I have been involved in file based audio, streaming as you might call it, over the last
15 years or so.
It all started when I saw my son play mp3's from his computer, and the phenomenon has
fascinated me ever since.
In this video I will tell you what I have learned about playing music from your hard
disk at better than MP3 quality.
I didn't like the mp3's my son used, so I gave him a proper stereo, including a Marantz
cd-player with improved clock oscillator.
He enjoyed the set but kept using the computer as source in stead of the cd-player.
So I gave him a stack of recordable cd's for I thought that money was the problem.
But it wasn't.
It was ease of use that drove him.
It made me think about the future of audio and started investigating the possibilities.
A noisy computer in the living room was no option and silent computers were scarce and
expensive then.
When Philips had a device out that could play photos, video and music from a computer over
the network, the Streamium SL400i, I ordered one.
It was then that I learned that playing audio from a video enabled device might not lead
to very good results.
To cut a long story short, I traveled through File Based Audio country, passing Squeezebox,
Sonos, iTunes - combined with Audirvana, Amarra and Pure Music - Simple Audio, Bluesound,
Pro-ject, Raspberry Pi, Sonore, SOtM and many others.
In this video I will attempt to give you an overview of the most popular ways of playing
audio files from a storage medium.
It's not an in-depth story and it doesn't pretend to cover all.
But for those relatively new to file based audio I hope it will give more insight in
the matter.
People that want more in-depth information might consider buying my book File Based Audio
aka Streaming Audio.
You will find the link below this video in YouTube.
Let's start with some general remarks.
There are some remarks to be made on the search-ability within streaming systems.
The number of metadata fields that can be searched is often limited to artists, albums,
genres and perhaps also the release date.
The support of extended metadata was - and sometimes still is - limited.
For instance, with classical music, the composer field, a standard field in all file formats,
might no be supported by the streamer or streaming server.
This led to very poor metadata-sets where in stead of the performing artist the composer
was entered.
So in stead of Arthur Rubinstein playing a Chopin nocturne the metadata sometimes only
named Frédérick Chopin as artist while in other files Chopin and Rubinstein were both
named as artist.
The correct way is to enter Chopin in the composer field and Rubinstein in the artist
field.
Often the composer field can be searched using the general search field.
This will usually be slower, but it's better than nothing.
But if you are a fan of classical music, be sure to check whether searching on composers
is facilitated.
On the other end of the scale not only the composer can be searched on, but for instance
also the composition, like Sheherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Then there are systems that don't support gapless playback.
So if you play music that is continuous but is marked in track numbers for convenience,
there will be a short silence between the tracks.
For instance with live music the applause is muted shortly.
Even more irritating is when a continuous piece of music is concerned, for instance
Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt, played by Kees Wieringa and Polo de Haas, a minimal
music-like composition for two pianos of almost 75 minutes that - on cd - is divided into
106 tracks.
Played on equipment that doesn't support gapless playback gives you a short break in
the music about every few minutes.
The better streamers nowadays solve this in the hardware, but there still are those that
don't.
The first system I came across after the Philips Streamium was the Slim Devices SliMP3.
It sounded disastrous.
This was corrected in the successor: the Squeezebox.
Several products followed and in 2006 Slim Devices was bought by Logitech.
They introduced the Squeezebox Touch that supports 96 kHz.
Many tweaks came available over time: better power supplies and later on even unofficial
firmware tweaks for the Touch that would activate the USB socket as output to a USB DAC and
later on an update to 192 kHz over USB.
The system is managed from server software - Logitech Media Server, LMS for short.
It was initially operated from the Squeezebox display using an infrared remote.
The player sent the infrared instructions to the LMS that sends back album or track
information to the display.
You then select music to play and again this request is sent to the LMS that responds by
sending music files to the player.
The Squeezebox itself is a dumb terminal, passing on information and rendering music.
Later on iOS and Android apps became available as remote.
There also was a Duet that had no display on the player but a display on its remote
control.
Logitech stopped making Squeezeboxes in 2010 but promised to maintain the support for the
LMS.
Today other parties use the LMS for their product.
There are emulators for the Raspberry Pi and for instance Sonore and SOtM offer a Squeezebox
emulation in their streamers.
There are also many plug-ins for LMS to expand its possibilities, including for streaming
services like Tidal.
Be wise though and install only those plugins that you really need to prevent instability
of LMS.
Many players use the DLNA protocol.
It needs DLNA server software running on a computer or NAS.
DLNA was initiated in June 2003 by the large consumer electronics companies.
It was designed to facilitate streaming video, audio and photos from your computer but it
was obvious that the audio part had little or no priority.
The system worked fine when indexing a few hundred files but became notoriously slow
when thousands of files had to be indexed and searched.
Most people won't have more than a few dozen videos but for audio - and photos nowadays
- things are different.
If you own 100 cd's, that will be around 1300 tracks.
Clever hardware solutions and better server software have mostly solved this problem,
at least in the better products.
Furthermore DLNA does not support gapless playback.
The better manufacturers have also solved this in their playback devices while modern
DLNA servers do support most or all metadata fields.
But there are still products out there that don't.
Even within the same brand one model might while the other won't, so be sure to check.
There are also manufacturers that used DLNA as a base and built their own extensions on
it, like Denon Heos, Linn and Yamaha MusicCast.
