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Forum Discussion
squeezebox set up for audiophiles
After researching a bit and reading up on the forum, I would like to set up my squeezebox touch as follows and any input, criticism, guidance, etc to help all of us get on the right path would help. I will post back my experience so others can learn as well:
Current Setup:
1) Do not have an option to run wired ethernet as NAS is in another room and wiring is not convenient. Besides I would like to keep the fan noise out of my listening room
2) Running Squeezecenter on a Readynas NV+ and will upgrade to Netgear Pro very soon. Have a dedicated router that is only used for streaming using WLAN to the touch, duet and SB3 in 3 different rooms. Router is a Cisco Linksys 610N. Have around 2 TB of music and using a laptop with a hiface and a itunes / hard disk / Mac, just does not cut it for me due to my LARGE music library
3) Touch analog outputs are not used and the SPDIF out put goes into the Audio Research Dac 8. Sound is OK but not on par with my Ayre C5XE MP CD Player even using good cables: stereovox xv ultra coax digital cable, kimber palladian power cord and kimber 1120 balanced interconnects on the Audio Research dac 8
4) All the equipment including the Touch is plugged into a Shunyata Hydra 8
Planned Setup:
1) Perform Soundcheck mods as posted on his tutorial
2) Plug the NAS and the router into a conditioner / filter. Thinking of Shunyata Hydra 2. If I use a UPS, the hydra will go into the APC 1000 on line UPS. Use an audiophile cable from the outlet to the Hydra 2. Not decided on the UPS as yet as I usually put the NAS off when not using it.
3) Change the power cable on the NAS to a decent audiophile cable like the KIMBER PK 10 gold
4) Change the power supply on the router and the touch to a linear power supply
5) Buy a bridge like WET 610N or use another router as a bridge (use ddwrt) and change the power supply to linear as well. Connect the touch to the Ethernet port of the bridge
6) Stream using wlan from the router connected to the NAS to the router connected to the touch
Audiophiles may like the setup as it theoretically should isolate all the noise and result in a good / hopefully bit perfect output on the SPDIF output of the touch. The NAS will be in another room and the fan noise will not interrupt with the sound but we need the technically adept members of the forum to give us their input to see if the above will result in a better / bit perfect signal on the touch SPDIF output. Computer Audiophile in its review of the touch claims that the SPDIF output of the touch is bit perfect but I have my doubts as my ears are not HAPPY!
Do not want to be in a situation where I go and buy the power supplies, etc only to find out that its of no use as my ears will still not be happy.
Request everyone that is interested in getting a good sound using WLAN to study the above and give input. Or is there no way to get good sound using WLAN? This is a mystery to me!
Thanks
Current Setup:
1) Do not have an option to run wired ethernet as NAS is in another room and wiring is not convenient. Besides I would like to keep the fan noise out of my listening room
2) Running Squeezecenter on a Readynas NV+ and will upgrade to Netgear Pro very soon. Have a dedicated router that is only used for streaming using WLAN to the touch, duet and SB3 in 3 different rooms. Router is a Cisco Linksys 610N. Have around 2 TB of music and using a laptop with a hiface and a itunes / hard disk / Mac, just does not cut it for me due to my LARGE music library
3) Touch analog outputs are not used and the SPDIF out put goes into the Audio Research Dac 8. Sound is OK but not on par with my Ayre C5XE MP CD Player even using good cables: stereovox xv ultra coax digital cable, kimber palladian power cord and kimber 1120 balanced interconnects on the Audio Research dac 8
4) All the equipment including the Touch is plugged into a Shunyata Hydra 8
Planned Setup:
1) Perform Soundcheck mods as posted on his tutorial
2) Plug the NAS and the router into a conditioner / filter. Thinking of Shunyata Hydra 2. If I use a UPS, the hydra will go into the APC 1000 on line UPS. Use an audiophile cable from the outlet to the Hydra 2. Not decided on the UPS as yet as I usually put the NAS off when not using it.
3) Change the power cable on the NAS to a decent audiophile cable like the KIMBER PK 10 gold
4) Change the power supply on the router and the touch to a linear power supply
5) Buy a bridge like WET 610N or use another router as a bridge (use ddwrt) and change the power supply to linear as well. Connect the touch to the Ethernet port of the bridge
6) Stream using wlan from the router connected to the NAS to the router connected to the touch
Audiophiles may like the setup as it theoretically should isolate all the noise and result in a good / hopefully bit perfect output on the SPDIF output of the touch. The NAS will be in another room and the fan noise will not interrupt with the sound but we need the technically adept members of the forum to give us their input to see if the above will result in a better / bit perfect signal on the touch SPDIF output. Computer Audiophile in its review of the touch claims that the SPDIF output of the touch is bit perfect but I have my doubts as my ears are not HAPPY!
Do not want to be in a situation where I go and buy the power supplies, etc only to find out that its of no use as my ears will still not be happy.
Request everyone that is interested in getting a good sound using WLAN to study the above and give input. Or is there no way to get good sound using WLAN? This is a mystery to me!
Thanks
46 Replies
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dhinesh wrote: PC: Great idea! a friend is working on building a very quiet HTPC (noise wise). can run softsqueeze on it when done and still use squeeze box server. Probably a better solution to everything around. SSD for the operating system is a great idea as well. No noise from the harddisk. How about the cooling? how do we do this? If can cool it without a fan, will sound better as will be quieter in the listening room. Any ideas?
