Jumbosausage

Hi guys, bit of a strange post but I was wondering what people’s thoughts were on my current setup. The reason I ask is that I literally have nothing to compare it to. I recently moved into a new house and decided to get a decent (at least I hope) setup. I purchased everything blind and the only thing I do have to compare it to is my previous system of an Ifi audio Idsd DAC going into a pair of Focal solo6be studio monitors from 5 years ago. My only source is digital (flac) coming from a fanless NUC pc running Jriver. NUC > Mercury USB cable > Ifi iUSB 3.0 > Gemini Power/data cable > Chord Qutest > Elac Navis ARB 51 powered speakers. I can’t seem to tell much difference between these cables and standard USB cables but the iusb3.0 certainly seems to make a difference, it’s hard to compare the Qutest to my previous DAC as I’m obviously using different speakers. I wish I had a few more pieces of equipment to test things but I’m running it blind really. Overall tho im really happy with the sound and my friends are blown away when they listen to it. Just curious to what you knowledgable folks think. Many thank.

I'm in the UK and my parents live in Spain, I've shared my Plex media library with them and they're able to view all my media from over there, music, movies and TV Shows. I also stream my entire music library to my phone using the Subsonic app. Pretty sure I didn't pay anything for either of these solutions when I set them up although it was a few years ago now.

From a sound quality standpoint, I'd say no. A NAS has many other benefits though. A centralised storage location accessible from any device on the network or over the internet. You're also likely going to have better redundancy depending what RAID/ZFS config you use. That said a NAS should never be used as a backup. I personally keep a copy of all my music from the NAS on separate hdd's stored away from my home.

I ended up going for this build, it's been perfect so far. http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/custom-built-ready-to-ship-intel-nuc-pc-3xs-n5-silent-fanless-pc-intel-core-i3

I run FreeNAS and it's absolutely rock solid. It's quite an expesive route to take due the the hardware requirements that ZFS demands. But ZFS really is the best file system for storage. Here's my build. Fractal Design R4 Supermicro X10SL7-F Xeon E3-1230 V3 Kingston 2x 8gb KVR16E11/8 Corsair RM 550w 10x Hitachi Ultrastar 7K300

I have a pair if Focal Studio Monitors and I'm basically wondering if it's possible to use a smart tv in the living room as a music streamer? I was going to purchase a mini pc but I'm wondering if I really need to do that. I have all my music stored on a NAS and can access it via the XBMC app on the TV. I also have an ifi iDSD dac so would like to output from the TV to that and then onto the speakers. Is this possible and what if any are the downsides as opposed to getting a dedicated PC for the job? Thanks.

I've had these speakers a few weeks now and can say they're everything I ever wanted from my music and more! I've also added the iFi iTube into the mix and it really complements them well. It just adds that little bit of warmth to turn them into the perfect speakers for home listening. I'm not a pro and don't do any mixing/editing etc and I'd played around with which route to go, either the hi-fi or pro monitor route. I'd auditioned many speaker and amp combo's from the hi-fi stand point and out of everything I had chance to listen to I preferred the Proac 118's paired with a Naim Nait 5si. That said when I compared them to the Pro Monitors I just couldn't believe what value to performance could be found in comparison. I actually almost preferred the Focal Alpha 65's which came in just over £400! However in the end as I went up the Focal line it became clear that both the CMS line and Solo's were in a different league, the latter just edging it. To my mind the Solo's at £1400 are an absolute bargain!

I use FreeNAS and the plugins available there. It all works in the back ground and automatically downloads TV Shows and Movies that I add to my watchlist on IMDB. It uses the following programs: Sickbeard and SABnzdb for TV Shows Sick Beard - Internet PVR for your TV Shows SABnzbd.org : Home of SABnzbd+, the Full-Auto Newsreader Couchpotato and Transmission for Movies https://couchpota.to/ Transmission Plex media server then automatically scans the download folders as new programs/movies are added. Basically whenever a new episode of your favourite show has aired it will automatically be available on Plex. It's without doubt the ultimate solution.

I built my own running pfSense. Well worth checking out. pfSense is an open source firewall/router computer software distribution based on FreeBSD. It is installed on a physical computer or a virtual machine to make a dedicated firewall/router for a network and is noted for its reliability and offering features often only found in expensive commercial firewalls. https://www.pfsense.org/getting-started/ https://forum.pfsense.org/

Thank you, I will look into both of those. I've actually never heard of either brand. How do those speakers compare to the Kef LS50's?

Yes exactly that, my budget is £2000 for speakers and an amp to pair with the iDSD and Itube. No idea which route to take.

Thanks Chris.

Great stuff I'll have to give this a go then, thanks. One last question, as you can probably gather I'm only just getting into audiophile grade equipment and I haven't really played about with DSD files or even anything above the CD's that I ripped into 16 bit 44.1 khz flac files before putting them onto my NAS. I see that some of these network media players available from the likes of Linn and Naim state that they upsample all files to ( i forget the numbers) but would this be a negative for going the route I plan?

Currently as mentioned I'm just connecting up a laptop to my DAC in the living room when I want to access the media on the NAS but what I'd like to do is install JRiver/Foobar inside a virtual machine on my Hyper-V server. That could run 24/7 and act as the media server. So if I built a small windows PC and connected that to my DAC in the living room I'd just need to install JRiver on that machine and configure it as a renderer? Once configured I could leave the renderer PC headless and just control everything from a tablet which would connect to the VM media server? I've have a powerline connection in the living room so I would hook up the pc to that but would this setup work via DLNA if setup as outlined? I'm fairly new to JRiver and I haven't played about with it much at all. Great guide by the way, and thanks for putting it together, it's really helpful.

Here's where I get confused, could the media renderer be another small fanless PC running windows for example? what would this small form factor PC need to be a dlna renderer and would there be any disadvantage to this rather than one of the network media players from Naim, Linn etc? I noticed when reading about some of these network players that they have up sampling capabilities i take it this wouldn't be possible on a windows PC? I have a FreeNAS system with all my music stored on it and at present I just hook up my notebook to the system downstairs when I want to play from NAS. This laptop has a cifs shared drive to the NAS. I'm wanting to get away from this and be able to control everything from a tablet but I'm unsure if i need to buy a network player or if i could save a few £'s by making a small form factor PC.