pi route or any of the cheap options will get you to where you would like to be sound wise. An Innuos server is the way to go with a DAC of choice on the other end. The server is more important for sound quality than you can imagine. I was gobsmacked at the difference it made. And it runs nice to use software for your metadata which is a joy to use and it doesn't fall over constantly.

[Sherwood]

I like your ethos mate and agree but I really don't think the Pi route or any of the cheap options will get you to where you would like to be sound wise. An Innuos server is the way to go with a DAC of choice on the other end. The server is more important for sound quality than you can imagine. I was gobsmacked at the difference it made. And it runs nice to use software for your metadata which is a joy to use and it doesn't fall over constantly.

I have been using my current Rpi player for nearly a year now, It took me 10 minutes to install and configure Volumio and I haven't had a problem with it in all this time. The only challenge I faced was finding out how to play Tidal through Volumio. That was resolved though this forum with very little effort. The only maintenance required is to check periodically for new updates and to install them. This is done without having to remove the sd card, through the Volumio browser. I should add that I have never had to connect a monitor or keyboard to set up the system. I know nothing about Unix either nor do I wish to learn it.

I am very impressed by the ease of use of Volumio. I noticed a recent upgrade has allowed me to add high bitrate web radio stations directly by typing in their url address. I have recently added most of the BBC 320k sites as well as some even higher resolution "audiophile" stations.

Geoff