PC audio set up advice.

Hipocrates

Super Member
Greettings fellows
I have a small wired 1GB network at home, with HTPC (W10/Kodi),PC workstation for work, File server, yada yada yada, (you get the idea).

I totally forgot about an intel nuc that I had around, so I'm thinking to use it as an audio PC standalone player.

Requirements.
./ Remote app for android with nice UI
./ Remote app for windows PC
./ It will be playing mostly FLAC, OGG, mokey audio and mp3. so I don't care about streaming services or internet radio.
./ It will be connected to a bel canto ulink then to the DAC.
./ OS can be Linux, Windows 10 or Server the lighter the better.
./ Don't care about DLNA(that thing sucks),I like NFS, CIF, SMB.
./ want to set it up and forget.

I use Jriver/wasapi usually to listen music with a keyboard, monitor and the whole thing to listen music, but I would like to update the set up.I've reading a about Daphile and Volumio, thought about kodi too

So I wonder what some more advanced members think about it. What is preferred on this days and age. I would get a nice auralic, but I rather spend that kind of money fixing old gear, tools, parts, tubes and projects:rolleyes:

So what do you think gents?
 
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I set my system up many years before Daphile was created but I have basically the same setup. LMS and Squeezelite. Only I have them on separate machines instead of on the same machine like Daphile. Daphile will do everything you want and then some.
 
Daphile on your NUC would work well. Only thing I did not like about it was the display on a small tablet, but as far as simple, and performance, it's spot on. Volumio is functionally nice as well. I never tried it with a remote control though, but the screenshots indicate it's the same GUI as displayed if you were to use a monitor.
Does your NUC still have windows or can you load windows? I've been trying Dopamine lately on a Win7 Ultimate box and like it. It's close as a free replacement for JRiver for audio.
 
Does your NUC still have windows or can you load windows?
Hello, I ended up with a basic W10 LBTS foobar/wasapi, and ''foobarcon" on the tablet worked out pretty good, is very stable. I did not know Dopamine, I'll test it right away
Thanks
 
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Kodi seems to be heading the way of "abandonwear" due to legal concerns similar to Napster. I hear it's already outlawed in some countries and I find a lot of the streams have gone dead or are no longer updated. Fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider it a reliable "go to" media source.

Went the HTPC route here as well, feeding my classic system using a Maverick TubeMagic DAC. jRiver, W8.1 (Wasapi), and bypassing the standard WindOHs sound handlers completely. Any streaming here is courtesy of my "smart" tv running Pandora or similar, and feeding the classic system, but I rarely use that.
 
Kodi seems to be heading the way of "abandonwear" due to legal concerns similar to Napster
I like it a lot, I been using in my HTPC since was XBMC. The problem seems to be the tons of add-ons on the android chinese boxes with Kodi pre-installed.
 
Kodi seems to be heading the way of "abandonwear" due to legal concerns similar to Napster. I hear it's already outlawed in some countries and I find a lot of the streams have gone dead or are no longer updated. Fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider it a reliable "go to" media source.

For accessing your local media library, Kodi is unparalleled. There are a ton of bootleg streams, but as a frontend for a NAS that you've archived music and movies to, it's very good and most importantly supports a ton of file formats.

Windows Kodi opens up using bit perfect audio drivers - the Android variants are nowhere in that league, because the Android audio stack was designed for phones and hasn't been meaningfully revisited.

The only other devices that come close are the old Western Digital streamers - they had a few streaming channels built in but were really set up to let you access a library of files either on a directly connected disk or over the network.
The user interface was awful and very sluggish. Today's networked DVD players are the worst of both worlds - limited format support and clumsy, pig slow interfaces for network browsing.

Fortunately, most of the DVD players can also be DLNA endpoints, so you can send tracks to them from a tablet or phone and not depend on them to try and find files to play.
 
My HTPC is this:

OS: Windows 10 LTSB + Kodi /WASAPI
Hardware;
SFF HP 8200, with 2TB Hard drive for video files and 1 SSD 120GB for System
Asus GT1030 passive cooled(low profile). Connected to a Marantz SR8002 thru HDMI.
Dell remote dungle.
Audio files are accessed via ethernet
Kodi supports gpu acceleration for HEVC H.265, passthrough, so master-hd rips run pretty smoothly.
Off course this is not those kodi distros full of crappy addons.
Blu-rays, DVDs, SACD, CDs can be played on the bluray player.

My audio setup is on another room hence the use of the NUC, CD and SACDs can be played on the Denon DVD-2910, which function as transport.

All in all, kind of old set ups, but they do what I need pretty well.
 
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