Thought I'd share something a bit unusual I've been doing with my hi-fi setup.
I've got a FiiO R7 that I mainly use as a streamer, connected to a Hifi Rose RA180.
A while back I started looking for CD players and started wondering whether I could connect a USB CD drive to the R7 and actually play CDs through it — use the R7's DAC for the conversion and skip having a separate CD player on the shelf entirely.
Turns out it is possible. I wrote an Android app called Redbook Player that reads audio CDs via USB and plays them bit-perfect — 16-bit, 44.1kHz PCM, no resampling, no processing, straight from the disc. It does a MusicBrainz lookup for track names and cover art, so the now-playing screen looks proper.
The setup is quite simple:
• FiiO R7 (or any Android device with USB)
• A USB CD/DVD drive (I use an Apple Superdrive but have tested it with several £15 drives from Amazon)
• That's it
Insert a disc, press play, and it sounds exactly like you'd expect — because it's doing exactly what a CD transport does, just via USB instead of SPDIF.
Also does a few other things:
• Chromecast streaming — sends the bit stream to any Cast device on the network. I've been using this from my phone with a CD drive connected casting to a Chromecast Audio into my main amp. Bit-perfect PCM over the network, directly from the disc with some digital shenanigans. Feels very retro-futuristic with the cover art and track names showing up on the phone after inserting a CD, and music being streamed from the spinning physical disc.
• Rip to FLAC — one tap, the disc gets ripped to lossless FLAC with embedded tags and cover art. Handy for archiving discs you'd rather not spin every day.
It's free to try (first 3 tracks of any disc), with a one-time unlock for full playback. No subscription, no ads.
Would love feedback on what devices it works on, and any it fails on. Fiio, HiBy, Eversolo, Shanling or any others.
Main issue I've encountered so far is power delivery - you may need a powered USB hub/splitter or similar for some combinations of device/drive. The Fiio drives them all directly connected though, as do some but not all phones.
Search for "Redbook Player" on Google Play to install.
No plans for an iOS version - USB is too restricted on Apple devices to use the methods the Android app implements.
Happy to answer any questions about how it works.
I've got a FiiO R7 that I mainly use as a streamer, connected to a Hifi Rose RA180.
A while back I started looking for CD players and started wondering whether I could connect a USB CD drive to the R7 and actually play CDs through it — use the R7's DAC for the conversion and skip having a separate CD player on the shelf entirely.
Turns out it is possible. I wrote an Android app called Redbook Player that reads audio CDs via USB and plays them bit-perfect — 16-bit, 44.1kHz PCM, no resampling, no processing, straight from the disc. It does a MusicBrainz lookup for track names and cover art, so the now-playing screen looks proper.
The setup is quite simple:
• FiiO R7 (or any Android device with USB)
• A USB CD/DVD drive (I use an Apple Superdrive but have tested it with several £15 drives from Amazon)
• That's it
Insert a disc, press play, and it sounds exactly like you'd expect — because it's doing exactly what a CD transport does, just via USB instead of SPDIF.
Also does a few other things:
• Chromecast streaming — sends the bit stream to any Cast device on the network. I've been using this from my phone with a CD drive connected casting to a Chromecast Audio into my main amp. Bit-perfect PCM over the network, directly from the disc with some digital shenanigans. Feels very retro-futuristic with the cover art and track names showing up on the phone after inserting a CD, and music being streamed from the spinning physical disc.
• Rip to FLAC — one tap, the disc gets ripped to lossless FLAC with embedded tags and cover art. Handy for archiving discs you'd rather not spin every day.
It's free to try (first 3 tracks of any disc), with a one-time unlock for full playback. No subscription, no ads.
Would love feedback on what devices it works on, and any it fails on. Fiio, HiBy, Eversolo, Shanling or any others.
Main issue I've encountered so far is power delivery - you may need a powered USB hub/splitter or similar for some combinations of device/drive. The Fiio drives them all directly connected though, as do some but not all phones.
Search for "Redbook Player" on Google Play to install.
No plans for an iOS version - USB is too restricted on Apple devices to use the methods the Android app implements.
Happy to answer any questions about how it works.
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