Beginner wants to play flag from hard drive and stream

[Onion]

Hi All,

I am new to computer audio, in that my experience to date is just limited to playing flacs from my external hard drive directly conneted via usb to my laptop. So, essentially non-hifi computer audio!

I would like to achieve two objections:

1/ Play flacs from my HDD on my hifi system - I have a couple of thousand songs on my external hard drive, and what I would like to do is connect this to my hifi system (my amp is a Marantz PM6005, which has digital inputs – coax and optical, connect to some Harbeth P3ESRs). In terms of IT equipment, I have: a laptop, iPhone and iPAD. However, I have no broadband, just 4G from Vodafone through a dongle, with a 15GB monthly limit.
2/ Play Spotify streams on my hifi system – I have a Spotify account, I guess there is limitations here in terms of lack of a router as indicated above. (At the moment I use Spotify from my iPhone which is connected via Bluetooth to a NAD Viso wireless speaker).

What would you do as a cost effective solution (sub €500, the lower the better)?

Many thanks

[tony]

Hiya Would suggest get a dac. You can buy one for €30 or €10K! Plenty around in the budget you have set. John Kenny from this parish has a nice battery dac kinda close to your budget. Comfortably under budget if found secondhand. Lots of half decent dacs available in the ad pages of hifiwigam and PinkFishMedia.

Are you Dublin based? Sure myself or another could arrange to let you hear a Ciunas or whatever dacs people have to give you a flavour of what you might get.

My suggestions above are around dac plugged into your laptop and onwards to the amp(RCA's)

Squeezebox is another choice available only secondhand. Not as good as dedicated Dac.

Arcam have a range of dacs some that do wireless from your phone or ipad.

[Diapason]

Hi Onion, that's pretty much what I'm doing in my 2nd system, although it doesn't have anything like the audiophile cred you'd be looking at for a lot of the systems here!

For hardware I use the entry level Intel NUC, which is a barebones machine requiring a stick of memory to be added, and I use a USB key for the operating system. Hardware cost is about 200 euro, but the lads could probably suggest better. The NUC connects directly to the digital inputs on my amp.

When it comes to software I use daphile some of the time and Kodi (formerly xbmc) some of the time, each installed on a separate stick so I can boot accordingly. Daphile sounds better and works with any squeezebox apps, so that's handy. There's also a spotify plugin (the third party one, not the official one) and that works fine as long as you have internet via a dongle. With Kodi you can actually stream spotify (or anything!) via Airplay using your iPad or whatever, and I find that useful too.

I'm on my phone and it's a pain to type more, but let me know if you want more info. I say again, this solution wouldn't pass muster with many here, but it works for me.

[nige2000]

good cheep starter setup
daphile on ur laptop into s/h dac into amp
controlled via iphone app

[Onion]

Hiya Would suggest get a dac. You can buy one for €30 or €10K! Plenty around in the budget you have set. John Kenny from this parish has a nice battery dac kinda close to your budget. Comfortably under budget if found secondhand. Lots of half decent dacs available in the ad pages of hifiwigam and PinkFishMedia.

Are you Dublin based? Sure myself or another could arrange to let you hear a Ciunas or whatever dacs people have to give you a flavour of what you might get.

My suggestions above are around dac plugged into your laptop and onwards to the amp(RCA's)

Squeezebox is another choice available only secondhand. Not as good as dedicated Dac.

Arcam have a range of dacs some that do wireless from your phone or ipad.

Thanks, was thinking of just using the DAC that is inbuilt in the Marantz amp. I had a NAIM dac a couple of years ago and didn't think it made an improvement on the sound over my CDP.

[Onion]

Hi Onion, that's pretty much what I'm doing in my 2nd system, although it doesn't have anything like the audiophile cred you'd be looking at for a lot of the systems here!

For hardware I use the entry level Intel NUC, which is a barebones machine requiring a stick of memory to be added, and I use a USB key for the operating system. Hardware cost is about 200 euro, but the lads could probably suggest better. The NUC connects directly to the digital inputs on my amp.

When it comes to software I use daphile some of the time and Kodi (formerly xbmc) some of the time, each installed on a separate stick so I can boot accordingly. Daphile sounds better and works with any squeezebox apps, so that's handy. There's also a spotify plugin (the third party one, not the official one) and that works fine as long as you have internet via a dongle. With Kodi you can actually stream spotify (or anything!) via Airplay using your iPad or whatever, and I find that useful too.

I'm on my phone and it's a pain to type more, but let me know if you want more info. I say again, this solution wouldn't pass muster with many here, but it works for me.

I've heard about a Raspberry Pi with an added hifi card such as a Digiberry, any thoughts on that?

Thanks again.

[Diapason]

I've no experience of it, but it would do the job I'm sure.

I was thinking about this afterwards, though, and your problem is controlling everything without a network. Most (all?) of the apps I was thinking of won't work, and I don't think Airplay will work either. Without the ability to use apps you're probably going to need some kind of display and keyboard/mouse. Certainly an added wrinkle.

[nige2000]

could get/use a router to create a network wont matter if its connected to the internet or not
rpi/dac will work fine with either rune or volumo software but you need to be able to do the install
what level of sq do you require?