Connections (Spotify as source)

[admin_exported]

I have been bitten by the spotify bug. However at the moment I can only listen to spotify on my laptops internal speakers.

What I would like to do, is listen to it via my home cinema system (appreciate its not as musical as a dedicated stereo hi-fi system, but thats one of my constraints).

I have read that if I want to connect my laptop to my amp, I must buy a dac to go between them as this improves the sound massively. Sounds fair enough.

However I would rather not 'hard wire' my laptop in as I will still need it to work on (in another room most likely).

I have read about airport express (as an aside i have an apple mac upstairs as well) and that would seem to give me the option to play the music wirelessly. But it doesnt seem like a dac comes into the eqation here.

Pardon my niaveity but is there a way I can use a dac (for improved sound quality) and still connect wirelessly to it? Or must I choose between the two options?

 

[professorhat]

The Aiport Express' output doubles up as both an analogue (standard 3.5mm connection) and digital (Mini TOSlink connection) output. So you can either use the AE direct into your Home Cinema amp via a standard 3.5mm to RCA phono lead, or you can connect it via an optical cable direct into your Home Cinema amp and use its built in DAC, or connect to an external DAC which then connects into the Home Cinema amp - it's completely up to you!

For Spotify, you'll also need to add in a copy of Airfoil ($25) which will allow you to stream any sound from your Mac / PC to the Airport Express.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks very much professor. Very helpful indeed. Can I just paraphrase to confirm my understanding?

Assuming I want a seperate DAC and dont want to use the one in my amp (the assumption being a seperate DAC will be "better" :-

I could buy a seperate DAC (like the CA DAC Magic) and connected it up to my home cinema amp?

I would then also buy airport express, which would connect into the DAC via an optical cable(and into a powerpoint)?

Than as airport express only works with itunes I would need a copy of Airfoil which is a piece of software (no hardware) installed on my laptop or mac (or indeed both)?

And I'm away?

 

[Dave_]

Spot on! Airfoil just needs installing on mac/pc

 

[professorhat]

Yup, that's it. I'd be dubious on whether the DacMagic would be an improvement over the DAC in your Pioneer amp though - maybe one to discuss with RS and see if you can get a loan.

 

[Anonymous]

Brilliant. So £79 for airport express (I assume direct from apple is the only place to get them) & circa £25 for airfoil ($40 for both mac & pc software versions) and I'm in business. And if I want to try the CA DAC later I can get a free trial from Mr Sounds?

One final question (I hope). My amp isnt connected into an ethernet cable of any sort. Its simply used as an amp. HMG isnt set up either as I had no idea how. Will I need to set up my amp to connect with airport express?

 

[The_Lhc]

No, you just plug the AE's optical cable into the amp like any other source.

I set up HMG on my krp-500a the other day. It's bobbins, horribly slow, especially for video files.

 

[professorhat]

You can get the Airport Express from other places (like Mac Warehouse) but I don't think it's much cheaper (if any) once they've added delivery and VAT.

 

[John Duncan]

professorhat:I'd be dubious on whether the DacMagic would be an improvement over the DAC in your Pioneer amp though - maybe one to discuss with RS and see if you can get a loan.

Agreed - the limiting factor will be the amp itself rather than its DAC - even if a DACMagic was better than the built-in one, your amp isn't good enough stereo-wise to take advantage of what would most likely be a subtle improvement.

But there's always the loan route if you want to test the theory (if RS will let you, I know one person did once but that was having bought an 840c pair at the same time...)

 

[John Duncan]

Hang on, didn't realise you had DLNA. It would be cheaper, if you take the time to experiment, to look for a DLNA server for your PC like JamCast. Haven't tried it, but as I understand it you should then be able to hook your receiver into it, and have it play whatever is playing on th ePC at the time (or indeed media files from your hard drive).

If your receiver isn't close enough to your router to run a Cat5 cable, then a cheapish router or wireless access point should do it.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes my amp is a constraint. But one I'm prepared to live with for now.

(I did consider attaching a stereo amp and cd player to my existing amp but my original thread on how to do it didn't get one single reply so I assumed my question was too difficult.)

No I didn't realise I had DLNA either. I always stand like this

I am assuming DLNA is some sort of communications protocol that my amp has?

Okay so the money side of it is coming down. Thats great.

But I need to connect my amp (which is in my living room) to my orange broadband router (which is upstairs in one of the bedrooms)? And I do this by buying something called a wireless access point (or another router)?

Apologies for sounding like a total idiot but unless something has wires I struggle.

