[Tamm Linn]

Hello for the first time and thanks in advance for any useful / interesting / fun / educational / supportive advice.
At age 66 I am finally allowing myself to assemble a modestly priced audio system.  I don't know if I fit the profile of "an audiophile" although my wife says I absolutely do.  I have played guitar since age 6 and trumpet since age 12 both professionally and just for fun. I do some recording and produced 6 CDs. I have a pretty large PA system and do live sound for gatherings up to a couple of thousand people. In the past I have been quite miserly with my home system for recorded music. Now I am creating a system with carefully chosen used equipment, some suitable items originally purchased for live sound work, a few new items, and the decent turntable I've had for 45 years.

What I'd like to know more about is using a computer to "play" Hi Res downloaded music.  I'd like to run the audio directly out of the computer via HDMI into my DAC (NAD M51). With this configuration, does the computer need anything other than the HDMI port?  The computer will be dedicated to this one task and not even have internet  connection.

I am okay with some technical stuff (I have an engineering degree) but I don't want to figure out everything and what I should be thinking about here. Thank for the help.
Tam

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Welcome, I built a custom computer as a music server with low noise and distortion parts.  I use Audirvana Studio as my music player. It works fabulous

I use usb out to my dac and use an after marker high end usb card for audio.  It makes a huge difference.

[WGH]

Welcome to AC!

Any ol' modern computer will work either using the HDMI or USB port but generic computers are not designed with high quality high end audio in mind. The switching power supply injects electronic noise into all the parts to the detriment of the digital audio signal.

HDMI is rarely used for hi-res audio, probably because it is limited to 24 bit/192 kHz PCM which is barely hi-res these days. The Sound Liason music catalog has music that is recorded in much high bit rates in both PCM and DSD. The latest Carmen Gomes Inc. album "Bluesy May" was recorded in DSD256. The only way to listen is to use USB.
https://soundliaison.com/

Do you intend to buy hi-res downloads or stream using one of the hi-res music services like Qobuz, Tidal or Apple Music which all max out at 24 bit/192 kHz? If so it really doesn't matter if you use HDMI or USB because the stream is faux hi-res with some sort of compression. A comparison between a streamed song and a downloaded song is revealing but most people don't care and streaming is good enough. Are you using PA speakers in your main stereo system?

I built a couple of low noise hi-res music servers. The two important parts are a linear regulated power supply and an audiophile grade USB card. This approach may be more than you want to spend.

I have a how-to build a low cost music server post here:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=177495.msg1867916#msg1867916

A year ago I upgraded the USB card to a JCAT Femto USB Card. Highly recommended. I wrote a review:
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=190790.msg1996428#msg1996428

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Agree with WGH.  I also use that JCat Femto card, well worth the money.

I you need some pointers on building a computer for audio, let me know.  I was using a high end laptop about $1500 for my music but when I upgraded to my custom desktop, the improvement in sound was excellent.   I remote into the desktop with a Windows laptop and the Windows Remote desktop program.  It works well.

[Phil A]

Welcome!

[WGH]

There is no reason not to have an internet connection, it won't degrade the sound and you can download music directly to the music server.

Streaming is more affordable and lets you discover new music. I used to have Tidal streaming but KXCI, our local independent radio station, plays more new music than I could ever find on Tidal. I ended up using Tidal like an internet radio station but got bored with their computer curated playlists. KXCI is more adventurous so I dropped Tidal.

I buy music from Bandcamp, most albums are 16 bit/44.1 kHz but I upsample all my music using my music server to DSD256.
https://bandcamp.com/

The NAD M51 does something similar and "converts it [PCM] to a pulse-width-modulation (PWM) signal, the native format for DSD, at a sampling rate of 844kHz, all controlled by a clock running at 108MHz. It doesn't care if you want this done or not—it just does it." [Stereophile NAD M51 review]. NAD's description is confusing because it doesn't follow common DSD nomenclature (DSD64, DSD128, DSD256, etc).

