Both come with an optical Toslink SP/DIF output that you can just plug into your receiver or outboard DAC for musical enjoyment.
MUSICSERVER GAME TV
Let’s take an Airport Express or their Apple TV as an example. And I personally love the simplicity of just having a laptop with all my tracks ready to play. Many people have mixed opinions about Apple but these guys make some really great products for streaming music and/or video. You can also pick up other great streaming clients on Amazon such as the well known Sonos system.
For less than 300 Euros, the Squeezebox was a damned fine deal for sure. However, many audiophiles were just fine with the standard. It has a very nice sounding DAC chip from Texas Instruments and decent digital outputs for an outboard DAC of cour choice. The Squeezebox could basically handle virtually any audio format up to 24 bit / 96 kHz lossless. If you find a pre-owned unit on eBay – don’t miss it. God knows what made them stop making these fantastic little devices. I believe the audiophile market wasn’t large or proditable enough to sustain production. Unfortunately, it has been discontinued for unknown reasons. I believe you can even hot-plug an external USB drive to the Pioneer player for instant playback.įor a long time, the Logitech Squeezebox has been my first choice. You would need to store your music either on a NAS drive connected to your wireless home network.
MUSICSERVER GAME ANDROID
On top of that, it can be remote controller by iOS or Android Apps for your smartphone. It comes with audiophile ESS Sabre DAC chips and supports virtually any file format. Many external DACs already come with USB or Firewire inputs which comes in handy if you want to use your Laptop as the music source.Ī great example and my recommended choice (if you do not want to fiddle too much with tech) is the fantastic Pioneer Elite N-50 network music player. Manufacturers like Denon, Marants and Pioneer already offer a wide range of music streaming products and you might want to check them out.Īudiophile listeners probably want to go with a dedicated external digital-to-analogue converter (also known as “DAC”) which can be connected to virtually any preamp or integrated amplifier. On top of that, they come with high-quality DAC chips for exquisite audio quality. Instead, they can talk directly to your network infrastructure and offer a more pleasing user experience with remote control etc. These don’t need a computer near your audio system. If all of the above makes your head spin and you just want a simpler solution, look out for streaming media clients. Check out my recommendation of a cheap Chinese DAC with the Wolfson WM8740 chipset for under 50 Euros.įortunately, some manufacturers have started adding network protocol support into their products making it even easier If you don’t have digital inputs on your receiver, you are going to need a DAC (digital to analog converter). Your receiver would then translate the incoming digital signal into an audible analog music stream. Using a USB to SP/DIF converter which can be purchased on Amazon, you would hook up the computer to any AV receiver with a set of digital inputs in the SP/DIF format (look out for coaxial or optical Toslink inputs on the back of your amplifier or receiver). This could be a power-efficient small computer or laptop located next to your amplifier. Once you’ve got the data back-end sorted out, you need a digital “front-end” for your stereo system that will produce actual sounds.įor this, you basically need a receiving device that can read from your music collection on the network. For example, my Apple Airport Extreme comes with a USB port that can be used to hook up practically any external USB harddrive. Better safe than sorry.Ī cheap alternative is to utilize your wireless router’s USB port. Regardless of the approach, I’d recommend planning for the worst. So you would either need to duplicate your primary hard drive manually or add additional disks to your NAS. Most people forget that they need a solid backup strategy in place. But the core principle is that you need ample hard disk space for your entire music library. If you want a more sophisticated solution, you could put your music on a NAS (Network Attached Storage).
MUSICSERVER GAME SOFTWARE
This can be simple external USB hard drive connected to a computer running some sort of server software (filesharing protocol etc.). A music server typically consists of a data back-end which is where you store your actual music files.
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