NAS and Media Streamer for FLAC?

[tony]

Can I ask a simple question. If you arrange the setup to hibernate etc etc to get best sound replay if you reboot are you back to usual windows operation. Personally I would like the option of moving to the higher grade sound but also be able to comfortably switch to lower grade or just to use the laptop for something else.

[Ken Moreland]

Tony, there's no problem with this. When you select Hibernate and press spacebar to start, everything not required to play music shuts down, including the screen, keyboard etc. Your selected music will play and when it's finished the computer will come back to full life. Jplay is still set at hibernate so if you play more music it will hibernate again but this is easily disabled from the menu and if you reset the computer it will default to "Hibernate off" when you start Jplay. It's only really annoying if you select the wrong album and play , you need to wait til it's finished.

KM

[tony]

Thanks Ken, Thats not so bad. It is a bit minimalist if you happen to be playing something and then decide to skip a track,you cant if in hibernate mode. For a serial addicted tv flicker that is very challenging. Dont know about others but I would often want to move on. Was looking on another forum and this seemed to cause a lot of angst as well. I would assume they will work on some option to facilitate stopping or skipping a track at some point. Is there a large drop in quality if not in hibernate mode? I realise quality playback is the goal.

[Ken Moreland]

Tony, the sound quality is best in Hibernate,but if you must flick leave it off but when you want best quality to listen to a whole album, a nice bottle from Ivor's and snuggle up to your honey of choice, then it must be Hibernate.
KM

[Fran]

Actually - you can. If you insert a usb stick, then "viaUSB" becomes one of the hibernate options. Choose that, and if you pull out the stick during playback the pc will come out of hibernate. Haven't actually tried it myself yet.

[tony]

Ta Ken,When snuggling any movement towards a pc etc is treated with a slap from a frying pan. That seems fine hibernate when listening seriously a
Fran does that mean you are copying the files to the usb key to play? Sorry if the question is silly.

I use an arcam idock also. Unfortunately it is not the remote control version but the sound is actually very ok. I move it around systems when I want to have a listen without moving cds around. You guys seem to have ignored ipods and itunes entirely. It is very handy and listening in the car is great when you have a cassette player.

[Fran]

Honestly - I don't know for sure, but I don't think so....

[cbarone]

Hey Tony, I'm the same, a laptop can't appear. I started this thread and all the way I wanted to prove great sound is possible with convenience. I've taken Fran and Kens advice (as well as researching and trying a whole bunch of other options) and this evening I finally got to;

Ripping to wav
Done this using dbpoweramp
Running JPlay (trial) on a 64bit Win7 laptop
Ran jplay in mini mode and hibernate

Using all the above I can happily report good decent quality sound. It's fine for my needs as I want to archive my CD collection anyway, the downside is of course needing a laptop and fiddling around with hibernate, no control etc, it a balls to be honest when compared to using your cd transport and sitting back and enjoying the music.

The lads here highly recommend using the modded JKDAC which is supposed to take the sound close to analogue. I'm still stuck on the whole convenience thing (having to fire up the laptop and not being able to control jplay in hibernate mode) so I'm going to take a step back for the moment.

I am sure the jplay guys will continue to refine their software and tey will master the interface to iTunes, at that point they will have a much more serious contender. I've read all the threads on the Jplay forum and to be fair they listen to their customers and have made huge progress in a relatively short time.

The future is unknown, the technology is changing fast, but it's certainly exciting for HDD based home audio. I love the Apple products myself, superb design and functionality. Anything based around iTunes and controlled by iPad or iPhone and I'm wanting it !

Thanks Fran and Ken for all your advice, please keep us updated.

Regards, Charlie.

[tony]

Hi Charlie,
Similar position as yourself. I was taken by the quality of the jkdac and have been toying with going that route for a year. I am glad I bided my time as the dac solution with the hiface from John is far more appealing to me than the original product which required a separate dac.
There was a thread awhile ago about comparisons with dcs,lector and wadia cdp's and all seem to be impressed with how the jkdac performed. I liked the comparisons made to vinyl and I am not sure if thats what I just wanted to hear from the reviews or not. I dont want to get another digital playback system for the sake of it but something that is reasonably priced but is delivering something magical(small ask). Its portability and the choice of messing around appeals also.

I will make the jump later in the year and sure by then maybe john will have another killer project released. Rgds Tony