Using the computer's USB output frees up the NAD's HDMI input for a player like an Oppo Blu-ray player enabling the playing of DVD-A (which I have never seen) and SACD. Unfortunately the NAD M51 can't accept DSD audio via HDMI (or any other input) so it will play the lower res PCM layer. [DSD64 is the native HDMI SACD format]

[zoom25]

Asynchronous USB is usually preferred over HDMI for fidelity.

I think optimizing the USB output of a generic computer (like NUC or Mac mini) is the best approach. You can stick that computer in your rig for not only audio but also for home theatre video stuff. I use a NUC as my computer for Roon, Tidal, Plex, Netflix, Prime etc.

I also have a dedicated audio player in Bryston BDP-1, but still use my NUC's USB to feed my DAC. I have an Audioquest Jitterbug that's been serving me well for a decade.

[Tamm Linn]

Thank you so much for the insights and suggestions.  It may take a bit for me to digest.
I have been downloading Hi Res audio so using a device that allows for storage is important.
USB seems to be the best choice so I'll go that route.
Is an "audio server" the correct term for a dedicated device for storing and playing audio?
Thanks

[Tamm Linn]

Question for Zoom25: What do you use for storage with your Bryston BDP-1 or similar?

[Yog Sothoth]

What I'd like to know more about is using a computer to "play" Hi Res downloaded music.  I'd like to run the audio directly out of the computer via HDMI into my DAC (NAD M51). With this configuration, does the computer need anything other than the HDMI port?  The computer will be dedicated to this one task and not even have internet  connection.

I am okay with some technical stuff (I have an engineering degree) but I don't want to figure out everything and what I should be thinking about here. Thank for the help.
Tam

You might also look at the Volumio software (https://volumio.com/get-started/).  It is designed with high resolution audio in mind.  I am currently running it on a NUC and it suits me well enough.

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Thank you so much for the insights and suggestions.  It may take a bit for me to digest.
I have been downloading Hi Res audio so using a device that allows for storage is important.
USB seems to be the best choice so I'll go that route.
Is an "audio server" the correct term for a dedicated device for storing and playing audio?
Thanks

You are correct about a music server.  I hand built my custom computer to use as a music server and player.  I have 9TB's of music in my computer with a mix of M.2 SSD's, regular SSD's and Western Digital Red drives all backed up on an external drive.  I use Audirvana Studio as my music player which is fantastic.  Adding the JCat Femto usb card made a huge difference.  I bought it 3 weeks ago to replace an old JCat card and it was a nice improvement.  Adding an external LPS took the sound up a notch.

If you need usb cable recommendations let us know.  Some dacs respond to usb cable changes and others not so much.

[Rusty Jefferson]

....I have been downloading Hi Res audio so using a device that allows for storage is important.
USB seems to be the best choice so I'll go that route.
Is an "audio server" the correct term for a dedicated device for storing and playing audio?
Thanks

USB can be a good interface but with some considerations, it is probably the most popular method.

Below is a post a friend made on another forum several years ago that describes the terminology of various digital/computer based systems. It can be confusing but I think this lays it out really well and some of the things already mentioned may make more sense.

"...For starters, let's define some of the buzzwords we'll need to discuss this. There is often some confusion with the usage of these terms, a big part of this is because a single PC often does more than on thing....

1. Storage. If you're going to use a PC for music playback, you're going to need to have music stored somewhere. This can be on a local hard drive, a NAS, in the cloud, or a streaming service such as Tidal or Qobuz.

2. Server software. This is the piece that allows you to tell the system what music on the storage to play, and, if you have more than one destination, where to play it. This is also where the metadata (artist, track, album, artwork etc.) is collected and presented when you browse or something to play.

3. Renderer. This is where any de-compression, resampling, and format conversion (DSD->PCM for example) is done. This is generally the most CPU intensive part of the process.

