Music on Hard drive - best method to play it

gurkin1979

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Hi All, I have now stored all my cds, audio onto a hard drive and am looking for the best way of being able to play it without losing too much audio and avoiding having to have a computer set up next to the system. I have what i still think is a decent system which i've never had to upgrade really....until now (set of Kef Refernece 3.2s, powered by a Meridian 557 power and a Meridian 502 pre and usually use a 508 24 bit cd player).

The 502 pre has only phonos or XLR inputs so am looking for something to bridge this gap. What can i use to read my flacs, WAVs, MP3s etc from the hard drive, with decent functionality and above all top quality sound. Will i need to fork out for a DAC. Is it worth uploading all the music onto something instead as i have quite a bit stored. Budget is variable - if the right machine gives me what i want then i'll pay good money for it.

I am aware that there are numerous places i could add this but it doesn't really fit into any specific thread i have come across yet (apologies in advance).

Any ideas would be much appreciate as it's been a while since i knew what was what and it seems everything's superceeded me!

n
 
A

Anonymous

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Is your music stored on the pc hard drive or a seperate NAS drive ? Dac would be obvious choice but you need to think about getting from pc to Dac to hifi ? Wireless streamers like Sonos would be one way to do it
 

omnibeard

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A better answer might be as follows...

...I just picked up a fairly old (2006 I think) Mac Mini for £90 from gumtree. It has optical out, so I lead this out to my relatively new Beresford Bushmaster DAC, which cost me about £190. The Mac has a pretty large HD, but I bypass that and connect to my NAS.

The Mac Mini is awesome - even with one that old I can stick pretty much any software I like on it. Even from the standard audio out it sounds fine, but via the DAC it''s pretty amazing. I use an old iPad that I had kicking around to control it all via a mixture of VPN and Apple Remote. You could pick up an old iPad for peanuts, or a new Android tablet.

Job done. At the risk of sounding arrogant (hello there CSE!), job done!

Have a lovely day y'all...
 

gurkin1979

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Thanks very much for this. Very kind and helpful. Am i right in thinking you can control the mini mac with the ipad? All the music is on a portable hard drive so guess i could run it through the minimac but will this lose any quality?

I was toying with the idea of using something like a Naim unitiserve - does anyone have any thoughts/knowledge on these or a waste of time?
 

relocated

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gurkin1979 said:
This is not an issue - i've previously been evicted for noise 'pollution'

Now there's something to be proud of. If you had been 'polluting' me, eviction would have been the least of your problems.
 

pgoody

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You should also consider a Naim or a Linn streamer. I just had a listen to Linn Majik DSM. It was really great. You could use it as a source or pre-amp directly into your power amps so it would not add a box if you sold the pre-amp. You can use your IPad / IPhone as a remote controll and stream from your Computer or a NAS. The connectivity of the DSM is really great. You get RCA, optical and HDMI inputs and even a phono stage. The IPad app works great.
 

gurkin1979

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relocated said:
Now there's something to be proud of. If you had been 'polluting' me, eviction would have been the least of your problems.

If you were my neighbour, sounds like i would have left anyway....

NOTE from MODS to ALL PARTIES - Let's leave it there now and keep further posts on topic
 

gurkin1979

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pgoody said:
You should also consider a Naim or a Linn streamer. I just had a listen to Linn Majik DSM. It was really great. You could use it as a source or pre-amp directly into your power amps so it would not add a box if you sold the pre-amp. You can use your IPad / IPhone as a remote controll and stream from your Computer or a NAS. The connectivity of the DSM is really great. You get RCA, optical and HDMI inputs and even a phono stage. The IPad app works great.

Thanks for this. I have a feeling a Naim ND5 XS sounds tempting although slightly worried about the DAC. Other "curve-ball" option i've just been told about is a Pioneer CDJ2000. I know it's not quite in line with the other peices here but i've been told they read hard drives / flash sticks. Seems like another option (with added bonus of being able to claim i can DJ or learn) although again i have no idea what the quality would be like. Seems like if these are the staple diet of numerous festivals and clubs round the world they're not going to compromise?
 

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