To my knowledge, the Mac Mini is very quiet and SoftSqueeze is available for the Mac platform as well. You could even put it on your Macbook for a try and plug this into the DAC with a USB connection. If you google for "computer fanless", you will receive hundreds of different solutions which are build completely without a fan, together with the SSD, there will be no noise from those at all.
Kind regards,
Frank- The newest player is called SqueezePlay and is available for Mac (I use it everyday in my office). Not sure if it supports hi res playback however (which I assume someone with a DAC8 would be playing...
There's also a free Hi Res player around called Audirvana and a low cost player called Fidelia that can directly access DACs and might be better to truly test a mac->dac setup.
As for silent, fanless, SSD based computer - there's always the MacBook Air. $1K for the 10" version. - Ok guys, The path to audio nirvana is getting clearer now... tks to you guys.
Prefer not to have a screen and use the controller or an ipod touch with ipeng. screen adds noise......
Guess the touch goes to the living room and out of my system.
Hi Res Files: Can install Pure Music on the Mac Mini and play hi res files, but will need a screen for this. You are right, would prefer playing hires files on the dac 8....
How about WLAN issues on the Mac Mini? is the wlan Better than the touch? dhinesh wrote:
Prefer not to have a screen and use the controller or an ipod touch with ipeng. screen adds noise......
No it doesn'tHow about WLAN issues on the Mac Mini?
What issues?How about WLAN issues on the Mac Mini?
What issues?[/quote]
In the case of the touch since wifi / wlan card is built in, it seems it adds noise. do you think mac mini will also have this problem?
also do you get good range with the mac mini? wireless streaming
The mac mini has a switching power supply, do you mod this? or go with stock?- You mentioned initially you have a 2TB music library - I presume you expect to have copied that to you NAS bit perfect? So why do you think that at the very last stage - transferring your audio to the DAC will be so potentially problematic? If your intent is to connect a DAC to you mini via USB, then why the obsession with noise in purely digital system? Remember, data gets where it needs to - bit perfect. If it didn't you'd have far more issues than poor audio quality - your equipment wouldn't work at all
I have seen the modifications that you are referring to - and not one of them has the backing of the slightest evidence that I've seen, and at least one that I have seen has been completely disproven. Not one measurement seems to exist that shows any discernible *audio* improvement, just the subjective claims of the author (who does not seem technically proficient despite his stated qualifications) and some followers who clearly have no engineering credentials, otherwise they would be providing evidence and not just posting "Wow! What an improvement!"
The WLAN capability of the macmini is solid - it works. Range will be heavily dependant on your location. eg Have brick walls and range will be less than if you have wooden walls. Any issues, invest in a $99 Airport Express and use it as a range extender. (The AE is silent and there are no cables - so nothing to tweak - you just plug it into a wall socket).
I can only reiterate - enjoy your music and the incredible equipment you have rather than tinker with useless modifications that serve no discernible purpose and that no one can even explain as to why they *might* improve anything sphardy wrote: You mentioned initially you have a 2TB music library - I presume you expect to have copied that to you NAS bit perfect?
The WLAN capability of the macmini is solid - it works. Range will be heavily dependant on your location. eg Have brick walls and range will be less than if you have wooden walls. Any issues, invest in a $99 Airport Express and use it as a range extender. (The AE is silent and there are no cables - so nothing to tweak - you just plug it into a wall socket).
I can only reiterate - enjoy your music and the incredible equipment you have rather than tinker with useless modifications that serve no discernible purpose and that no one can even explain as to why they *might* improve anything
The files on the library are flac, wav and aiff. Once I have installed more harddisks on the readynas pro, plan to store all the flac files in wav. Most of the files were ripped using EAC, others using DB poweramp and most of the rips are ACCURATE when compared to the accurate rip database by DB poweramp.
Mac Mini and airport: This idea got me thinking of a lot of possibilities. Can use the MAC Mini HDMI out to connect to my processor and stream movies as well over WLAN as well. Saves me bucks as was thinking of getting another gizmo like the AC Ryan, Dune, etc to stream movies off the NAS. The Mac Mini will be able to handle squeezeplay and play movies as well.
In case you are wondering this system is part of a home theater setup where the processor goes into the ref 5 preamp / Levinson Amps for the front two speakers.
Absolutely, need to concentrate on enjoying the music. Enjoy it tremendously with the AYRE and want to find a way to get the same sound using a NAS, Mac Mini, Dac as well. Thats what got this thing started as I wanted good sound using the touch. But as we have concluded through our discussion, Nas, Mac Mini and Dac route should serve that purpose! Will try installing squeezeplay on the mac book pro before heading out to buy a mac mini!
Will look at fidelia and audirvana, presume these will need to be controlled via an ipod touchsphardy wrote: The newest player is called SqueezePlay and is available for Mac (I use it everyday in my office).
Installed Squeezeplay on the macbook pro and could control it with the controller. One hitch: the sound comes from the internal speakers and not the USB port. Audiomidi is configured so that the output is to the Audio Research Dac 8 drivers.
itunes outputs at the USB port but not squeezeplay.
any ideas on how to get the output at the USB port using squeezeplay?- Iam looking for linear power supply for my router and switch that connects SB touch. Any suggestions?..
- Had my power supply custom built for the squeezebox touch. Boulder and teddy pardo (i think thats how it was spelt) sell linear power supplies. Sound a lot better with linear power supply
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