4. Bridge. This is where the decompressed/resampled/converted audio gets from inside the PC(s) to an outside link that the DAC can take as an input.

5. Control point. You've got to control it all from somewhere. Many of the options can be controlled directly on the machine that's running the server software, but some can't. Also, having a monitor/keyboard/mouse hooked up to a PC in the listening room can be problematic. Most of the solutions can be remote controlled via either an IOS/Andriod app, or through a web interface.

5. DAC. This one is fairly obvious

There are some commercial offerings where all five of the pieces are in a single box. I'm not going to discuss that option here, I'm going to assume we'll always be using a separate DAC, or a DAC that has built-in Bridge or Renderer/Bridge. So, from simplest to most complex, here are a few ways to put this together....

A. A single PC that does 1-4 (or 5) above. This is an easy solution to start with, and there are quite a few options. The PC can be running MacOS, Windows or Linux, with several options for software, such as Jriver, HQPlayer, Audirvana, daphile, ap-linux, roon. If you don't start with the very cheapest PC you can find, if/when you move to one of the more complicated solutions that follow, you should be able to re-use the PC as you move on. This is the only solution where having the PC on WiFi rather than Ethernet is acceptable, and then only if you're not streaming from the Internet.

A.5 Same as A, except the you've moved any local storage to a NAS. Having local storage on a NAS is recommended for all the following options.

B. Splitting the functions in 1-4 into multiple PCs. There are, of course, a bunch of different ways to make the split. Many consumer NAS products can have a server app installed on the NAS, but I question whether or not most dedicated NAS products have enough processing power to make effective renderers. In my system at this point, I'm running a separate NAS (FreeNAS) and two PCs, one functioning as a server/renderer, and the second one as a bridge. The engineer in me (for those who don't know, I do have a BS in computer engineering) says that's a better split than having a server only PC and a renderer/bridge PC, especially since the server PC can be outside the listening room where a small amount of fan noise is more likely to be acceptable. If your DAC is network connected, it can serve the role of the bridge PC. Network connected DACs generally CAN perform the renderer functions as well, but that's probably better performed on a more powerful PC. If you send your DAC stuff that's already been rendered, and is always in a format the DAC can handle natively, it won't have to do any rendering.

C. This is where we start getting into the esoteric, and are rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns. Basically we're starting with B above, but building the PCs with hardware (Ethernet cards, USB cards, linear power supplies etc.) that's been specifically designed to optimize audio playback performance. The sky's the limit here, but I'll let some of the others fill in the details here as I haven't gotten this far yet"

[zoom25]

Question for Zoom25: What do you use for storage with your Bryston BDP-1 or similar?

I've tried and used all options at this point with my BDP-1, which has both multiple USB ports and an ethernet port. I've tried portable hard drives (WD My Passport 2.5") powered directly off Bryston BDP-1's USB bus and via an external hub, thumb/flash drives, external 3.5" WD My Book drives, Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD directly off BDP-1. I also have used my Synology NAS for storage and connect that via ethernet. I even used one of the USB port and paired it with a USB Wifi receiver to send music from Synology NAS to BDP-1 via this USB to wifi adapter, instead of the regular ethernet, just as an experiment in flexibility and "what does it do the sound for point of reference." On the network side, having different routers such as gigabit vs 100 Mbps (with or without LPS to power it), also had an impact.

ALL playback methods and storages resulted in different sound even though identical files were played through all, with the same software which was supposed to buffering to RAM in advance, yet differences were heard by many of us.

2 things I could think of why differences may exist: Differences due to noise of component AND/OR Timing.

For example, the NAS with darker and smoother, but local playback via drives directly powered by BDP-1 itself resulted in a more direct and engaging sound. So did whether the files were WAV or FLAC (even though the WAV files were directly derived from the original FLAC files themselves).

