Playing digital audio through a 1990s amplifier

[Adrian Caspersz]

ok, have a look at

I have both of these,

[Caecilius]

That sony HAP-S1 would match up with my other hifi components nicely. If there was something a bit more modern than 2015 at a reasonable price point then I'd be interested.

This is a strong contender. Probably without the screen attachment though because I'll probably control it remotely somehow.

Probably not for me because I think they'll all tie you in to their own streaming service.

From wikipedia: "The Logitech Media Server software is written in Perl". I know Perl quite well and I wouldn't use it for a product like this.

I saw that Techmoan has a sonos device so I'll look at those as well.

[Caecilius]

I was a software engineer in the 1980s and still maintain some open source projects to keep my hand in so I think I'll be fine.

[Caecilius]

Thanks, I'll take a look.

These look similar in concept to the audioquest dragonfly I use for headphones, and I find that superb when compared to PC audio output.

[Caecilius]

That certainly looks like a useful piece of equipment. Not sure what the quality will be but for £40 it looks like a bargain.

[Caecilius]

My music files are stored on a QNAP NAS with backups on onedrive. I have a copy on a USB stick for the car. I've got about 300 albums which seems like a big collection to me, but it easily fits on a USB stick after conversion to MP3 or AAC.

[Alan J. Wylie]

I've got an MC preamp with A2D/USB plus normal RCA phono output for digitising my vinyl, the same company does D2A

The cheapest with USB input is over £200, though.

You'd also need something like a Raspberry Pi to do the navigation. One of those with a DAC from

would be a lot cheaper, you can get a bundle including the RP for about £100

[John Rumm]

Something like a Chromecast Audio would be an easy solution if you can still get one (they were discontinued) - you would just need a lead to adapt from the 3.5mm stereo socket on it to a pair of phono plugs.

You could use a normal Chromecast with a box to extract analogue audio from its HDMI output (£10 on eBay etc), or you could go for something like an Amazon Echo dot which has an analogue audio out (3.5mm jack again).

I use Plex on my network to glue all the bits together. I run the client on my phone, and a server on my NAS. I can call up a list of music in multiple ways (i.e. by artist, track, album, date, style etc, and ply one or many. The phone just sends out the instruction but does not take part in the playback - the chromecast devices or the TVs reach out to the server themselves to do that.

There are also various Raspberry Pi options - but the standard audio output on that is not really HiFi - so you may need an add on DAC to get good results.

So details on how I setup plex for PVR use here:

But it is also my main audio playback platform as well.

[John Rumm]

What home assistant setup are you using? (it will probably be easier to stay in the same family)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ok, then if you want to D-I-Y it a Pi Zero W, running an apache/PHP web server for user interface equipped with a hifiberry DAC will be all the hardware you need. I wrote some glue code that does a nifty bit of loading files and streaming them via the correct output programs - so that e.g. flac works as well as wav and mp3.

Web server is fairly crude and still being developed, but backend code works for a tree structured archive of playable files, and the radio works as well

Very happy to pass it along if you want to play with a Pi rather than fit an 'off the shelf' solution.

Add a keyboard and monitor top make it self contained...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I know PERL just well enough to know I wouldn't use it for anything

[Caecilius]

That equipment looks really nice.

£200 isn't a limit, just the sort of money I thought I'd need to spend based on what I paid for my audioquest dragonfly for headphones about five years ago.

I wouldn't want to go back to PC sound card output quality after knowing what a decent DAC sounds like with a good set of headphones.

Yes, I've seen that DAC mentioned earlier in this thread. It's the main contender at the moment.

[Caecilius]

I have HA on a raspberry pi controlling some zigbee lights, switches and temperature sensors. I've not done anything with audio yet.

[David Wade]

I have my music on a NAS box which is also a DLNA sever. You can use a PI as a DLNA server if you don't already have one e.g.

The great advantage of the DLNA server is that it can deliver music to many devices. I have found most Smart TVs have a DLNA player, both my LG and Panasonic SMART TVs just find the music.

My wife recently bough an Alexa and with the "ourjukebox" skill Alexa will play the music. This means I can ask Alexa to play any albumn, song or artist.

All Alexas have outputs that can feed the HiFi so you could get the cheapest Alexa and use that to feed the HiFi. That would also give you access to the BBC Sounds applications and several digital radio stations you won't get on an FM Tuner (if its digital there are fewer).

Dave

[Caecilius]

That looks like an interesting device. I was going to dismiss it as not suitable for my use case, but the specs are actually quite good. Not sure how good the DAC will be, or whether I'll hit some google lock-in, but for around £35 I might just buy one to try it - there are a few around this price on ebay.

I didn't know the Amazon alexa stuff could do that. Again not sure if I'll run into lock-in or what the quality is like but the idea of having voice commands is attractive and it's only £30 (I've already got home assisatant so I think I can integrate it).

Maybe I should look at plex. I only use my NAS for storage because it's old, but I've got a few raspberry pi's running things already so another one for a home media solution might be worthwhile.

Yes, I've seen the add-on HiFiBerry DAC2 Pro which looks decent.

Thanks for your input. It's very useful.

[D.M. Procida]

Yes. I have a built and use a number of devices - about five, I think, link to photos below - that do just that. I use:

• Raspberry Pi (including 2, Zero and newer)

• Volumio as a player

• ALLO Boss or Boss Mini as a DAC (I've also used a pHAT DAC, and IQaudio DigiAMP+; the latter includes an amplifier)

I copy all my digitised music to large USB flash drives plugged into the Raspberry Pis, but you can also use Airplay or play music from a network server, or services such as Spotify.

I listen to a lot of Internet radio.

I control Volumio via a web browser on a computer on my network. On one of the devices I've wired up an IR receiver diode, and can control the device - play/stop, volume up/down - directly using an old Apple remote controller I had with an iMac years. You can also use a touchscreen connected to the Pi itself, amongst other ways of controlling it.

Volumio is the best software I've found as a player, but to be honest, I can still find plenty to fault with it.

Some pictures of them:

. I used to be able to share a link to a folder of photos that worked as a gallery, but I can't seem to find that any more...

As you can seem someone gave me a packet of Japanese patterned paper.

The bamboo box is a toothbrush holder from IKEA. Otherwise, I just use stiff cardboard boxes (the last one is the actual box the ALLO Boss DAV came in) and art mount card.

Daniele

[Andrew]

Have a browse through Richer Sounds website for a DAC

However, a 30-YO amp might pop its electrolytic caps at any moment so you might want to consider a new amp that has digital and analogue inputs. Something like a Denon M39DAB mini could be ideal.

[Caecilius]

Thanks for the offer. I might well take you up on it if I decide to go down that route.

[Andy Burns]

I've had a couple, one has got itself confused and I cant get it to complete a factory reset properly, try as I might.

Are there? I've been on the lookout for a replacement for some time, they usually sell for £50 secondhand or closer to £100 new, beware there are hong-kong scammers, I once ordered one and eBay themselves cancelled and refunded it a few minutes later, presumably having triggered something on their systems?

Google are "a bit funny" about allowing sending audio-only streams to a video+audio chromecast, some apps allow it, others don't.

[RJH]

Yes, I use one of those connected to a Synology NAS and controlled with Volumio on an iPhone/pad, very impressed.

Had a few 'stutters' using wifi - never got to the bottom of it so use ethernet and all fine.