Digital File based music - How I do it

[Thaddeus Smith]

Intro

I'm by no means an expert on any of this. If you want to experience some information overload, just google "digital audio" or become a member of the computeraudiophile.com forum.

 

I'm not going to spend any time in this thread arguing on the merits of a particular media format or gear choice. What I'm presenting has proven to work for my needs and budget. The concepts are universal, so don't get hung up on brands or cost.

 

I also don't wish to dive into moral, legal, or philosophical debate about media acquisition. There are numerous methods for getting what you want, and I use a little bit of everything.

 

Feel free to ask questions and I'll do the best I can to help. Everything I've chosen has at least a week of research behind it and all of the DIY stuff has a month or more in setup and tweaking. I've walked away from the solutions presented at one time or another - sometimes out of frustration or lack of feature support. Sometimes it was just a matter of learning, and other times I needed to wait for community supported features to become a reality. In other words, you're going to have to get you hands dirty at some point if you want to save some money and go with a solution that isn't quite plug-n-play. 

 

Media Storage

My first NAS was a Netgear readynas duo. Nice hardware and reliable, but I was limited in both software plugins and disk growth.

 

I had some spare pc parts and a bunch of random hard drives, so I cobbled together a system suitable for unRAID (http://lime-technology.com/). It's not the best, but it's also not the worst and it has dramatically improved over the last 18 months. I now have it running 5x 2TB drives in the disk array with a 6th 2TB disk for data parity. What that means is that I have 10TB of usable storage space and if any one of those drives fail I can replace and rebuild with the parity data found on the 6th drive. That's good enough protection for me, especially with a healthy amount of built in tools to monitor system health and address issues before full disk failure.

 

Multiple license tiers exist, with the only real difference being the number of drives you can have in the disk array.

 

Plugins

Why do plugins matter? Because there are data related tasks you can offload to your NAS to save time transferring files back and forth between your computer. I have:

 

Transmission: a torrent client for downloading files directly to the array, so I don't have to move the data twice. (https://www.transmissionbt.com/)

 

Bittorrent Sync: this provides me with a private dropbox-esque feature set to share files between my computers and ensure data privacy and resiliency. (http://www.getsync.com/)

 

Serviio: this is a popular DLNA server and provides access to the music and movies from my Oppo BDP-93. Plex is another popular plugin, but the DLNA feature just doesn't play well with my Oppo. (http://serviio.org/)

 

Beets: this is a tool for managing your music library and tag data. it's command line based and not for the faint of heart. it creates a database that can be queried for any data found within your music files. upon import it searches the musicbrainz database and corrects your tags. I never trust tag data and insist on files conforming to my own preferences, regardless of where I acquire my music and this helps me achieve those goals. A beets plugin for the latest beta version of unRAID does not currently exist, but it is being developed. As a result I have a backlog of new music waiting to be added. (http://beets.radbox.org/)

 

Subsonic:  this is another media streaming package, focused solely on music and for remote access. It can either transcode to mp3 at the bitrate of your choosing or stream native FLAC, depending on your bandwidth and device needs. This allows me to access my full library in the car via my phone or in the office via my web browser.

 

Previously used tools

 

Yate: a music tagger for mac. good tool set, slow to sync changes back to files on my NAS. (http://2manyrobots.com/yate/)

 

mp3Tag: a music tagger for windows. a very capable tool, but again slow to synch changes back to my NAS. File management really should take place locally to the data, which is why I use beets. (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/)

 

Audirvana: music player for mac. very popular, but I didn't like the itunes dependency or lack of remote control features. (http://audirvana.com/)

 

Vox: music player for mac. same as above. (http://coppertino.com/)

 

JRiver Media Center: a superb application for managing music, streaming music, and local music playback. the companion app for iPads called JRemote is unmatched and the combo is a perfect solution for music playback. in my situation, however, tag changes were again slow to sync back to the NAS. It also required me to use my MacBook Pro, which serves as both my work computer and home tinkering computer. I wanted something dedicated to the system and buying a mac mini purely for playback was unreasonable for my budget. (http://www.jriver.com/) (http://www.jremote.net/)

 

 

Edited December 19, 2014 by Thaddeus Smith

[Thaddeus Smith]

Source playback (a.k.a. the transport)

Because of the software I've chosen above I now have a plethora of playback devices. Audio files are all FLAC in either 16/44.1, 24/96, or 24/192 quality. I went that route for the improvement over MP3 and while staying relatively system agnostic.

