Soldato
Is anyone else running a dedicated music server?
I toyed with a shuttle 'media server' many, many years ago, but soon tired of having a noisey PC in the living room. In the last few years I've built up my AV system, but I've been living in the hifi wilderness until now.
Over the years I'd amassed many cd albums, however short of ripping them to MP3 to play in the car, I've had no way to play this music in the house (other than with a laptop or pc, not ideal). This wasn't an issue until the birth of my daughter where I found I was spending more time at home (and sometimes in need of a little chill time). She's only 4 months bless her, but I've already found that she enjoys music and we now enjoy it together. To any new fathers looking for suggestions; AC/DCs 'Back in Black' will take her from meltdown to being sound asleep before the track has finished
So I decided I wanted to make use of my CD collection and started looking for a decent cd transport to hookup to my AV amp. After much reading i soon realised that I wanted an audio setup better than what my AV equipment would offer. I also decided I actually wanted rid of the hundreds of Cds that were getting dusty in the garage, not keep them for another 25+ years.
After reading many reviews and threads about so called media servers, I came across this:
https://youtu.be/RlCG2fK-abo
I like the idea of good sound quality and it appeared to offer what I wanted, so I thought I'd try it. To get the Zen to work with 'my' existing setup, I needed another couple of pieces of equipment. I now have:
I spent all last night hooking this stuff up and I'm rather impressed so far. Albums are ripped to Flac for the metadata, but I could have done it to wav. Pop a CD in the Zen and it rips it automatically with little fuss.It takes a while to do your entire collection, but better than sitting at a pc clicking buttons.
You can use your tablet or smart phone with an app (ipeng or Orange squeeze I think) to control music playback directly on the Zen, rather than use it to stream to other equipment. So far so good.
It's early days, I haven't had the chance to really listen to different types of tracks and see how I feel about the sound. It might need some tweaking but I'm looking forward to chilling at home over the coming days/nights/weeks
I toyed with a shuttle 'media server' many, many years ago, but soon tired of having a noisey PC in the living room. In the last few years I've built up my AV system, but I've been living in the hifi wilderness until now.
Over the years I'd amassed many cd albums, however short of ripping them to MP3 to play in the car, I've had no way to play this music in the house (other than with a laptop or pc, not ideal). This wasn't an issue until the birth of my daughter where I found I was spending more time at home (and sometimes in need of a little chill time). She's only 4 months bless her, but I've already found that she enjoys music and we now enjoy it together. To any new fathers looking for suggestions; AC/DCs 'Back in Black' will take her from meltdown to being sound asleep before the track has finished
So I decided I wanted to make use of my CD collection and started looking for a decent cd transport to hookup to my AV amp. After much reading i soon realised that I wanted an audio setup better than what my AV equipment would offer. I also decided I actually wanted rid of the hundreds of Cds that were getting dusty in the garage, not keep them for another 25+ years.
After reading many reviews and threads about so called media servers, I came across this:
https://youtu.be/RlCG2fK-abo
I like the idea of good sound quality and it appeared to offer what I wanted, so I thought I'd try it. To get the Zen to work with 'my' existing setup, I needed another couple of pieces of equipment. I now have:
- INNUOS ZEN mk3 2TB server
- Cyrus 82 DAC Qxr integrated amp
- Beresford TC 7220 router
I spent all last night hooking this stuff up and I'm rather impressed so far. Albums are ripped to Flac for the metadata, but I could have done it to wav. Pop a CD in the Zen and it rips it automatically with little fuss.It takes a while to do your entire collection, but better than sitting at a pc clicking buttons.
You can use your tablet or smart phone with an app (ipeng or Orange squeeze I think) to control music playback directly on the Zen, rather than use it to stream to other equipment. So far so good.
It's early days, I haven't had the chance to really listen to different types of tracks and see how I feel about the sound. It might need some tweaking but I'm looking forward to chilling at home over the coming days/nights/weeks
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