0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. Read 40942 times.
ignorant question alert...Stream Player, Stream Server...are both needed?Just the server? is this dependent on what we have presently?
i'm seriously considering this, just wish it had the Spotify capabilities and then it would be a complete no brainer for me.
I really like the design of the blue soft light of the "stream" on the player. It looks very nice at night. I tried to capture it in the photo, but it came out so so. The small box next to it with the bright blue dot is my external usb Oyen hard drive (soon to be on back-up duty).The back inputs are: RS control, 2 ethernet ports, 2 usb inputs and the power input.
Those are the basic connections on the embedded processor we use in this unit. The serial connector is not used and you only need to use one of the Ethernet connectors (take your pick) and either of the USB connectors to hook up your DAC. Although not recommended for hi-rez playback, you can use the second USB to connect a USB hard drive.- Jim
There is a possibility we may be able to add Spotify capabilities. There is a linux program called Mopidy that is designed to do just that. But it runs its own version of MPD (the player app). I don't know how this would affect the regular performance of the StreamPlayer. It may be that you have to use one or the other and it may not be possible to run both at the same time (I don't know as I have not had time to work with it yet). But if they would need to run exclusively, it would probably be possible to use our web interface to switch back and forth between these two (if that is required) players. I plan on checking into it as soon as I find the time.- Jim
Now I'm confused...... If you can't use a USB drive to feed it hi rez music, how do you feed it hi rez files?
If you have a StreamPlayer with a built-in drive, you don't need a USB drive to store music. If you have your files on another computer or a network storage device (NAS) of some kind, the StreamPlayer mounts that "shared" drive via an Ethernet connection to your router as if it were internal to the StreamPlayer. (The Ethernet connection can be direct to your router, or through a power line extender or a wireless extender.) While you can use an attached USB drive to store music (as Ern Dog is doing), we don't recommend using one for DSD playback because it would be using the same USB circuit to both read files from the drive and output the files to the DAC at the same time. There is only so much bandwidth available. It would work, but you would likely experience some drop-outs. (I am constantly playing with different hardware platforms, some more powerful, some less so. If we ever release a new version of the StreamPlayer, it will likely have multiple USB circuits, so this would not be as much of an issue. Of course, it will probably have a built in drive as standard anyway.) You might ask, how do you get the files onto a built-in drive in the first place? That is easy. If you download the files (or rip them) on a computer on your network, the StreamPlayer shows up as a network drive on that computer. So you simply store the files in the StreamPlayer's music directory as if it were a drive on your computer. It would show up in your "Network" on a Windows computer and in the Finder on a MAC. You would work with it just like you would work with any drive inside your computer.I use dbPoweramp (the best) to rip CD's on a Windows computer. In the dbPoweramp set-up, you specify where the files will be stored and how you want the storage set up. I have it setup to store them directly onto the internal drive in my StreamPlayer as if it were a local drive. I insert a CD, hit "rip" and my files are automatically compressed (flac by choice) and stored in directories (folders) by artist name, then by album name under that and finally the music files themselves, including cover art. As far as dbPoweramp knows, the StreamPlayer it is just another drive in my computer.I should note that there are some very nice Linux programs that can rip CD's as well. But that would require a CD drive in the player and with the StreamPlayer, I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. There is no limit to what you can add to a player, but you pay a price in cost, complexity and stability.I hope that answers your question.- Jim
Thanks Jim. That does help.You mentioned DSD may be an issue using the USB input. What about high res FLAC files (not particularly interested in DSD files)? Is there a resolution limit you would suggest using the USB, or is it not a good idea to use the USB input at all?
It would be nice to just have an easy to use single component to hook directly to my pre/pro. But I understand with a Salk player I would also need a USB DAC. Would a USB/SPDIF converter work?