 

Oppo BDP-93: plays movie and music files in my HT system without swapping USB drives or performing any extra media management, all via serviio on the NAS.

 

iPhone 6/iPad mini: my portable devices. I can stream music over wifi or cellular at home, in the car, at the office, or other people's homes, all via Subsonic on the NAS.

 

Samsung Galaxy S5: wife's phone. same access as above.

 

Samsung Galaxy S4: old phone, now streams music in my daughters' room, same access as above.

 

Laptop: Subsonic has a built in portal for web access, or you can use browser based apps.

 

Raspberry Pi B+ & Archphile: in my two channel system I needed a device with network access, FLAC playback up to 24/192, USB dac connectivity, and no waste in allocated compute resources or cost. Many options exist including Volumio, Rune Audio, and other build your own solutions. I landed on Archphile. It's inspired by volumion with a focus on minimalism. In order to reduce computing needs it includes only enough software to playback music from a NAS or USB disk, and focuses on USB DAC support rather than on-board I2S DAC's that are currently trending for this platform. With this implementation you have to do a bit more manual configuration of your NAS access, MPD configuration, and system settings - but the end result is a very streamlined network player, with a basic web interface that can be navigated on your laptop, tablet, or phone. I pictured the device with USB wifi, but it starts to choke on 24/192 files, so ethernet is your best bet if you have files of that quality. The B+ model sports 4 usb ports which should give you plenty of connectivity if you have multiple USB drives to connect directly without sacrificing connectivity to your DAC. (http://www.raspberrypi.org/products/model-b-plus/)(http://archphile.org/)

 

Oh, and this combination has also implemented support for Apple airplay communication - which means I can stream music from my iPhone or iPad @ 16/48 quality from any available app such as Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Songza, Tidal, Spotify, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAC

 

DAC choices are overwhelming and available at every price point. I wanted a streamlined device chain and the integration of DAC and pre-amp features into the Emotiva Stealth DC-1 put it on my short list. Once I decided to get a more robust amp, the aesthetics of the Emotiva mini-X A-100 paired with the Stealth DC-1 made the decision final. The only recommendation I can make is to actually get a DAC and not rely on the onboard analogue out from your laptop, raspberry pi, etc. Beyond that - do your research and find something that suits your needs and budget.

Edited December 20, 2014 by Thaddeus Smith

[mustang guy]

Beets looks cool. Definite must for the OCD music person. That's me. For instance, I went through all of my Rolling Stones digital collections and put the proper album cover for each song. Many of them had covers for stuff like the best of the stones CD, etc. I want the correct album cover showing based on the ORIGINAL recording, not some newfangled thing. Metadata is always crap, and needs modified. Although Beets looks like it has a bit of a learning curve, it does look to be an excellent tool.

 

My ISP guy got on me for using Torrents. It was actually my son. He said our bandwidth was out of sight and it was likely a torrent. It turns out he was right. YMMV, but be careful with the settings. I think many install in open sharing mode, which could cause a lot of upload bandwidth. ISP's seem to care more about that than the download bandwidth.

 

The file server looks very robust. Are you using hot-swap drives? You probably know this already, but I will say this for others. Get a spare or two and shelf them. Many times the drive must match exactly, and after a year or so, matching drives get hard to find. Having one or two in a box brand new can save aggravation, and if it takes a long time getting a swap from a vendor, you risk losing another drive, thereby  risking the entire array.

Edited December 19, 2014 by mustang guy

[Thaddeus Smith]

My ISP guy got on me for using Torrents. It was actually my son. He said our bandwidth was out of sight and it was likely a torrent. It turns out he was right. YMMV, but be careful with the settings. I think many install in open sharing mode, which could cause a lot of upload bandwidth. ISP's seem to care more about that than the download bandwidth.

 

Good advice. However, my particular instance is certainly unique. My brother in-law runs a wireless ISP for rural customers, of which I am one, and I get free un-throttled (and un-governed) bandwidth in exchange for having a 100ft tower and gear onsite as part of his network.

 

The file server looks very robust. Are you using hot-swap drives? You probably know this already, but I will say this for others. Get a spare or two and shelf them. Many times the drive must match exactly, and after a year or so, matching drives get hard to find. Having one or two in a box brand new can save aggravation, and if it takes a long time getting a swap from a vendor, you risk losing another drive, thereby  risking the entire array.

