Digital Streamer Geek / Nerd / Guru Help required please

[TheRealAleman]

Ok, so After reading all 47 pages pf "Life Of Pi", 67 Pages of "Tinker, Tailor, Streamer, Pi" , and 28 Pages of "DAC to the future" I just have to say My Brain Hurts!!!

From what I can gather, skip the Pi and Tinkerboard, and, instead, go for a Silent/Fanless Mini PC running your favourite software ... Of Volumio if you can't be bothered trying out all the options! :D So I was thinking about this one I've gone for the slightly faster Celeron N5150 rather than the more ubiquitous N4125 ... Question is 8GB of RAM going to present any difficulties for resampling within Volumio? of should I drop down to the N4125 and go for 16GB ... It's important in windows but not sure about Volumio. The alternative is this one with a fan ( ), although I do have enough experience with PC's to be able to sort out a silent replacement (from QuietPC)

Need some uprated Network cables (Audioquest Cinnamon??) from the Virgin (Super) hub 3 to the Tenda Router to the TP Link Switch and finally to the PC ... although I can go direct from the router to the PC as the tenda router has a 4 port hub on the back

Then I need a USB cable (Audioquest Cinnamon/Carbon) to go from the Volumio Streamer to the DACMagic 200

That should as far as I can work out give me the foundation of a digital setup, before I have to start thinking about stuff like Jitterbugs, Wyrds, LPSU's, Oehlbacks etc

Any additional advice / pitfalls?

[Fretless]

I can easily believe that after reading all of my musings, ramblings, trials and (mainly) errors that your brain hurts. Mine certainly did!

Volumio is lightweight and needs a minimum of 1Gb RAM. 4Gb should be more than sufficient.

Ethernet cables: ordinary CAT8 are brilliant. AQ Cinnamon is slightly smoother at many times the price.

USB. See recent developments. AQ Carbon is a stunner (but there are better).

X86 Volumio loads onto a USB stick and can run from there, leaving Windows intact You need an image writing program to put the OS on the stick.

If the installation doesn't run successfully then you may need to reformat the stick and reload the software onto it. Use BIOS to instruct the PC to boot from the USB source.

[Nearlymusical]

If you are all in on the PC then fine too late for my contribution , but in my experience an older Mac mini running on wichever is the highest oS it will support , and with Amarra luxe (free trial available) is highly stable, simple and reliable , then after that you still have same USB challenge , ( see my signature ) but ultimately very satisfying

[Fretless]

There is another thread dedicated to adventures in Ethernet Network country called 'It's So Ethereal'.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=50480&hilit=Ethereal

[Fretless]

Just checked the specs for the Acer Veriton PC I have press-ganged into streamer-service. It has a mere 2Gb of RAM and works superbly with Volumio.

[TheRealAleman]

In my experience an older Mac mini running on wichever is the highest oS it will support , and with Amarra luxe (free trial available) is highly stable, simple and reliable

The only issue I have is that for some reason Apple devices do not play nicely on the home network. My work phone had to be swapped for android, peoples iPads just never connect, my daughter's iPhone has to use 4/5G rather than WiFi.

I've spent days of my life trying to resolve it, and I could have spent those listening to music. Nice idea though

[TheRealAleman]

Well, my MeLe PC has arrived, and I've just installed Volumio on the SSD overwriting Windoze 11 ... Time to go and see if my old Buffalo NAS will boot up, and discover what Music I have on it

[Grumpytim]

and ....

[TheRealAleman]

Sorry, been listening to music

Doesn't want to play with my NAS box but I'm not surprised as it uses smb-1. Worked out how to turn on dnla media sharing on one of the PC's, and that works well, except for volumio sometimes refusing to play the files.

It's upsampling my FLAC CD rips to 384MHz, and everything is burning in and opening up. Top end isn't too bright, but the bass is "woolly" and muffled. As I'm using an old USB A to B lead to connect streamer to DAC, and a Netsmear GS105 switch there might be room for that to improve.

Inky blackness Surprisingly large soundstage though.

Need to work out how to makes the best of my Tidal Trial and get volumio to process the MQA stream so the DM200 can really shine.

Surprisingly good for the amount paid so far. Cables and digital hokum will reduce the ROI though. ... Two Cisco 2960G switches are on their way to me. Trying to justify spending as much as both switches on a Cinnamon USB c to B cable is difficult. It will happen some time put old fruitbox parts on the bay of E ... Generate cash ... Spend cash on more shiny bits

[TheRealAleman]

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! Just discovered that my so called Gigabit "Router" actually only has 10/100MB wired ports!! It's only so called Gigabit as the 5GHz is 867Mbps and the 2.4 GHz is 300 ... so 1167MBs throughput.

Arrghhhhhhhhhhhh! Ok Now I need a new Wireless router with Gigabit ports as well as dual band wiFi ... any of you helpful people have any suggestions ... I wonder if I can configure the 2960 as a DHCP Server???

Wondered why internal speed tests showed I was only getting 70Mbs download when I should be getting towards 250Mbs ... good job I didn't give Virgin Support a hard time :D