[tortugaranger]

Thought I'd share this since it's not every day I get truly surprised (in a good way) with new approaches to audio.

Starting back around 2006/7 I've owned at least 2 versions of Squeezebox players that were linked to what later became Logitech Media Server (LMS) which I ran on a PC. Worked great. Sounded great. It was....great. Then a few years ago Logitech bailed out on the whole LMS thing and I got curious about alternatives. Found JRiver with its dLNA. Bough it. Found JRemote for the iPad. Bought it. (FYI, I bought an iPad mostly because of JRemote - that should tell you something. Don't know what though. Let me know if you figure it out. )

Then just this past month I got an itch to try a Linux server just because. It's a bit geeky but overall I've found Linux to be remarkably robust and stable. I repurposed a simple PC I'd been using as a NAS using FreeNAS and replace FreeNAS with Linux. Ultimately I ended up with Linux Mint because of its Cinnamon GUI but Ubuntu worked great as well. Anyway, so I got the Linux server all working and networked with my PC, laptop, iPad et. al.

Next I put JRiver on the Linux server and got it up and running and it was like old home week only on a different platform. And darn if JRiver didn't work flawlessly on Linux. Even worked with JRemote. Sounded the same as always. Cool beans.

Though scratched, the itch was still there. What else can I try?  Lo and behold I discover that LMS never really died but has been nurtured along by a group of enthusiasts/programmers and is now in the public domain not unlike Linux itself. Even better, there is now a client app/player called Squeezelite that will also run on Linux in lieu of needing a hardware based wireless Logitech player which I'd long since sold off.

Last night I got LMS and Squeezelite loaded on the Linux machine with very little difficulty, picked the appropriate USB driver for Squeezelite from the available list, bought the iPeng app for the iPad to remotely control Squeezelite and fired it all up. This is the part where the pleasant surprise comes in.

To put it simply, LMS/Squeezelite sounded far better played through my system than does JRiver. I sat there late into the night a bit stunned and very pleased as I played a whole array of stuff - all FLAC - through LMS/Squeezelite. I don't have an explanation or even a WAG but there's no doubt in my mind which sounds better. They are both running on the same Linux box feeding out the same USB port on the same USB cable into the same DAC etc. and one clearly outperforms the other. If I hadn't heard it myself I would've called it bull. Motivated reasoning perhaps? I don't think so. I don't have a dog in this hunt.

Cheers,
Morten

[mcgsxr]

Interesting story.

I never left the world of LMS from a server s/w perspective.  I also still run a Touch in a 2nd system.

I currently run the server on a dedicated netbook, and run Squeezelite on a hacked Pogoplug as my player.

I also continue to love iPeng as my remote on 4 iOS devices, and in 1 case even bought the in app streaming so I can stream my 2TB FLAC collection to my 3rd generation iTouch as my headphone rig.

I understand that the freeware Daphile is a great way to repurpose a lower powered device into a server/player too.

Thanks for sharing!

[Russtafarian]

I share a similar journey.  I used SB3 then SBT for years.  In 2012 I wanted DSD playback capability for my Benchmark DAC2 so I replaced the SBT with a Windows laptop running Jriver.  That worked fine but seemed overly complex. 

Last year I heard that LMS had been updated to handle DSD via DoP, so I reinstalled the SBT and it sounded better than the Jriver laptop. Nice, but keeping the SBT configured with the 24/192 update and DoP plug-in was a bit of a pain and the SBT was unstable with some DACs.  Plus the SBT processor was too slow to handle large attached storage drives.

I then tried Daphile running on an 8 year old Sony VAIO laptop and that works even better.  Daphile is a self-contained Linux OS/music server application that uses LMS and Squeezelite.  This is the best of both worlds. Daphile interfaces with whatever DAC it's plugged in to, handles an attached 4TB USB music drive with ease, and automatically plays all sample rates and formats.  Most importantly, it sounds great and is easy for a Linux knucklehead like me to configure.

Russ