DLNA is based on the universal plug and play standard and companies that didn't want
or weren't allowed to join the DLNA consortium, developed a comparable system and named it
UPnP AV.
In practice you will find no difference between UPnP AV and DNLA and you can mix both systems
without any problem.
There are many DLNA controller apps for smartphones and tablets as there is a lot of DLNA server
software, sometimes as pure DLNA server but there is also player software that doubles
as DLNA server.
Even hardware players like those by Sonos offer their music to other players through
the DLNA protocol.
Systems like Sonos and Bluesound and software like Volumio for the Raspberry Pi use their
own local indexing system, Just point it to the shared volume on your home network and
it will be indexed after which you can pick and play your music.
Bluesound and Volumio-like programs can even work without a shared volume: as soon as you
have you music on a hard disk, connect it to the player and you're done.
Some players even have the hard disk built in and also hold an optical drive to rip the
cd's to the hard disk.
Self indexing systems are rather responsive since they contain the index locally and when
more devices are added, the indexes will be automatically copied to those too.
There is a limitation too caused by the amount of memory in the player and the efficiency
of the database engine.
This limitation only gets in the way if you have a real big music collection.
The BluOS used in Bluesound also is used in NAD products.
They are not the only self indexing systems, upmarket products like Sooloos do their own
indexing and have no need for a computer.
Self indexing players are the easiest to install and maintain and are highly recommended for
the computer illiterate.
There is a broad offer: from the relatively low sound quality of the Sonos to the true
high-end Sooloos.
On the other side of the spectrum we have the computer literate that use the computer
for playback.
They were there even before the Squeezebox but it took some time before decent audio
quality was possible.
The simplest way is to use the analogue output of the computer but as often with simple solutions
it results in poor audio quality since the sound card inside the computer suffers from
poor clocking, polluted power supply and interference from other clock signals.
Using an outboard sound card - a digital to analogue converter, abbreviated to DAC - does
offer better sound for it suffers less form the aforementioned problems.
But they are not entirely gone.
Some use an audiophile power supply to further improve the sound quality while others use
interface boxes that clean up the power lines and re-clocks the USB or SPDIF signal.
Depending on the quality of that box the result can be somewhere between hardly better to
shockingly good but shockingly good easily will set you back a grand.
And than there is the operating system that - by default - will change the audio signal.
For quality sound you don't want that.
This can easily be solved but it depends on the OS what is needed.
Windows computers will need a special driver, a special mode to be enabled and bit perfect
software.
On a Mac and Linux computer just the bit perfect software will do.
Some software will allow you to use network audio adaptors - which I will discuss in the
following chapter - like JRiver Media Centre that can play music to DLNA renderers.
The network audio adapter - NAA or short is essentially
a digital output that is connected to the computer over the network.
When you use a tablet or smartphone to control a Raspberry Pi that emulates a Squeezebox,
the Raspberry Pi is essentially an NAI.
The same goes for a DLNA renderer or Roon Endpoint - on which later more.
The essence is that the noisy computer can remain elsewhere while the NAA will be placed
in the living room.
Since the NAA is a very simple computer, purposely built for audio, it will be more optimal and
thus provide the DAC with a cleaner signal than a regular computer.
Also here price and performance vary greatly and the most expensive will not automatically
be the better one.
But the better one will be more expensive for it takes a lot of design time and expensive
components to achieve this.
Many audio specific streaming systems are brand specific too.
Sonos only supports Sonos hardware, BluOS only supports Bluesound/NAD and so on.
This doesn't apply to DLNA ad also Roon is brand agnostic.
The latter is a development by the people that started Sooloos and left some years after
Meridian had taken over the company.
The difference between DLNA and Roon is immense, in speed, presentation, metadata and price.
The Roon server is run on a computer running Windows, Mac OS or Linux and has at least
an Intel i3 processor and a SSD system disk.
A special version is available for the Intel NUC if you are willing to dedicate that computer
fully to Roon.
I have several videos on Roon if you want more details.
See the link in the comments in YouTube.
You control Roon with a smartphone, tablet or computer and you can output to the computer
output, a DAC connected to the computer, DAC's that are Roon Ready, streamers that are Roon
Ready, NAA's running Roon Ready software and Raspberry Pi's running Roon Ready software.
You can also send music to other computers, smartphones and tablets running Roon software,
Squeezeboxes, Sonos equipment and Airport stations.
So, like with many other systems, you can store your music centrally and play it on
many places in the house.
Like DLNA you can use it for ultra high end audio in the listening room, top quality hifi
in the living, use a Bluesound player in the study, a Sonos speaker in the kitchen and
a Raspberry Pi with sound board, connected to that old ghetto blaster in the garage.
Your son and daughter can play from the same pool of music over their computer or smartphone
and each an everyone can have their own profile, playlists and so on.
It is hard to say what system suits you best.
I have reviewed a large number of solutions, see the playlists on Streaming audio players,
networked audio adaptors and networked audio players.
See the links below this video in YouTube or Patreon or at the end of this video.
And subscribe to this channel or follow me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.
See the comments below this video in Youtube for the links.
If you have a question, post it below this video but please don't ask me for buying
advise.
See my About Questions video to find out why.
If you liked this video, please consider supporting the channel through Patreon and see super
exclusive videos too.
Just one dollar a month will do.
The link is in the show notes.
And don't forget to tell your friends on the web about this channel.
I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com.
And whatever you do, enjoy the music.
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