Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Several ways to go about this, Darko.audio is a great resource for all things audiophile streaming.

You could get an integrated amp with 2 pairs of speaker outs, plus a DAC, something like the Schiit Modi 2 (or an integrated amp with built in DAC) then connect your Alexa to the DAC. If you don’t want to use the Alexa directly as the streaming transport then something like the Audiolab 6000 supports Amazon and has DAC built in. Not sure if it has Alexa voice control. Denon Heos does, I think Cambridge Audio might do one too.

Yes, some of it, about 10% from personal experience. Couldn't justify a Brennan in my personal circumstances as it's too easy to find good software to streamline the process. I guess there are situations where it would be worth it.

It also depends on your end goal. I'd favour a streaming system based around a roon core running on intel nuc with tidal or qobuz subscription and all your cd's ripped to a hard drive. No doubt the Brennan is cheaper and convenient though.

A lot depends on what motivates you to listen to music. Does the Brennan do playlists for example?

It does do playlists and it can / does work as NAS.
I've got bits and pieces of music on drives/cloud/iTunes which I can move onto it.
It's just time innit.
What motivates me musically is finding stuff like I listen to. Or finding new stuff "organically".

Great that it runs as a NAS with playlists. Seems like your motivation is very similar to mine. I've developed a system that works for me based around a mixture of Vinyl, CD's and streaming but it's expensive and borderline obsessive.

I'd get the Chromecast and crack on.. I have a Chromecast stuck into some active speakers in the kitchen and it all does the job..
Sound quality IMHO is dependent on the mastering supplied to Spotify rather than bit rates. The recent masters of 'classic rock' generally sound a bit shit...
Classical recordings are generally OK.. BBC Sounds is similar.. Radio 3 sounds great, the rest of the stations are shit..

For finding new music, how do you guys do it? I just remembered I used last.fm a while ago but have just discovered I linked it to our Sonos system which is used by both me and the so.

Spotify discover weekly / release radar seem to be a bit shit. Deezer had that flow thingy which seemed awesome but we settled on spotify a while ago and don't feel like switching it back up.

Is last.fm still the way to go?

Do you use Roon? That will consolidate all your stored music into a nice interface and generate recommendations based on your collection.

At the moment I use Spotify/whatever I stored on Google play at work.

My wife uses iTunes and I have an account with stuff on there.

It'd be nice to centralise all that, plus our CDs. Listen to that at work and at home.

Like I said. It's time and energy and motivation getting everything in one place.

I like spotify to find new music - find it works quite well.
Or pitchfork.

Do any of these algorithms work well? Finding decent records used to involve drinking cups of tea in shops whilst sharing fags with the staff..

Yeah that’s what it does. Not much setup required, just point it at all your accounts and storage drives.

The Spotify one takes a bit of time, and sometimes it repeats the selections.

It doesn't help if you've rinsed murkage Dave and the streets for a couple of months...

Interesting!

The physical junk pile I have is still the limiter.
That's not going away....

will Roon play nice with Plex? Does Plex do the same thing?

Probably have fucked up the algorithm by listening to too much junk :p

Thanks for the other suggestions. Might need to just take the hit and clean up the last.fm scrobbles.

@Chalfie: my father in law digitised his music collection. Good luck.

I’d take everything he says with a pinch of salt. Some of the stuff he promotes is total snake oil.

I think they pretty much do the same thing, I don’t think they integrate with each other.

Sonos are cunts

LOL @ people using SAAS (Speakers as a service)

For finding new music, how do you guys do it?

youtube recs
dj sets + digging

I listen to people/dj's I like on mixcloud (house Shoes, Lefto, Gelale)/6music (Benji B and Gilles Peterson) and make notes of tracks/producers/bands I like, then either buy them on bandcamp or download them.
Use the discover weekly in spotify and like tracks in there, so they're available to refind, but the spotify account is my missus and I'm not a fan of subscription based services, so I'm only using it until I get my music up and running (4yrs and counting)

Thanks everyone.

Found my older last.fm account. Aaaah, teenage me listening to Ill Nino...

With the bricking?

That was the beginning.

Now they are not providing updates for any system that contains "legacy" products, so no new features and a risk of breaking if protocols change. Only a 30% discount to replace old (5 years old) models with new replacements.

I found that they tend to pull you to what they want to sell... You start with Linkin Park but end up with Ed Sheeran or Beyoncé.

But that was ages ago.... Not sure if its any better now. Or if the platforms vary.

If Linkin Park is your starting point you probably deserve Ed Sheeran

Damn, saw the Brennan 2 after your post. Then saw there is the Bluos vault 2i which would integrate even better as we are using Bluos here.

But finances (or utter lack of them) is a problem. I do have a huge cd collection I’d like to rip to a shared drive.