Off topic, I'm a bit of an audiophile, but NOT the type that believes in magic
I picked up this Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb Model B kit and it is my new music server.
Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Starter Kit - 8GB RAM : Electronics
www.amazon.com
FYI, this Raspberry Pi solution has
- Ethernet
- WIFI
- Reads FLAC, and every other format I'm familiar with.
- Runs USB drives directly
- Runs shared drives on the local network
- Streams from just about any service
- Has client software by browser so anything with a web browser can use it.
- Has mobile apps for Apple, Android phones.
- Has applications for Windows, Mac and Linux
- Very quiet
- $119 ( for the specific kit I purchased )
- Volumio is free ( unless you subscribe to their service for Tidal support etc.. )
This kit is $119 plus tax and Volumio is free unless you want to subscribe to their My Volumio which has native Tidal support among other things. Given the cost of most streaming hardware this is a real bargain.
This solution relies on already having a good DAC in your stereo system.
The kit popped together ridiculously easily. It's serving music directly to my OPPO 105D's DAC and most of my music was ripped as FLAC files. The music quality is excellent. Since it is simply transferring data asynchronously to the DAC buffer it has no sonic footprint what-so-ever.
I went by the book for installation.
Plugged the small fan into 3.3V vs 5V so it is quiet.
Downloaded the SD card association formatter and did a full format just to verify all the sectors on the 32Gb micro SD card. (time consuming and probably unnecessary)
Downloaded Etcher to my computer to flash the card.
Downloaded the Raspberry Volumio image.
Flashed the Raspberry Volumio image to the card using etcher. ( 30 seconds )
Plugged newly flashed SD card into my Raspberry Pi.
Moved this into my den and connected it to my Oppo 105D DAC by USB cable and powered it up.
It created the WiFi Hotspot "Volumio" automatically.
I connected to that Hotspot with my Smart phone and logged in with the password provided.
The configuration was extremely easy.
Set it to English.
It recognized my OPPO USB 2.0 DAC immediately.
I connected a 2Tb USB music drive using a powered USB Hub just to make sure.
Then Connected it to my local WIFI.
It asked me about any NAS drives, but I don't have one setup yet.
Last it asked me for an optional Paypal donation and was done.
It rebooted and immediately started to index the music off the USB drive.
I can now browse to the Volumio server off of any computer connected to my WIFI.
The temporary Hotspot is gone.
I downloaded the Android Volumio app and it immediately connected to my local Volumio server with zero setup.
Then I started to play my music using the Volumio app. As long as I'm connected to my local secure Wifi at my house or am on the wired network I can control it.
That was pretty easy and it sounds great.
I'm going to move all my music to a 6Tb drive on my network that is running 24x7 that and in another room and use that for all of my music so this has a tiny footprint.