'Analog Dinosaur' succumbs to the joys of FBA : enter Raspberry Pi 2/IQ-Audio DAC+!!

[jandl100]

Jerry you can pay people to archive your music collection for you, they'll even come and set the streamer up for you! Might be a bit pricey though

Yeah, I seem to recall 50p a CD? - so that'll be £1500 please

[Marco]

Cheers... Gapless meaning that their is no gap between tracks... So, for example, Pink Floyd DSOTM plays through flawlessly just as it does on CD.

You just hear a slight click (through the speakers) when you first play an album, then a click when it finishes, otherwise it's the same as CD (one tracks just flows seamlessly after another), and you can set up your own playlist

I've also had no dropouts so far - the connection here between the NAS and Pi has been rock solid.

Marco.

[anthonyTD]

I agree,
Streaming can be very good from these little devices, a friend and i have been playing about with a PI system for about a year now, with excelent results, its amazing the performance available from such devices today for so little outlay compared to what would have been needed just a few years ago!
A...

[Soulman]

Yeah, I seem to recall 50p a CD? - so that'll be £1500 please

Man up then and get ripping! being serious for a moment I'd have thought a streaming solution woud be great for classical. tagging would allow you to search using different criteria deending on your mood (composer, classical style, conductor etc) and gapless would let the movements have their correct spaces apart (sorry if the terminology is wrong, I now now't about classical)....

[Marco]

I agree,
Streaming can be very good from these little devices, a friend and i have been playing about with a PI system for about a year now, with excelent results, its amazing the performance available from such devices today for so little outlay compared to what would have been needed just a few years ago!

Anthony, mate, you've just *got* to get one. Trust me, not only will it sound as good as (or if not better) than your CDPs, you'd be able to sit in your workshop, listening to music on your system, all controlled from your laptop!

If you didn't want to open up the partition doors in your lounge, and hear it through your main speakers, you could simply hook up a small pair of decent speakers, and wall-mount them in your workshop. Then have a wee shimmy-ette, to Sister Sledge, whilst soldering some capacitors....



....or perhaps not!

Marco.

[Tim]

Ha ha, for some reason I am finding reading this thread is making me smile, I can it seems stop banging my head against a wall now

With the rise of vinyl sales (I buy an LP at most gigs now), the rise of downloads and decline in CD sales and the availability of affordable, great streaming services, it would seem folly to me for a real music fan not to add this type of capability to their arsenal of playback options. It's part of music's future, embrace it fellas.

Enjoy

[The Black Adder]

Good olde Acorn, lol....

[jollyfix]

How to assemble a decent Pi streamer setup using PiDac.....

1. You will need: Raspberry Pi2, IqAudio PiDac+, PSU (one of these and a 12v 1.5A toroidal transormer, case big enough for all of the above, fast 8gb SD card, some free software (SD Formatter, Windisk32 Imager and Volumio).

2. Format SD card using SD Formatter.

3. Write Volumio onto the card using Windisk32 Imager, this is the card fully prepared for use in the Pi.

4. Attach PiDac+ to the Pi2, no soldering required.

5. Connect transformer to psu board, plenty of internet instructions but on the transformer I bought it was a case of wiring the two central wires together and terminating with heatshrink or tape and then positive lead to AC+ on the board and negative to AC-

6. Use an phone charger cable to connect from psu board to Pi2 (cut the unused end and connect to DC out on the psu board), from memory this is a mini usb connector which ground is the outer part of the connctor.

7. Put SD card into Pi2.

8. Power up and allow to boot.

9. Connect to router either directly using Ethernet cable or if in a different room to router/modem use powerline 200mpbs ethernet plugs (about £20 a pair and provide connection to router using your mains wiring). To mu mind ths is much simpler and more robust a solution than messing with setting wifi up on a headless Pi.

10. Connect to Volumio - type volumio.local into a browser (phone, tablet, laptop)

11. Connect to your storage and update library, this will take some time as th Pi2 isn't the quckest PC but i only needs doing when you add more music. Storage can be a USB drive attached directly to the Pi, a pc whch has the correct folders set to "Share" or a NAS drive. This last point will need more explanatin and I'm not the best person for this.

I'm not a computer expert, or big diyer but managed all of the above quite easily with a little reading. Hope this helps, Belloire hopefully will be along to comment sometime....

Thanks Des, great someone with a list of what to do etc. Unfortunately to me its like reading a foreign language. Looks like i need to become computer savvy before i can go down this route. Do i have the time/ want to learn what seems like a foreign language, No, but i would like to as i can see the benefits etc, just wish it was as simple as a CD player, plug in and play. Can you buy stuff like this and do just that?

[Soulman]

Thanks Des, great someone with a list of what to do etc. Unfortunately to me its like reading a foreign language. Looks like i need to become computer savvy before i can go down this route. Do i have the time/ want to learn what seems like a foreign language, No, but i would like to as i can see the benefits etc, just wish it was as simple as a CD player, plug in and play. Can you buy stuff like this and do just that?

Probably but the cost will be high, the best value is with something like vortexbox (mini pc setup to rip cd's in FLAC when it arrives) 2 powerline plugs (connect to your internet) and a Pi/PiDac with volumio installed. If someone will sort the Pi part out for you the rest is plug in, rip CDs, type volumio.local into a browser and update library...Voila! Streaming for under £500 that will hold 2000+ cds at full quality. A little more money will buy you a vortexbox server with more capacity.

Hope that reads more like a language you can understand? I've never searched for combined storage/dac solutions, the obvious ones are Devialet etc which are serious money

[Marco]

With the rise of vinyl sales (I buy an LP at most gigs now), the rise of downloads and decline in CD sales and the availability of affordable, great streaming services, it would seem folly to me for a real music fan not to add this type of capability to their arsenal of playback options. It's part of music's future, embrace it fellas.

In terms of the emboldened text, precisely! For me, the most genuine music fans own various music sources, able to access their favourite music in different ways - not just one... Now that I've added a streaming device, I now have five different music sources in total (Pi, CDP, T/T, tape deck and analogue tuner), all of which are used regularly.

Yup, vinyl and FBA are most certainly the future. CD is on borrowed time!

Marco.