StreamFan

Adding Airplay to receiver with Rasberry.... Adding AirPlay to a Receiver without an Apple TV - Raspbmc and the Raspberry Pi - Scott Hanselman

Chris, I just wanted to mention in particular that, to me, the most important parts of your CAPS design are: Bit perfect playback, headless JRiver service via remote JPad, NAS centric, and USB research on SOtM tX-USBexp card. Silent parts are critical as well, but I had silent parts before but without knowledge of clean USB, remote control, or a BitPerfect path and therefore was lacking. Other parts may come and go, but these core aspects actually fundamentally changed and liberated my digital experience and increased my enjoyment of digital audio fidelity. No other place has made it clear how to achieve this result, end to end, which seams important to the success of digital HIFI. So thank you most sincerely for that. Cheers, SF

Hi, The graphic card memory is managed by the card, and so is not part of the OS memory, and doesn't count against the 32bit 4GB limit. Also, IE 9/Chrome/FF now use the CPU power of video cards to offset CPU cycles, meaning the main CPU isn't doing the drawing for browsing, so it does help in that regard. Also, the card will draw more power, which goes against the CAPS requirements. See these test results, Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks : AMD Radeon HD 6450 Review: Caicos Cometh. There are other similar fanless cards. Search Amazon. The card would likely require a 100w power supply instead of 60w per the spec, which can be had for $25. I have not added a fanless graphics card to an Atom processor board. Someone else, perhaps Small Green Computer can confirm if this particular board takes it. But for other boards with available PCIexpress slot, it works great.

I understand that CAPS doesn't include video in the requirements, but there was a call for improvements for different needs, so haven't seen any mention of fanless video cards, such as EAH6450 Fanless Video Card, which work well for 1080p video to monitor. They do work silently. A headless music server is very useful, but can be useful to to have it connected to monitor for visuals or selections or whatever, especially now that JRiver has HD TRacks built in, surfing and having the video card offload that work is good. cheers, SF

Try How to optimize Windows 8 on old hardware | PCWorld. For Win 7 on Atom chips, it helps to disable Aero, set background to color with no pictures, fix swap file size, and disable unneeded services.

Great design. Great case. Regarding USB 3.0, I'm wondering if the usefulness for having 3.0 might be bandwidth for reading 24/192 flac files from a stick, since StreamMagic 6, and MF M1 CLiC seem to have trouble reading those files from USB sticks. While most usage of this server for me would be via NAS access, it would be useful on occasion to put in a USB stick for files. Someone comes over or whatever. Is there a difference between USB 2 and 3 related to the reading of 24/192 flac files. Again, Thanks for the design. cheers, SF

Hi Chris, This is a great design, and incredibly helpful. Thank you. Not just for the design, but your process helped in understanding many other things about bit perfect streaming. For anyone needing either a portable, or a really low cost solution, one option is Win 7 Home w/ TighVNC remote viewer installed which is free installed on a mini. I've got a Dell Mini10v, dual core Atom, which is fanless running as a music server feeding an Onkyo USB DAC which drives a Musical Fidelity A324 DAC via optical. It is Configured to run with the lid down. You can pick one up on eBay for $80-$130. Upgrade from XP to Win 7 for $60, and for less than $200, you've got a pretty good portable, wireless, silent music server. Add SSD and JRiver to suit. It was the articles on this site that enabled me to effectively use a mini this way. SF

Hi Chris, This is a great design, and incredibly helpful. Thank you. Not just for the design, but process helped in understanding many other things about bit perfect streaming. For anyone needing either a portable, or a really low cost solution, one option is Win 7 Home w/ TighVNC remote viewer installed which is free installed on a mini. I've got a Dell Mini10v, dual core Atom, which is fanless running as a music server feeding an Onkyo USB DAC which drives a Musical Fidelity A324 DAC via optical. It is Configured to run with the lid down. You can pick one up on eBay for $80-$130. Upgrade from XP to Win 7 for $60, and for less than $200, you've got a pretty good portable, wireless, silent music server. Add SSD and JRiver to suit. It was the articles on this site that enabled me to use a mini this way. SF

Hi Chris, In your review you mention that UPnP worked well with the CLiC, also that you enjoyed streaming internet radio. Could you clarify for me, Were you (Or are you able to ) streaming radio via UPnP to the CLiC? Or was the CLiC getting the stream direct? Thanks for a very informative review. SF