Best way to go CDless?

[Kevin Stephens]

I've been reading the other thread with interest. My CDP is playing up intemittently stopping part way through playing disks, some times a lot, sometimes not at all (on the same disks) but really annoying. My options are to pay to get it repaired, buy a new deck or take the opportunity to go for some sort of hard drive storage.

I was thinking of some sort of hard disk storage with all my CDs copied at full resolution, via an internal CD drive, or from my PC via USB memory stick. If I got a good quality DAC (tempted by the MF M1DAC) would I notice any reduction in quality (I particularly like classical and subtle female vocal etc) wiht my existing amp, speakers and interconnects. This would give me the option to buy more CDs and also store downloads via my wifi. It would also be nice to use my TV to show a menu from which to choose my music.

I'm not really interested in moving my PC to the HiFi

What are my options and how much would they cost?

 

[Kevin Stephens]

Just looking at the Dell Zino, would look nice with the MF DAC, combined cost a little under £1k, how would this compare wiht a £1k CD player?

 

[Messiah]

I think it would compare very well.

I was also considering similar options for a source and the Zino looks good. I would also consider the MAC Mini.

In the end I settled on using a laptop. Still gives me a display in case the TV is in use and is used to show photos when not employed for music. I can also sit down and sort playlists out etc. All-in-all I find this the most flexible.

 

[PJPro]

How is that Zino cooled? Looks like it might be noisy to me!

 

[PJPro]

Although I've read a review where it reckons they are near silent?

 

[spockfish]

Buy a good NAS, buy a Squeezebox. The NAS (I would suggest a Synology) goes somewhere were you can't see it and hear it, the Squeezebox can be hooked up to your DAC. Rip your CD collection to FLAC and...

User experience is great, and you never look back.

Initial investment is not that cheap, but with this you have a good solution.

 

[Anonymous]

Depends on money I guess,
but Sonos with all CD's ripped to a hard drive or NAS in a lossless format. + DAC if required.
would be very good.

 

[Anonymous]

or if you are feeling flush, how about the Olive?

 

[Kevin Stephens]

Spockfish and Brittondave

You've both got me going to google to try and understand every other word of your posts and I'm still non the wiser! I think some of what you are suggesting is a multi room system?? Something that is of no interest to me. The positions of my couch and GS10s are comfortably fixed

 

[idc]

If you do not want to use your PC as the source, then you need a music server type set up. That involves a hard drive to keep the music files on and a server to send the files to a DAC to then convert into analogue for the amp. Some server systems include the DAC as well.

All of the suggestions so far are various forms of music server system. Think of it as a computer that only deals with music (and video) files.

 

[Anonymous]

Kevin Stephens:
Spockfish and Brittondave

You've both got me going to google to try and understand every other word of your posts and I'm still non the wiser! I think some of what you are suggesting is a multi room system?? Something that is of no interest to me. The positions of my couch and GS10s are comfortably fixed

Ok understood about the Sonos.

This is the olive I was pointing out.

http://whathifi.com/Review/Olive-4HD/

Cheers

 

[Fisherking 145]

If you don't want to have your computer on all the time, then you are going to need a NAS, Network Attached Storage, to store all your copied CD's. There are many makes of NAS, Synology is one, I use a Windows Home Server by Hewlett Packard. I have ripped all my CD's to this using software in FLAC format, and I then use a Squeezebox Touch to 'read' these files wirelessly. The Touch is connected to my amp, and uses it's own DAC to convert the files to 'music'. You could attach the Touch to a seperate DAC, which in turn would be connected to the amp.

It is a little confusing, but this forum, and Google, is a great resource. There are many ways to get the job done, it's about which one suits you, and your budget. Feel free to ask away, there are many on here that have already gone down this road.

 

[Anonymous]

You stick your cd in, in burns it onto it's hard drive in a lossless format. Then you can use it's menu system to chose whichever track you want to and it plays them with very good sound quality.

 

[AEJim]

Well, to try and help simplify the process a little...

You could download a free CD ripping program as can be found here - I've been using it and it works fine. Read the instructions, put CD into PC and rip in the format you prefer (I've been using .wav for exact 1411kbps CD resolution but this is hefty on storage with tracks coming in at around 40meg each).

Then it would be best to put those tracks on a portable disk drive as back-up, just in-case. These can be found very cheaply, i.e. - Here

Now as others have said this can be streamed from using various methods but personally, for top quality (not using hard drive which can be fairly "noisy" in the audio process) I would then put those files on a large USB stick as can be seen here - not the cheapest and smaller sizes are far more cost effective, the 64gb one would hold around 1600 tracks at the maximum resolution size I mentioned previously but if compressed in a "lossless" format you could probably get at least 5 x that amount on there, if not more. Quality should not suffer much at all and there may well be no noticeable difference between the two (I have only compared the wav files to 256kbps mp3 and there was a noticeable difference).

You could then plug those into a USB-equipped DAC of your choice and into your system or even trade in for something like the Olive system mentioned, a Naim UnitiQute, Arcam Solo Mini or even a Marantz M-CR502 if you wanted to save a bit. We've been using a UnitiQute in the office and in pure sound quality terms it's fantastic, only running out of steam a little at very high volumes on larger speakers in a big room, for home use it should be more than adequate. If I buy a new system to replace my AVI Lab Series gear then that will be what I get and how I've said is how I will store my music!

 

[Kevin Stephens]

Thanks for the responses

Definately more bother than it's worth compared to a maximum (if I have to have the transport replaced) of £250 to repair my excellent CD player. I'll be buying those quaint ol' silver coasters for a long time yet.

However I've come across a hidden cost; while my CD is in for repair I've been listening to Radio 3 on my tuner via the Chord Chorus 2 interconects I normally use for my CD. The sound is now incredible, especially when compared to R3 from digital virgin cable and original Dacmagic. Tempted to buy another pair of the Chorus 2 when the CD comes back...

 

[Bloviator]

AEJim:
... for top quality (not using hard drive which can be fairly "noisy" in the audio process) I would then put those files on a large USB stick... then plug [it] into a USB-equipped DAC of your choice.
I really like the idea of storing music on a USB memory stick and playing it back through my hifi system without using a computer. Could I do that by plugging a USB stick straight into a high quality USB equipped DAC? How would I then browse the files and select albums for playback? I am thinking that the DAC would need to have its own media player software and display built-in, like the Naim UnitQute.
How well would it work if I plugged the USB stick into a media player and then connected that to DAC with an optical cable? Presumably, it would have to be a media player without its own hard drive in order to obtain the best quality.

 

[manicm]

Bloviator:AEJim:
... for top quality (not using hard drive which can be fairly "noisy" in the audio process) I would then put those files on a large USB stick... then plug [it] into a USB-equipped DAC of your choice.
I really like the idea of storing music on a USB memory stick and playing it back through my hifi system without using a computer. Could I do that by plugging a USB stick straight into a high quality USB equipped DAC? How would I then browse the files and select albums for playback? I am thinking that the DAC would need to have its own media player software and display built-in, like the Naim UnitQute.
How well would it work if I plugged the USB stick into a media player and then connected that to DAC with an optical cable? Presumably, it would have to be a media player without its own hard drive in order to obtain the best quality.

I'm thinking something like the Naim DAC, where you can connect a USB stick or iPod. For the USB I would guess it would come with control software, perhaps the optional n-Stream.