 

[John Duncan]

Digital Living Network Alliance

Yes, it means that network enabled products can talk to each other, so if you have a DLNA server on your PC, the receiver can recognise it and read its content (always) or just accept a stream (not always, so research required).

Jamcast appears to do the latter by offering the option of a virtual soundcard, which means once your receiver is talking to your PC, select that option and anything you play on your PC will appear by witchcraft on the Pioneer.

And to connect the Pioneer to your network, yes you need a wireless extender/access point like this - it'll talk to your router and you just use a short cat5 cable to plug in the Pioneer. Just to confuse the issue, an Airport Express can act as one, so you could get one of those and work out which is better!

 

[professorhat]

barnsleydave:(I did consider attaching a stereo amp and cd player to my existing amp but my original thread on how to do it didn't get one single reply so I assumed my question was too difficult.)

This is also easily achieved using the pre-outs on your Pioneer. I'll try and dig up the thread which walks you through it.

EDIT - this one will do!

 

[Anonymous]

JD & the Professor. Thank you. You are stars. In fact I'll award you 5 stars each.

It would be nice if the site had the concept of stickies then often searched for queries like connecting stereo amps to HC amps could be easily found. Anyway that wasn't a grumble (well maybe just a tiny one).

Incidentally If I did attach a stereo amp, would I still attach the second router to my HC amp, or to the stereo amp?

 

[professorhat]

If you were to attach a stereo amp to the system then I would definitely look into the Airport Express / external DAC route. Basically the network / DLNA features are only available to your Home Cinema amp, so you couldn't run this through to your stereo amp from the Home Cinema amp.

The best bet to take advantage of a stereo amp would therefore be to stream the music from your Mac / PC to the Airport Express, run this via an optical cable into an external DAC which would then connect directly into the stereo amp via standard RCA phono connection i.e. your Home Cinema amp wouldn't be involved at all in the process.

The trouble with all of that is I think to improve the performance, unless you've already got a decent stereo amp tucked away somewhere, you might have to spend quite a significant amount over and above the cost of implementing either the network solution or the Airport Express unit connecting directly into the Pioneer's optical input solution...

 

[Anonymous]

So you pay your money, you make your choice.

Thats fair enough. Thanks Prof

 

[Anonymous]

Me again.

Sorry if this is all like teaching a 5 yr old to read.

I have just downloaded and installed Jamcast.

If I buy one of these

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/545667/art/d-link/dap-1160-open-source-linu.html?srcid=8421&Partenaire=twenga&CodePromo=oui&var=03024269cd50f0534eebafef43e5f83c&aftrack=TVRBeE1UczFPRE01OzEyNTQxNTUyNDE7dmFyPTAzMDI0MjY5Y2Q1MGYwNTM0ZWViYWZlZjQzZTVmODNj

Are my next steps to connect the d-link to the amp? (I assume the instructions will tell me what goes where, and I dont need any additional cables?)

Then to run the jamcast software which should then see my network and connect to it?

 

[John Duncan]

Pretty much, yes. You'll need a short ethernet cable to connect the D-Link (or other extender - there's a thirty quid one by Belkin on eBuyer, for example).

Get jamcast running on your PC, and then I imagine there will be a network setup routine for the receiver - you'd best consult your manual for that one...

 

[Anonymous]

JohnDuncan:Pretty much, yes. You'll need a short ethernet cable to connect the D-Link (or other extender - there's a thirty quid one by Belkin on eBuyer, for example). Get jamcast running on your PC, and then I imagine there will be a network setup routine for the receiver - you'd best consult your manual for that one...

Yes,

Before Jamcast, my Yamaha RX-V3900 could "see" my PC via Windows Media Player. I installed Jamcast and it appeared as another device next to my PC on the amp's menu, although it is just a piece of software on the same hardware as Media Player. I didn't need to do anything special for Jamcast. If I were you, I would follow the instructions to connect your amp as per the manual. Don't worry about Jamcast for now, it will most likely appear as an option once your amp is on the network.

I just browse into Jamcast on my amp and have all the playlists, podcasts, etc. More importantly, the Virtual Soundcard option is one of the playlists. This is the one which plays everything the PC is playing. The sound is a couple of seconds behind the PC's sound as it needs to convert format, then stream, etc. You will turn down the sound on your PC once you have it going through your amp. You still need to use the PC to control what you are listening to though...it will play through a playlist no problem, but if you want to chop and change and search for things in Spotify, you need to be on your PC to do that - same as you do just now - and whatever comes out of your PC speakers will come out of your amp's speakers.