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Dramatic_Hammer
Olly398
Right, I have a vague plan.... starting from the top and trying to keep it logical (spoiler: I think I fail).
I don’t need the Brennan B2, cos I already have a CD ripper; I’ll use the iMac to gradually rip* my collection to ALAC. I can run trusty iTunes as a fallback, even build a nice little office system :)
On media storage, I reckon i’ve only got about 500CDs tops, and for now i’m not looking at video, so we’re looking at <<1TB setup ... I reckon a NAS is overkill (future upgrade?), maybe for now a half gig USB SSD or even SD card with the iMac.
Server... well I love the look/idea of Roon. It might be just what I am looking for... so I’m gonna give it a trial. Let’s see... if it works I could run a Roon Core on my iMac. I’d like to trial Plex too.
For multi room, well I don’t like really like Airplay 2 because it only works from iTunes / Apple Music**. I do like Sonos, it’s clearly the market leader for usability, my mum and dad use it FFS. I know from my years of green marker pen, clocking, and upgrading decoupling capacitors around TDA1541As (who’s with me?!) that the DAC section is crucial... but thanks for reminding me @freddo! Then I remembered my old (epic) Musical Fidelity Digilog DAC ... it’s 16/44 of course, but I’m not drinking the hi-res Kool Aid just yet (not saying I won’t glug it in the future). So I could dust that down and with a Sonos connect, it could be a nice client/renderer for my two-channel system. Thoughts? Cost: £350 for Sonos Connect.
Looking at an alternative i.e. high-res DAC I would probably lean towards DLNA rather than Sonos because it opens up some very nice integrated client/DAC options and lots of endpoints choice. I like the look of the Aurilic Aries Mini. This can take a 2.5” SSD too within the chassis and become a streamer ... neat solution for my storage. Cost: £450 (plus say £80 for 512GB SSD)
I am swooning at the Chord Poly/Mojo combo. Yes, that did escalate quickly. My internal case for this is that I could use it as a headphone source as well as Hifi client. ‘Phones is actually how I do most of my listening nowadays, what with an office job, commute, and young kids. Anyone else use this setup? I have Bose QC35s currently but I find them quite fatiguing and not that engaging. Obviously they’re Bluetooth too so I am sure can be improved on. To go tethered again would take some getting used to though. The Chord Poly also has a micro SD slot so again for a hundred quid it could host and stream my library.
Cost: £1k plus £100 for micro SD plus headphones £???!
Thanks to all those who helped so far. Looking forward to spending some dosh.
*Yes, I know I should really just save myself the trouble and not bother, because it’s all available on Spotify or tidal, but I can’t do it. I’m gonna rip ‘em. At least it’ll remind me of what I have. I like the idea I think @Airhead said about whittling CDs down to a classic shelf of albums... I’m not chucking my CD player away just yet.
**One thing I did discover, don’t remember it being mentioned here, was Home Sharing on iTunes. This is limited but elegant: it just lets you access and stream your iTunes library from the iMac to iOS devices with the same Apple ID, but only while on the home network. So you can listen to lossless on your iPhone. And then bounce it on through AirPlay 2 I guess.