Advice on playing flac on HIFI

aterreno

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Hi all, I've a Sonos Controller, a Marantz PM6005, a Marantz CD6005 and a pair of Wharfedale 220, I am quite pleased with my little/medium range system, however I am getting more and more frustrated by the bad user interface of the Sonos, the poor integration with Spotify and the quality of the music. I'm also fed up with not owning my music, so I've decided to go flac.
I've tried Tidal but it doesn't really suit me, the monthly price is very high, the app is not great, I often listen to music offline (tube/rural areas), so I've started buying flac files from my favourite artists.

The Sonos seems to crash after a while (the controller itself) when playing flac, plus I am not sure if it keeps the quality high.

I also have a ZyXEL NSA325 which can host the music and I wonder what would be the best way to get the two systems to talk, in high fidelity with each other.

I did a bit of googling and I still can't manage to find a resonably priced solution, stable to get the whole system playing together.

Do I need a network player? Do I need to plug the NAS with the Marantz via USB? Do I need to connect the whole thing via Ethernet to avoid problems with the network?

Any help, pointers to articles much appreciated,

thanks
 

visionary

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You say you have a Sonos Controller - controlling what? Do you mean a Connect? What do you use to control it?

I find now that my Sonos is very stable with iOs devices but can be problematic if the broadband has a hissy fit. Network conflicts can make it freeze sometimes but mixtures of flac and alac and mp3 never seem to faze it.
 

Hifi Sound

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Hi,

The problem you're having with the sonos ( i'm assuming it's a Connect ) could be due to the wifi signal not being strong enough in that room and your Controller losing connection to the Sonos. You might cure this by hardwiring the Sonos or by adding a Boost to the router to improve the Sonos network.

As far as I'm aware you can't connect a NAS to the Marantz directly - correct me if I'm wrong - So, maybe your best solution would be to hardwire a Streamer to your router, something like a Blueroom NODE2 or The Marantz NA6005, both of which will play Hi-res FLAC from your NAS .

Barry
 

The_Lhc

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I use flac almost exclusively with my Sonos, it never crashes or hangs, if yours does it means you have network issues.

Additionally the Sonos Connect has been shown to be bit-perfect down to a pretty low volume level (it plays 16-bit through a 24-bit output and thus has 8-bits of volume control before it has to alter the digital signal in any way), so it isn't doing anything to the quality of the audio unless you have the volume right down (ideally you'd set the Connect to "Fixed volume" and use the amp volume control instead).
 

aterreno

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Yes a Connect.

I am also on their beta version (I've tried apple music some time ago and that was the only way to get it)

I have to say I've hacked the wifi settings (channels) yesterday and things started to go better.

I've an Asus RT-N66U, I can't recommend that router more, it's a brilliant device.

After those wifi changes things started to go better (or probably is the good luck of finally posting here?)

thanks for your reply
 

aterreno

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I am tempted to get NA 6005, I've read mixed reviews on Amazon though, sounds like it can play flac files that Sonos can't play, according to their website (32/44.48/88.2/96/176.4/192 kHz). Their app seems poorly designed but people use a custom one called ' bubble upnp' I might digg further into reviews (esp by professionals) of this device cheers
 

GustavAP

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You could investigate one of the single board computers running Runeaudio or Volumio. I recently started to use a Raspberry Pi 3 as a streamer via wifi or ethernet. It is a cheap option with a great user interface (I have only tried Runeaudio). Of course it plays flac and other file types, aditionally it has DSD-support (but I dont know if the DAC in the Marantz support it?).

So far I am happy with the integration of my NAS using Runeaudio. However if you would go for a Raspberry Pi and connect it to the Marantz PM6005 you would need a "hat" (this one https://www.hifiberry.com/digiplus) with coax and optical output to feed the PM6005.
 

Edbo2

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aterreno said:
Hi all, 
I've a Sonos Controller, a Marantz PM6005, a Marantz CD6005 and a pair of Wharfedale 220, I am quite pleased with my little/medium range system, however I am getting more and more frustrated by the bad user interface of the Sonos, the poor integration with Spotify and the quality of the music. I'm also fed up with not owning my music, so I've decided to go flac. 

I've tried Tidal but it doesn't really suit me, the monthly price is very high, the app is not great, I often listen to music offline (tube/rural areas), so I've started buying flac files from my favourite artists. 

The Sonos seems to crash after a while (the controller itself) when playing flac, plus I am not sure if it keeps the quality high. 

I also have a ZyXEL NSA325 which can host the music and I wonder what would be the best way to get the two systems to talk, in high fidelity with each other. 

I did a bit of googling and I still can't manage to find a resonably priced solution, stable to get the whole system playing together. 

Do I need a network player? Do I need to plug the NAS with the Marantz via USB? Do I need to connect the whole thing via Ethernet to avoid problems with the network? 

Any help, pointers to articles much appreciated, 
 
it would be the way to go but, If you have an iDevice, (which I assume you do since you're on Apple music) there's no version of BubbleUPNP availlable for you. It's a great app and I've been using it for years but they don't make an iPhone/iPad version. So you're stuck with the Marantz app which is not that good. No better than the sonos app in any way. But if you abandon Apple music and go back to spotify, the NA6005 support spotify connect which mean you can play music in the NA6005 directly from ths spotify app.

For locally stored files, Marantz is supposed to launch a new app soon. Hopefully it will be compatible with the NA6005 and still hopefully, it will be any good.

By the way, the NA6005 DOES support DSD64 and DSD128.

Hope this helps.

Nicolas
 

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