Utter beginners guide to digital music set up needed please !

[steveinspain]

So, I have a pc with lots of music stored in WAV format. I am soon to have a Caiman DAC. I also have a stereo.
I have a really bad internet connection, making listening to or downloading online music difficult.
I want to listen to the music on my pc via the stereo, and know nothing about squeezeboxes and the like.

What do I need and how do I set it all up ?
Is there some sort of guide, or can anyone help me out here ?
I do not need music all over the house, as I have a volume control and no neighbours to worry about but some sort of random play feature would be wonderful (my iRiver HP40 is wonderful for that when travelling) so can anyone tell me, in basic terms what does what, and why buy this or that.

Anyone willing to put in the time it takes to educate one as far behind the times as I am ?

[The Grand Wazoo]

Good post, Steve. Someone needs to write the definitive guide to this so it can go into the library.

[steveinspain]

Lordy - praise indeed from the man who has made me chuckle with his forum name description - having had the album way back when I had hair growing all over my head and chin, I never got the meaning of the title !
Lets hope someone can come up with some basic explaination of what and why - I certainly need the help !

[The Grand Wazoo]

Haha, yes a Wazoo is actually an arse!!
The computer audio thing is certainly a must have item for the forum & so are lots of other 'back to basics' items, but Nick, Barry & I can't do 'em all!!

[alb]

This is exactly what some of us requested some time ago.
The problem is............ that it will be quite a commitment in terms of time, for someone to actually do this thoroughly.
Which, i suppose is the reason nobody ever did it.

[steve dixon]

what do you need?
well it sounds like you have everything, you just need to connect it up.
you don't mention a home network so i'll skip that bit for now.

1. put the computer somewhere near your amplifier.

2. plug a usb lead into the pc and put the other end into the caimen dac.

3. connect the dac to your amp with two regular phono leads into the aux input on the back of the amp.

4. switch on the pc, dac, and amp.

5. select the usb option on the dac.

6. select the aux on the amp

7. open your player of choice, if you don't have one download itunes for windows.

8. itunes will ask if you want it to search for music, click yes.

9. adjust the volume slider, upper left, to about halfway.

10. adjust the amp volume to about 25% usually about the 9 o-clock posn.

11. select the album you want and click play.

12. you can now adjust either itunes or amp volume till your happy.

13. sit back and enjoy.

the only problem you may have could be between step 6 and step 7 where you may have to alter the sound output settings on the computer to enable usb output, but usually it's automatically done by the computer, which is described as 'universal plug and play'.

i hope this helps and i haven't missed anything critical.

good luck
steve

[Alex_UK]

2. plug a usb lead into the pc and put the other end into the caimen dac.

This needs to be an "A-B" USB lead - the sort used to connect a printer usually - something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-PRO-H...5646959&sr=8-3 would be ideal, IMO.

[Stratmangler]

Just to cloud the water a bit, what about Squeezebox, Airport, Soundbridges and what have you ? All of which are server or PC based.

You then have the wonderful decision to make of "which format do I choose to rip my CD's to" ?

I personally choose FLAC - I cannot distinguish audibly between a FLAC file and a WAV file - I do not like MP3 because I can hear difference, and the MP3 is always poorer.

Another reason for my choice of FLAC is that my Squeezebox SB3 deals with it as a native format.

If you use Linn product to steam then you need to get to grips with Twonky Media, which is, I have read (no personal experience, so I could be well off the mark) a bit of an arse to have to play with.

Dunno what Naim want to play with, but they seem to be acknowledging that physical media is the direction that they too are moving away from.

Point of my post is just that there are many ways to skin a cat, and that by the time someone reads this the information in this posting will probably be out of date.

Chris

[Alex_UK]

Fair points Chris, but Steve already said he has lots of music stored in WAV format, or are you proposing he converts it all? If not, pretty much any player will cope.

If the PC is near enough to the amp, then from my experience, a streaming device (Soundbridge in my case) is only advantageous for a clearer display, and remote control - but depending on room/equipment layout, worth considering. (Though I also remember from other posts that for Steve, money is a bit tight (same here, bud!) and so might be best avoided?)

Personally, I ended up with Twonky Media by default - it was the only server software I could find that could cope with diverse clients such as the Soundbridge, PS3, XBox 360 and other PCs/laptops - can't say I have touched the server software since I installed it 2+ years ago, set it up with the preferences I needed and it has just got on with it since - just my experience though, others may have had issues of course.

Not having a go Chris, just my opinion/experience and by no means the only valid one - as you say, many ways to skin the proverbial kitty!

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Ok ok, this is getting a bit mixed up

linn, with twonky is easy (from experience) certainly no harder than geting bit perfect output for a USB dac!

If your getting a caiman then you want to sort out bit perfect output from the pc (pc direct via USB into caiman)

I use foobar with aiso support (aiso being the thing that suplys the bit perfect USB output)

Does this help!I'm not really sure if I'm answering that right question