How do you stream high resolution music files?

[Wardsweb]

What is your digital setup for playing high res music files? Do you have a preference for file type: WAV, FLAC, APE, DSD, etc?

I use a laptop running JRiver20, with an external 1T drive. I USB out to a Music Fidelity M1DAC that in turn goes to my preamp. Most of my files are in FLAC, but have some of the others formats too.

 

[Flint]

I use my Windows notebook PC running Wavelab using an Apogee interface feeding the DAC input on my preamp. I am a firm believer in reducing any an all opportunities for noise to enter the signal chain, so I attempt to keep the digital stream untouched or converted as much as possible. So, my intention is for the source file to get from the storage to the preamp in its original form without any form of processing or conversion.

 

[Huey]

Like a few others on here, everything is ripped to flac and then streamed to my Squeezebox via powerline adapters. Control the software with an app on my android.

 

[Haywood]

FLAC or WMAL to Squeezebox. I am actually in the process of re-working my digital music library so that I will have two identical directories, one in FLAC and one in 320kbps MP3 with a third separate director for music my wife bought of iTunes. I will present FLAC + iTunes to the Squeezeboxes and MP3 + iTunes to Plex.

 

[scubabob]

I use WAV rips with off the shelf Sonos equiptment ending with an optical connection between the receiver box and the pre-amp.

 

[PaulyT]

FLAC -> Squeezebox -> coax/optical SPDIF -> DAC or receiver.

 

[heeman]

WMAL through the SqueezeBox connected to Pre/Pro via coax.

 

[Wardsweb]

Seems a lot of you are using a Squeezebox. Are you controlling it with the remote, your phone or iPad?

 

[mcad64]

Seems a lot of you are using a Squeezebox. Are you controlling it with the remote, your phone or iPad?

If i am listening to my Squeezebox on the deck I use my phone. If I am washing dishes while listening I use my universal remote. If I am surfing the net while listening I use the web browser.

 

[heeman]

I am using the SqueezeBox Duet and using the Duet's remote.

 

[PaulyT]

I control the squeezebox either with the remote (duet remote in my den/main HT), or via logitech media server's built-in web page (when in my office).

I have also tried using an android app on my nexus 7 tablet, which worked fine too, but that was a while ago and I don't use that regularly.

 

[Deleted member 133]

What is your digital setup for playing high res music files?

High res source material (all discs): CD, SACD, DVD-A, and Blu-ray.
Played using any compatible device, but the typical go-to (in every room / set-up) is a Blu-ray player feeding a pre/pro or receiver via HDMI. With SACD I feed DSD over HDMI and let the processor / receiver do the work.
For streaming I stick to low res (192kbs MP3).

Jeff

 

[Flint]

I am surprised anyone would bother with hi-res audio if convenience is top priority.

I generally don bother with hi-resolution audio tracks unless I am devoting a significant amount of my time and energy on the listening experience. At that point something like convenience makes the ritual of the effort to be pointless.

 

[Huey]

I am surprised anyone would bother with hi-res audio if convenience is top priority.

I generally don bother with hi-resolution audio tracks unless I am devoting a significant amount of my time and energy on the listening experience. At that point something like convenience makes the ritual of the effort to be pointless.

Really? I spend way more time listening to music since I've gotten a squeezebox, and I feel it's because of a combination of convenience and sound quality. I like that I can change what I'm listening to on a click with my phone, whether I'm sitting in the sweet spot in the room, or casually listening on the deck, and still have the same quality as a cd.

 

[PaulyT]

It's a complex balancing act, depending on the order of priorities, and your devices. Personally, it's just as easy for me to use flac than any lossy format, for the most part. Even my portable listener (my iBasso dx90) uses flac, so it's simpler for me to copy the files over to it directly rather than transcoding, which takes a lot longer. But I'm not interested in having my entire library on the device all at once, and I can't fit anywhere near all of it (probably not even 10%) in flac format. But that's ok, I just periodically change the songs around by copying over different sets of files. If you want more songs available, then yeah transcoding to lossy may be the only option. Or, OTOH, in my car where it doesn't do flac, but there's a 1000 song limit on a usb stick. So I buy cheap 16GB sticks, transcode to medium quality mp3 (192 I think), and ~1000 songs fits about right in that amount of space. Quality is just fine for the car.

 

[Haywood]

Seems a lot of you are using a Squeezebox. Are you controlling it with the remote, your phone or iPad?

Any or all of the above.

 

[Haywood]

I am surprised anyone would bother with hi-res audio if convenience is top priority.

I generally don bother with hi-resolution audio tracks unless I am devoting a significant amount of my time and energy on the listening experience. At that point something like convenience makes the ritual of the effort to be pointless.

I mainly rip to FLAC so that I can transcode to any bitrate or codec I need for a given application without taking the hit of transcoding from lossy to lossy. I maintain a high bit-rate MP3 library, because I have a lot of devices that do not support FLAC. The ripper I use can create both FLAC and MP3 rips in one shot, which saves some work. Given that I have use cases for both FLAC and MP3 libraries, I might was well use them both. In my perfect world, I never want to touch a disc after I rip it.

 

[Deleted member 133]

I am surprised anyone would bother with hi-res audio if convenience is top priority.

I generally don bother with hi-resolution audio tracks unless I am devoting a significant amount of my time and energy on the listening experience. At that point something like convenience makes the ritual of the effort to be pointless.

Are we identical twins separated at birth?

Pretty much my exact thinking.

Jeff

ps. Having said that, I find everyone else's "solutions" and approaches to be quite neat. While there is some gravitation towards somewhat common approaches, that there is an almost limitless number of permutations and combinations just re-inforces my belief that "getting there" can be half the fun of this hobby - err obsession.

 

[Deleted member 133]

It's a complex balancing act, depending on the order of priorities, and your devices. Personally, it's just as easy for me to use flac than any lossy format, for the most part. Even my portable listener (my iBasso dx90) uses flac, so it's simpler for me to copy the files over to it directly rather than transcoding, which takes a lot longer. But I'm not interested in having my entire library on the device all at once, and I can't fit anywhere near all of it (probably not even 10%) in flac format. But that's ok, I just periodically change the songs around by copying over different sets of files. If you want more songs available, then yeah transcoding to lossy may be the only option. Or, OTOH, in my car where it doesn't do flac, but there's a 1000 song limit on a usb stick. So I buy cheap 16GB sticks, transcode to medium quality mp3 (192 I think), and ~1000 songs fits about right in that amount of space. Quality is just fine for the car.

Question: Is it really a 1000 song limit, or is it a folder level limit? I've reported elsewhere on my frustrations regarding my Sony BD players' 1000 folder limit and the problems that has created in streaming my song library to it, and how my simple solution / workaround is to break a given 1000+ level down into two sub-levels of not more than 1000 each. I've had way more than 1000 songs on a stick at any given time (in multiple folders / levels) and have played them without issue on a number of makes of vehicle.

In other words could the first level of your stick not contain multiple folders where the contents of each folder did not exceed 1000 songs?

Jeff

 

[Zing]

...WMAL to Squeezebox

WMAL through the SqueezeBox...

I'm unfamiliar with the WMAL acronym. Windows Media Audio Lossless??

I'm not a streamer nor a Squeezebox owner so maybe that's why I don't recognize it. Then again, maybe I'm just ignorant.