davidt-uk

thansk for this tranz. i sadly have no idea what DSD Or UpnP are! i've now got JR working although I did need to fiddle with the settings for 24/96 as advised on their forums for an early dragonfly. thanks all

i downloaded trial versions of both last night and like the look of JRiver (and the sound of both) but sadly the theater view isn't available for the new mac version. damn! thanks for your help here guys, much appreciated

Thanks Musicophile i saw the free trials (what a great idea that is by both vendors, it gives great confidence) and I'm going to have a play over the weekend. Many thanks to you both for your inputs, much appreciated.

Thanks firedog that's great. I've had a quick look at both JRiver and audirvana and the JRiver player looks (at first glance) to be the little more snazzy of the two. It's a shame that Plex can't do this because it looks great displayed on a large screen TV (which acts effectively as my monitor). Any other suggestions as to what to replace Plex with greatly appreciated.

Hello folks I have been using a mac-mini plus 2 drobo DAS devices playing through a dragonfly DAC and powered B&O speakers very successfully for a couple of years. The music quality that I get is excellent, or at least "good enough for me". Once I set up my latest config I binned itunes for Plex because of the generally better looking interface and also the ability to play non-apple formats. I have a large music library which is a mix of FLAC and Apple Lossless files. Here's my question: I can't see a simple way of playing HDtracks 24/96 files using my existing configuration. The mac (or is it Plex?) simple outputs everything to CD quality unless I manually change the HDI settings every time. Is there a reasonable way of being able to play CD quality files, HD quality files etc with auto detection of the quality of the file? Do I need to change Plex for something else? Very grateful for any pointers please!

folks, thank you all so much for your help, i'm going to need a few days to digest all of this (well there is the office party to get over tomorrow!). many thanks again. i've never heard of a music streamer for example so i've got more reading to do!

oh, and the goals for the system: future-proofed (where possible) excellent sound quality. if there's a "need" to spend a real lot, themn i guess i'll find a justification, but if there's not, all the better!

hi there J, happy to change anything in the set-up, the macmini can always be redeployed elsewhere if there is a better solution, and i've had the amp and speakers a few years, so no real constraints apart from justifying the spend (which i'd rather do bit-by-bit) to my wife! thanks for your welcome!

i'm delighted to have found this great site a couple of weeks ago, i've read a lot of the articles and have learnt a lot! there's still some (fairly long) way to go though.... my current set-up is as follows: all music files are stored in apple lossless format (initially because of the file size issues but latterly because of the ease of metadata and look and feel with appletv-which i've now ditched) and all film files are at least 720p. external hard drives are lacie d2 quadra (two of with about 3tb across them) i've recently ditched appletv as we live in old house with a huge central chimney stack which sometimes, but strangely not always, kills wi-fi streaming. buffering is a pain, so we now have the high end mac mini connected to the 42" led sony tv. audio is straight from the macmini into an old but much loved beocentre 2300 playing through beolab 8000 speakers. i never knew that dac existed until a couple of weeks ago, so i haven't invested yet. the cabling is good stuff (from sounds heavenly in the uk) but i have no idea if i have the set up optimised. money, within reason, is no object. where should i start in perfecting the sound? i was thinking about a peachtree dacit (on the sad but true basis that it has good reviews but looks cool), what else folks? your help and assistance much appreciated david, sussex uk