Experiments were interesting to do, but wasn't happy that even at that this level of dedicated audio gear, there were still differences in the system because of such things. I hoped these optimizations in a dedicated device would have yielded a product that could deliver the same performance regardless of these playback and storage methods.

Since then, I switched over to primarily streaming music and stopped my local collection. I use Roon which integrates local music and streaming services. Bryston BDP-1 remains in Roon Ready endpoint mode nowadays. BDP-1 as a Roon endpoint also sounds different then BDP-1 with local music (shocker). I stopped doing local music with my BDP-1. I had to take a step back and just go back to the music and keep it enjoyable. I actually use the native Tidal app majority of the time for playback on both desktop and iOS. I also have Spotify which I use from time to time.

[brj]

You might want to start with the software you wish to use and work backwards.

Personally, I'm using Roon as a control interface (via a lifetime subscription that I got ages ago) and HQPlayer for the actual audio processing.  Thus HQP implements an audio client/server configuration where the HQP "Desktop" software is the server and the HQP NAA software is the client.  These can be hosted on the same machine, or physically separate machines.  In my case, I use a M4 Pro Mac Mini as the server hosting both Roon and the HQPlayer "Desktop" software, and a (fanless) Fitlet3 hosting the HQPlayer NAA client software.  (The NAA is a custom Linux-based OS image made available by the author of HQP that requires no further configuration or maintenance once installed.)  Note that my bulk music storage is on a separate NAS, from which my Mac mounts the music folder.  (As much as I like the Mac, Apple charges a pretty penny for larger SSD sizes, so I was content to stick with a minimal SSD, given my NAS use.  I did opt for more RAM, though I probably didn't need to.  Also, the M4 Pro chip has more memory bandwidth than the base M4, however, which is important to HQPlayer.)

My particular Fitlet3 was a BTO variant so that I could get the "FC3-OPLN Optical LAN FACET" card option that adds an optical SFP+ port.  (Ethernet magnetics do implement galvanic isolation, but an optical connection takes this a step further.  I can't say that the added isolation makes a definitive difference in my case, but for me the cost was negligible, since my network already supported SFP+ connections, and I find it more convenient, as I'd far rather route skinny, flexible optical cables through my walls than copper Ethernet cables.)  This means that I can locate my Mac away from the audio system wherever I find it convenient - not that I've ever heard the fan kick in anyway.  (It's a shockingly high performance/watt system.)  Normally, the audio architecture of a Mac requires DoP to support DSD playback, which halves the max possible DSD rate, but the use of the NAA avoids this limitation.  Relative to your initial ask, I'd note that the Fitlet3 does have an HDMI output, but I've never tried it for audio, as I use the USB output instead.  (My DAC has exceptional reclocking abilities, so I don't want to rely on an external clock, as would be the case with I2S over HDMI or similar.)

My HQP configuration is reasonably heavy, implementing both DAC correction and matrix processing of EQ filters, yet I've never saturated my Mac with any upsampling filter or dithering option that I've tried, though I limit my upsampling to DSD256 because that is the input rate at which my DAC has the lowest phase noise.  I have tested at DSD512 and still had no problems, though lately I've been mostly running poly-sinc-gauss-long with LNS15 dithering at PCM1536.

HQP does have a bit of a learning curve, but Jussi, the author, is shockingly response on the Computer Audiophile forum (under the handle "Miska").  Also, the interface is a bit old-school, but that's why I use Roon to control it instead of the native interface.

Hope that helps!

[Tamm Linn]

WOW! So glad I found this forum.  So much help.  Thanks for your time and thoughts. I'll be working through this for a while.

[cigarman]

I'm using a Bryston BDA 3.14 and an older Moon Neo 340i D2 with Mind 2 - two systems connected to a LAN and the internet. Also on the LAN are 2 NAS for a vast amount of music file storage. I can control either system with my iPhone or tablet and I'm quite happy with both systems. The quality of sound and ease of use is superb.

cheers