Hi fi question - which computer music player software (fubar2000, musicbee, summat else) ?

[Profpointy]

Sometimes it is Jellyfin app on an Android phone and a Bluetooth speaker.

I was up until recently using a couple of Raspberry Pis with HiFi Berry hats - in one case a Digi 2 Pro into a standalone DAC, in the other HiFi Berry DAC 2 direct into a small class D amplifier.

But I got fed up with the temperamental nature of them. Now I've got a Cambridge Audio AXN10 attached to the proper HiFi and several Wiim Minis. They are used with the on-prem music libary, TIDAL, and I'm just experimenting with Internet radio.

Thanks - again a useful extra bit of background info. That's using the PC solely or mainly as a file-server with the peripherals like the wiims (I'd only heard of these yesterday whilst youtube researching !). I'm, kind-of, wedded to the notion of using my Lynx studio-quality sound card (within the PC), but what with the advances in such things, it might be as good to get a wiim or some Cambride Audio box from Richer Sounds and relegate the PC to a server with all the music on. I have cabled the house up with Cat 5 so don't need to rely on wifi in any likely rooms

 

[richardfm]

I use Jriver. Powerful tagging options and cataloguing. Handles and converts many formats/bitrates.

I have used JRiver for years. It's great gir managing my music library and for playing it on multiple devices around the house and away from the house.
It can be complex to set up though. There are many options to play with.

 

[richardfm]

Sometimes it is Jellyfin app on an Android phone and a Bluetooth speaker.

I was up until recently using a couple of Raspberry Pis with HiFi Berry hats - in one case a Digi 2 Pro into a standalone DAC, in the other HiFi Berry DAC 2 direct into a small class D amplifier.

But I got fed up with the temperamental nature of them. Now I've got a Cambridge Audio AXN10 attached to the proper HiFi and several Wiim Minis. They are used with the on-prem music libary, TIDAL, and I'm just experimenting with Internet radio.

I have a Hifiberry Amp Pro 4 on a Raspberry Pi4 for one of my players. It was easy to set up, is reliable and the sound quality is good.

 

[PedallingNowhereSlowly]

I have a Hifiberry Amp Pro 4 on a Raspberry Pi4 for one of my players. It was easy to set up, is reliable and the sound quality is good.

The one I used the most, went into a boot loop three times in just over a year of ownership/regular use, despite using quality SD cards. I was using HiFiBerry OS with a container for TIDAL Connect support. Switching between TIDAL Connect and other sources required a reboot.

When last week the other one (the DAC2) stopped emitting any sound, despite from a software/configuration perspective appearing to be okay, I gave up on them.

Plus, they didn't really have WAF.
If I wasn't so pressed for time, I would have perservered with them. I had no qualms with the sound quality.

 

[richardfm]

The one I used the most, went into a boot loop three times in just over a year of ownership/regular use, despite using quality SD cards. I was using HiFiBerry OS with a container for TIDAL Connect support. Switching between TIDAL Connect and other sources required a reboot.

When last week the other one (the DAC2) stopped emitting any sound, despite from a software/configuration perspective appearing to be okay, I gave up on them.

Plus, they didn't really have WAF.
If I wasn't so pressed for time, I would have perservered with them. I had no qualms with the sound quality.

I wonder if your problem was the Hifiberry OS. I haven't tried it, I've used Volumio and JRiver

 

[MontyVeda]

...
I'm not up on PC based audio playing these days, not really since WinAmp in the early 2000s! ...

I'm still using Winamp for digital music

 

[Tenkaykev]

After rebuilding my PC (after blowing up the motherboard by installing a sound card with the power on) I think it's best to totally re-rip all my CDs. After the rebuild, I think one of the discs is a bit iffy, and despite my having backups, the library seems to all over the place rather than easily cleaned up.

Also itunes is shyte for classical music (90% of my CDs), where the important info is "composer" (Beerhoven, Stravinsky etc), "Artist" being LSO or Berlin Phil is of minor importance when searching. You also end up with"Album" being "Symphony no 3 " which is bog all use when searching as I'm sure I have 50 composers' third symphonies in my collection.

So, I want an Itunes replacement, using a non-proprietary lossless storage format, with some control where it is storing everything so I can do easier backups. Ideally some means of controlling via an iphone app.

My studio quality soundcard works fine, may buy another disc, or might use one of my USB discs for storage. Intend to make the disc, or at least a part thereof visible on the local LAN so we can share the library in different rooms

Apparently foobar2000 and musicbee are both considered very good, and are free. Anyone using either / both, or have other suggestions, particularly anyone with an interest in classical music.

I'd heard very good reports of the Apple Classical Music app. Apparently you can drill down to specific performances of a work by orchestra/ venue / conductor / year etc.

