I have had my CDs stored on a NAS drive fora number of years now and have used and have tried a number of ways to listento them:
Mac Mini: Initially I just fed the mac mini directly tomy pre-pro using the HDMI connection and ran Plex as my music handler, but thenPlex changed their database system and I could never get it to do what I wantedfrom then on.
Logitech Squeezebox Touch: This is the next method I usedand to be honest is still my preferred way of distributing music to thebedroom, kid’s rooms, office, pool area & exercise room and the apps (Ipengor Squeezepad) are great apps. However for my main listening area I felt as ifI was missing something in terms of quality. Add to that the fact that it is nolonger available and nothing lasts forever and so the hunt began again.
Mac Mini à SchliitBifrost: Doing some research I decided to go back to a mac mini (new one as myfirst one had died) and feed an external DAC. I chose Audirvana as the handlerfor the music and to be honest this worked very well and the quality of theaudio was certainly a significant step up from the SBT, but I was not so happywith running everything via iTunes. Sowith the upgrade to Audirvana 2.0 I thought maybe this was it, nirvana? Wellnot really, No easy way to control it except to revert to playing it viaiTunes, yes I tried the Screens app on my iPad mini, but that really is not asolution. I think it will be a while till an app is developed
HAP-Z1ES: So here we are with Sony’s one box (wellnearly) solution and I have to say that on an overall basis I am very happywith it. It took about 36 hours to transfer my about 15,000 tracks, I do notconsider this to be too excessive and certainly not a deal breaker, just anexercise in patience, none of the other methods (above) have had the musicinstantaneously accessible, they all have to build databases to work from. Ihave a very stable wired network and pretty good tagging of the tracks and Ihad no problems at all everything transferred, album art better than 99%successful and for those that did not the ability to search for the cover(using Google) and attach it all from within the app is great. The sound, Ihave to say this was a bit of a revelation, very very good would be my commentfull of detail at lower listening levels, little or no edginess at higher ones.I do have a few niggles; when the app goes to sleep and you want to access theplayer again, it can sometimes take a while to connect (similar to the DirecTVapp which I also find a bit frustrating). Other apps I use to control hardwaredo not seem to have this reconnection delay. Random play (or rather the lack ofit) is definitely a missing element for me. Sure there is SenMe, but I wouldactually like to choose the selection of tracks that I would like to randomlyplay, for instance from one of my playlists. The last one is the Tracks choice,this just appears to be an expansion of the albums not an alphabetical listingof all the tracks, which seems a little strange. I use Roomie Remote to controla lot of my “stuff” and hopefully they will expand their app to include two waycontrol of the HAP-Z1ES.
Have I reached the end of my search? Certainly for themoment I would say yes, I hope that Sony is responsive to people’s requests interms of updating the player software and the app software as this can alwaysbe a problem with Megacorporations as opposed to those smaller enterprises thatdevelop software as almost a hobby.