 

Yup, hot-swapping is supported though it's not too much of a hassle to shut everything down and swap a drive. one of the features that pushed me to unRAID is the support for mis-matched drives. in fact, it's recommended that you have a variety of drives from different manufacturers and manufactured dates in order to reduce the number of simultaneous drive failures. the only real stipulation is that your parity drive be as large as the largest disk in your storage array.

 

Here's a few screen shots of the interface;

 

 

 

 

 

[mustang guy]

I love that. How much did it cost not including the drives you crammed in there?

[Thaddeus Smith]

I love that. How much did it cost not including the drives you crammed in there?

 

 

I traded an iPAD 1 for a "gaming" computer a dude had listed on craigslist. It has a dual core AMD CPU, 6GB of RAM, motherboard with onboard SATA connectors, and power supply - all crammed inside of my arcade cabinet that's in the room. I needed to purchase an expansion card for more SATA connections, which was $30 from newegg. It's about a 4 year old computer and more than adequate for the NAS function and extra plugins.

[Thaddeus Smith]

I updated the player and DAC sections, pretty succinctly. Feel free to ask questions on anything I've written and I will clarify or expand above.

[eth2]

There are numerous methods for getting what you want, and I use a little bit of everything.

 

Please share more details with us Mr. Thaddeus, and rememba, ve have vays of making you talk...

[Thaddeus Smith]

 

There are numerous methods for getting what you want, and I use a little bit of everything.

 

Please share more details with us Mr. Thaddeus, and rememba, ve have vays of making you talk...

 

 

You can obtain digital music from: iTunes, Amazon, Linn, HDTracks, ripping your own CD's, or "other". You're on your own from there

[Jim]

Thaddeus,

 

I am in the process of uploading about 1400 cd's onto my laptop as I want to put everything into an easier way of listening.I may also convert 350-400 cassettes to digital.I am starting by using Windows Media Player and uploading them lossless. I don't know how to do FLAC,and don't really know the differences except  I was told FLAC is better than lossless and lossless is better than MP3. I am extremely ignorant to how this works and have been asking different members questions when seeing something like this as a topic. I have a WD My Book Essential 1 TB External Drive that I plan on hooking into a Dell Latitude D81O Laptop and then also hooking in a Music Streamer ll+  DAC and a 20 watt tube amp then speakers. At this point I'm looking to go the cheapest/easiest way possible. I guess my question is-

 

Is it possible to upload the music to the computer, transfer it to the external hardrive, then hook up the USB DAC and then the amp and out to the speakers, or will I need to use the computer in everything? Again, excuse the ignorance, but I've not been educated on this side of things yet. What I'm looking to do I guess is be able to have everything on the external drive and either hook it up on a receiver through the USB input,or through the tubes when I want to. I'm not looking to dive in deeper until I learn a little more,and most likely will not be using any of my smart devices to control things until I learn a little more, so I guess on the external drive after reading what I just wrote will need to have it hooked to the computer to control different music,unless going through the receiver and the receiver's remote.

 

I have gotten some information on running things a little easier than this by using the computer to dac and dac to amp and out to speakers and using the computer to do everything. I just wanted to know if the other option of integrating the external drive fits in with things and if so how? 

 

Any info is greatly appreciated.

[Thaddeus Smith]

Yup, you've got all the right components.

 

Think of the music on your hard drive as a CD.

Think of your laptop and playback software as the CD player.

Think of your DAC as the analog output of the CD player.

And then the amp.

[Thaddeus Smith]

At 32 and having grown up with computers, I guess I just take all of this stuff for granted. The decision process for me revolves around cost and effort. I don't fully appreciate how daunting this method of music delivery can be for you die hard vinyl/CD guys that may not be as computer savvy. 

[USNRET]

The "switching / interfacing - integration" is just one of my downfalls. I want the wife to be able to 'one button' tunes when I am not home.

Stuff I have to use:

• Wired or wireless; both available
• Router with external drive USB input capabilty
• Mac Mini sitting mostly unused
• AppleTv like that would help here
• PC
• External drive with USB (externally powered holding near 1TB of music in loseless)
• Spare external USB drive with copy of the files contained on the drive above.
• Oppo 105D
• Marantz AV8801
• iPads, iPhones, iPods
• Emotiva X-100 for outside speakers, Klipsch of course
• Harmony 900 Remote
• Emotiva XDA-1 DAC sitting in the closet

When you coming down to the coast Michael?

[Thaddeus Smith]

The "switching / interfacing - integration" is just one of my downfalls. I want the wife to be able to 'one button' tunes when I am not home.