 

[sungod]

fwiw...

i embarked on a refresh/de-clutter last year, out with the old amps, speakers, cd player, cables etc., just kept the turntable which now feeds in via a waxwing

playback is a stereo pair of devialet phantom 1 108db, also have a devialet mania portable for use elsewhere

for library storage/management, i use roon on a qnap nas (silent as there's no fan or hard disks, it has ssd raid for fault tolerance, and it's backed up), i also keep a copy on my mac for use when away and as an extra backup

roon is not free, but you can get a free trial, after testing i just plumped for the one-off 'lifetime' licence fee, you should be able to just download it to your pc, point it at the music library and it'll work

the roon server can run on many platforms (mac/pc/linux or roon's own hardware), and can be controlled from a phone app as well as a mac/pc

you can only use one instance of a roon server per licence, but this means you can also have a copy on a mac/pc to use when away from home, just logout/login according to which copy you want to use

https://roon.app/en/

this way all my music format/storage is portable, i simply copied in my old itunes library to roon (i never used apple's proprietary formats), there's no lock-in and roon's auto-indexing was pretty good

my remaining cd library i plan to get bulk-ripped to flac and then keep it on the nas and mac, as i haven't the time to diy rip

lastly, for streaming i use qobuz (good for lossless and no messing around), which roon manages well (it does tidal too), you can get a free trial for qobuz

 

[richardfm]

fwiw...

i embarked on a refresh/de-clutter last year, out with the old amps, speakers, cd player, cables etc., just kept the turntable which now feeds in via a waxwing

playback is a stereo pair of devialet phantom 1 108db, also have a devialet mania portable for use elsewhere

for library storage/management, i use roon on a qnap nas (silent as there's no fan or hard disks, it has ssd raid for fault tolerance, and it's backed up), i also keep a copy on my mac for use when away and as an extra backup

roon is not free, but you can get a free trial, after testing i just plumped for the one-off 'lifetime' licence fee, you should be able to just download it to your pc, point it at the music library and it'll work

the roon server can run on many platforms (mac/pc/linux or roon's own hardware), and can be controlled from a phone app as well as a mac/pc

you can only use one instance of a roon server per licence, but this means you can also have a copy on a mac/pc to use when away from home, just logout/login according to which copy you want to use

https://roon.app/en/

this way all my music format/storage is portable, i simply copied in my old itunes library to roon (i never used apple's proprietary formats), there's no lock-in and roon's auto-indexing was pretty good

my remaining cd library i plan to get bulk-ripped to flac and then keep it on the nas and mac, as i haven't the time to diy rip

lastly, for streaming i use qobuz (good for lossless and no messing around), which roon manages well (it does tidal too), you can get a free trial for qobuz

Have you considered ripping your vinyl to FLAC? I use Vinyl Studio for this. My turntable is plugged in to a Pro-Ject Phono Box USB V which has a USB output to my PC and RCA outputs to my amp.

Although, if you haven't got time to rip your CDs I don't suppose you will be ripping any LPs

 

[sungod]

Have you considered ripping your vinyl to FLAC? I use Vinyl Studio for this. My turntable is plugged in to a Pro-Ject Phono Box USB V which has a USB output to my PC and RCA outputs to my amp.

Although, if you haven't got time to rip your CDs I don't suppose you will be ripping any LPs

yes, i did quite a few once, especially old 1970's singles that'd had a hard life, but it was 25+ years ago and adc quality wasn't as it is now, plus they were ripped to mp3 as disk space was also limited

most is now available online via streaming services etc. or duplicated on cd, so my remaining vinyl is perhaps more for sentimental reasons, though there're some that i still prefer the sound of vs. modern lossless versions, they'll be with me to the end

main motivator for ripping the cd collection is that i've then got it all in a form where as well as having on the nas, it'll also fit on my laptop, then i've got almost my entire music library when travelling and it's available in places where there's no/poor connectivity to stream

the other attraction is that i can then stash the physical discs away out of sight and do away with the bulky storage

 

[sungod]

Have you considered ripping your vinyl to FLAC? I use Vinyl Studio for this. My turntable is plugged in to a Pro-Ject Phono Box USB V which has a USB output to my PC and RCA outputs to my amp.

Although, if you haven't got time to rip your CDs I don't suppose you will be ripping any LPs

just discovered this...
https://hifimediy.com/product/s2-digi/
...which should take the optical output from the waxwing and turn it into usb which i can save direct, also works in the other direction (they also do one that's input only)

benefit for me is the waxwing is set up for the cartridge mc-201, so now i can fit an optical splitter to send the signal to the phantoms as well as the optical-usb converter, no need to shuffle cables etc. for ripping, and no chance of introducing a ground loop

 

[sungod]

just connected up the s2-digi: 2-port passive optical splitter from the waxwing, one port to the phantoms, one to the s2, then a usb cable from s2 to the mac for power/data, it immediately appears as an extra audio input device

the waxwing adc is 24/96 and i've just had the cartridge re-tipped, perfect time to redo and at far higher quality than the first time around, plus it'll be much less hassle

just to be sure, i ran the audio stream through rew's spectrum analyser, looks like the s2 is doing a clean passthrough without any downsampling etc., definitely a good option if you've optical out to rip from

 

[nellietheelephant]

windows media player (legacy) and VLC media player, both easy to use. I play all my digital music (WAV, Flac etc.) on a laptop which is connected to my HiFi, specifically the DAC on the CD player. Sounds great.

 

[Rezillo]

I've used Asset for some years and it has been faultless:

https://dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/forum/dbpoweramp/asset-upnp

The Synology version runs on our NAS and I can use any dlna-compatible device to access the server. I use https://www.eezupnp.de/
for playback on a Windows PC.