Very New to all this please help complete novice

[True Blue]

Hello all,

Whilst I am relatively well versed in Home Theatre, and CD / Amp type audio, I am looking at upgrading my seperates system. Now the quandry is do I spend £800 on the CD player I want OR really like the idea of putting all of my music on a Buffalo Terastation (or equivalent) only problem is I have not got a clue how to do this. Would it be possible for me to glean some of the vast amounts of knowledge out there from you kind people on the following?

1. I am assuming that I plug the Terastation into my network and my PC will "see" a storage device?

2. Again I assume that I then use my PC to RIP in lossless to the Terastation, however my son has an I pod and wants i tunes on the PC?

3. What equipment do I need to send the music from the terastation to the hifi amp? Does it have to feed into an external DAC?

4. If I have understood the tech specs, my PC does not need to be on whilst accessing the terastation so how do you scroll through and choose songs?

For information Hifi and terastation will be in seperate rooms about 6m apart, if that makes any difference.

Sorry that these questions are probably very basic but I really do not know anything about the subject. Thanks in anticipation of your replies

 

[True Blue]

Can anyone help / suggest alternatives, maybe the buffalo is not the way to go. Just like the idea of having all my songs easily availabe.

 

[Ant8519]

My advice is first do not rush!

You have a few options all with various pro's and con's. You will need to do a fair bit of research....

1. Squeezebox Duet - attach the wireless transmitter to your amp and the seperate handset gives you an ipod like controller. Should work with a terastation attached to your wireless network (but check on slimdevices forum and consider alternative nas or netbook systems) and can also be attached to a seperate dac to improve sound (however the supplied dac is excellent)

2. Sonos - similar to the above but sets up it's own wireless network and can therefore be used with cheaper nas drives. Also can use external dac.

3. Mac mini - buy a mac mini and attach it to your amp either wired via a dac or wireless via a dac and airport express. Set it up initially using your current pc/laptop and have it set to rip automatically when you put in a cd, either to it's own hard drive, a usb attached one, or a nas. Control itunes either via a tv screen or better yo using an itouch.

Three options all of which can give you a antastic sound and can easily better any cd player based only on the quality of the dac you choose......

If you need any clarificationjust ask.....

Ant

 

[True Blue]

Right been doing a bit of digging / research. Can someone tell me if I have the right end of the stick or not?

If I buy a 1Tb NAS storage drive I can store an uncompressed / lossless copy of all my CD's.

I can access the NAS by looking on my netork places?

Then I need to buy a squeezebox or sonos to link the NAS with my amp, and navigate with the hand held remotes with the PC off as they will access the NAS via the local network?

Eventually buy an external DAC, or would I have to buy one straight away?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[True Blue]

Ant,

Thankyou. I think this is going to be this "years" project!! cant wait to see the wife's face!! No doubt I will be posting many more stupid questions in the meantime.

Must admit to be quite taken by the third option

 

[Ant8519]

I went for the SB duet and am very happy with it, however the stup of the nas drive was a pig of a job. The duet is designed to work with a pc and using a nas is possible, but takes some setting up. On saying that if I could do it again I would use an eee pc nas drive (which is coming to market soon, see this link http://www.eeextra.com/news/asus-eee-d200.html) as it is perfect for the job. The duet costs about £250 and the eee box will be at least £300. This compares well to a sonos and a cheaper nas.

The mac setup is £400 ish for a mini, £165 for an itouch, then £1 - 200 for extra memory (depending on whether you buy mac branded stuff!) and at least £150 for a dac that will measure up to the sonos or duet, then £65 for an airport if you want wireless.

So the duet is the cheapest and can work initially with your laptop/pc which reduces your initial costs further. The mac is dearest and also requires much setup as it is not designed to be a music server, whereas the duet and sonos are. The sonos costs quite a bit but can be used with a cheaper nas and crucially is meant to be dirt simple to setup.

Now you really have to consider what file types you are using and will use and also how to integrate that with the ipod!!

ps - regarding storage size - if you rip lossless to flac reckon on about 300mb per cd, or maybe 3cd's per gb therefore 1tb should accomodate 3000 cd's lossless. But don't forget to back it all up...