 

Oh yes, this 2-channel setup is not wife friendly. Our HT consists of a DirecTV (broadcast/cable) box and Oppo (streaming movies/music from NAS, Pandora, Netflix, physical discs) and a very clearly laid out Harmony remote. One time I added a Roku box to the mix and her brain melted.

 

Wired or wireless; both available Router with external drive USB input capabilty Mac Mini sitting mostly unused AppleTv like that would help here PC External drive with USB (externally powered holding near 1TB of music in loseless) Spare external USB drive with copy of the files contained on the drive above. Oppo 105D Marantz AV8801 iPads, iPhones, iPods Emotiva X-100 for outside speakers, Klipsch of course Harmony 900 Remote Emotiva XDA-1 DAC sitting in the closet

 

Hookup a USB drive to your mac mini and get Asset UPNP server. Then play your music via the Oppo > Network feature. Full control via the Harmony remote and an easy learning curve for the wife. And she can access Pandora from the same device.

 

When you coming down to the coast Michael?

 

some day! our girls are just young enough to make long trips a hassle and more complicated than they need to be. I'm due for a Beaumont trip soon, but first need to come up with a project or purchase to include Carl. Worst case, we'll get to see each other in Hope. 

[USNRET]

Oh yes, this 2-channel setup is not wife friendly. Our HT consists of a DirecTV (broadcast/cable) box and Oppo (streaming movies/music from NAS, Pandora, Netflix, physical discs) and a very clearly laid out Harmony remote. One time I added a Roku box to the mix and her brain melted.

 

You got that right! I didn't mention the remote switching I have to allow me to use the NBS / VRDs to Belles instead of the Pre/Pro & XPA-5 to same Belles when I want to hear the analog system being fed from the digital music but that is drifting off the OP. Sorry, back to your tutorial......

Edited December 20, 2014 by USNRET

[Jim]

Yup, you've got all the right components.

 

Think of the music on your hard drive as a CD.

Think of your laptop and playback software as the CD player.

Think of your DAC as the analog output of the CD player.

And then the amp.

 

So then would I be able to use the external drive by itself if I were to hook it up to my AVR? And if I don't use it that way, what would I need to add in to the set up in order for the system to access the music from the WD Drive once transferred while hooked up to my computer?Does te external drive then become "the cd" with everything else staying the way it is? The DAC is a USB hookup going from the computer to the RCA outs which would go into the amp. If the music is put on the external drive which also is a USB, how do I get them all to go together? It looks like if I set it up with what I have,something will be left out as I would have 2 USB's going into the computer for each (DAC/EXTERNAL DRIVE). Will they recognize each other? Or is there something else that needs to be added into the mix.

 

Unfortunately, being 46,I didn't grow up around computers. It was more sports for me and taping things onto cassettes, then recordable cd's or listening to vinyl. I had one system I bought in 1998 that I kept up until last year,albeit the receiver WAS the top of the line back then, and I had my cd player, tape deck, turntable, and rear projection TV with a set of KSB 3.1's and 1.1's. So back then I knew more than most of the people did, but now, I'm lost.

 

Hope I'm not too much of a pain.

[Thaddeus Smith]

Some AVR's support direct playback from a USB drive. You'll need to check the manual on that one.

 

For the other setup you will need to have both the USB drive and DAC connected to your computer at the same time, with the DAC connected to the amp via analogue inputs. Your computer will need to use some sort of software for the actual music playback and it will consist of a library that is pointed to your USB drive and told to route audio through the USB DAC. As I mentioned in the beginning, JRiver Media Center is a top tier piece of software - very robust and feature rich, with excellent bit perfect playback. It's around $50 with a very gracious trial period. There's a learning curve, but the JRiver forum and wiki is comprehensive and helpful. Reach out to "joessporster" here on the forum; he recently transitioned from windows media center to JRiver with great success.

[Jim]

He is the one who has also helped me with things so far. And as stated I'm looking for different approaches from different people. So windows media is ok as a starting point,but at some point an additional software download will be needed if running the external drive with the DAC and amp. Thanks for the information.

[Thaddeus Smith]

but at some point an additional software download will be needed if running the external drive with the DAC and amp.

 

most likely, yes. happy to help, though windows based solutions are admittedly a weak spot for me since I've been on Apple/Linux products for about 10 years now. 

[Jim]

Well I'm just starting out, so this has been the easiest for me as it's already there. I do have ITUNES for my youngest son, but I haven't done anything with it and don't know if I want to open up a can of worms until I learn a little more. He knows more about ITUNES than I do.He's 10