decreenisi

Thanks for your reply. Well for the life of me I could not find any way to adjust the volume from Chrome, whether the CCA was playing music or not. So, somewhat frustrated I instead went and got a Dragonfly Black USB DAC which I coupled to an older win7 laptop I had hanging around, loaded all my music to that, added foobar2000, connected direct to the hifi and it all works a charm. And I can organize my classical collection in ways that I find useful and not just by track/album/artist etc. So, sorted. But thanks for your help.

Changing the +/- button volume control provided by the foo_out_upnp plugin (range 0 to 50) has no effect on the sound played by the CCA. It remains the same, very low volume. The only way to get it louder is to turn up the volume on the hifi to a very high level I would never ever need to use with other sound inputs (cd, dab radio etc). And then there is a lot of hum and other noise coming out of the speakers. Basically the output from the CCA seems to be a very quiet sound that is for all intents and purposes effectively useless. I have only tried using the CCA with BubbleUPnP and foo_out_pnp with foobar2000. I am not aware of how to access a volume control slider setting for the CCA in Chrome or Google Home app.

Well eventually I was given a Chromecast Audio for Christmas. And I have it playing from foobar2000 with foo_out_upnp and the BubbleUPnP Server software. So ... thanks for the advice there. Quite a nifty little thing the CCA. Only problem I have is that the volume is low. It seems the volume level of music fed to the CCA is low and changing the volume within foobar2000 doesnt do anything. Only way I can see to get the volume to a reasonable level is to turn up the volume on the hifi which ends up with hum and speaker noise. I'm sure there must be a better way ... does anyone know how I can change the volume on the CCA or foobar through its foo_out_upnp plugin? Thanks

Firstly thankyou for the detailed replies. Re gapless playback - yes I do understand what is meant by that term. Though it honestly is no issue to me as I am used to (and expect) gaps between the movements of pretty much everything I listen to so any solution that doesnt implement proper gapless is not likely to cause me problems. I am used to the foobar interface and the fact that I can configure it reasonably well including a fairly good organisation with custom tags means I an quite happy to continue to use that. Seems to me that the most cost effective and relatively easy solution for my situation is with a chromecast audio, fed by foorbar2000 along with foo_out_upnp and the BubbleUPnP thing. Though if the chromecast is a upnp renderer, I'm not sure I fully understand why I need that in addition to the foo_out_upnp component. What is it doing that foo_out_upnp does not? I guess the BubbleUPnP can sit on the same PC thats running foobar? I am a software developer [though not in the audio field] and am quite interested in at least understanding whats going on under the hood as it were. Thanks

Not a problem at all. I prefer to have the gaps!

Thanks for all the advice. Off to get a chromecast...

Thanks for your reply. Distance is however an issue; the PC is a long way from the Denon system and besides I really dont want to have a PC in my lounge! So, some kind of networked solution is what I'm looking for.

Its a Denon DRA-F102DAB (dab tuner + amp), Denon DCD-F102 cd player, plus Denon speakers all bought bundled together, some 9 years old now.

This is my first post here. Would appreciate some advice on selecting a network audio player setup. I have an extensive classical music collection which I ripped to my PC and have spent a lot of time tagging to organise it as I wish. I use foobar2000 to play it on my PC (Windows 7) and that’s just fine. Everything is FLAC and I use lots of tags (composer, composition, movement, catalog, year (of composition), genre). I also use album artist for the performer(s) and duplicate the composer into the artist tag. I like to be able to browse by composer, or by genre, then sometimes also by performer as I have multiple recordings by different performers for many works. Now I want to be able to play this on my hifi system which is a mid range Denon system that’s a few years old now. Currently I don’t have any kind of network music player or software or whatever. So I guess I need some kind of network music player. I dont mind copying the files to a NAS or other dedicated music server on my network if I need to. I basically want to be able to browse my collection in a more sensible way than just by ‘album’ [which can sometimes be meaningless for classical] or ‘album artist’. So I need to be able to intelligently browse the collection and select stuff to play, use/setup playlists etc. Will I need to get a tablet/ipad or similar to act as the ‘remote control’ to browse my networked library and which then feeds the stuff to the player? I’m a total novice when it comes to this sort of thing. In terms of fidelity of music I am not looking for the ultimate in audiophile quality sound. Just reasonable quality without breaking the bank. The ease of browsing the library and selecting music is what matters to me most. If someone could suggest the kind of equipment/setup I should be looking at, without spending a great deal of money, that would be great. Would something like a Denon DNP-F109 do? This would match my existing hifi and apparently plays FLAC files. But its unobvious to me what kind of interface it gives for browsing your music collection. Any advice gratefully received. Thanks.