[mikoss]

I also enjoy the ease of use with Chromecast Audio, but I hear noticeable differences, feeding the MB Gungnir optical from the Chromecast, vs USB from the laptop. Since it uses Schiit's USB v2, I wonder if you find the same with the Yggdrasil.

Basically, bass doesn't sound entirely correct... Less quantity and less quality. Lower midrange also seems to be lacking quality, so there is an overall tilt to the upper midrange and a bit into the treble with Chromecast and Gumby. It doesn't sound sharp, or bad... Just different in a way of reduced quality.

I am also very cautious using optical as an improvement to USB. I realize a lot of others use it with their Macs, but I personally think it may have worse jitter than USB, without resorting to more expensive optical transmitters. We have measurements showing the (low) jitter of the USB 3 implementation, but I also believe others who say improvements can be made using other inputs and expensive converters... I'd like to see how they compare with regards to jitter.

I also personally believe others who have wrote that Gumby benefits more from other inputs than Yggdrasil. It would also kind of make sense since it hasn't been rev'd up USB wise.

 

[RCBinTN]

  My Yggy has landed. This is my breakin setup with Mac Air playing Jango 24/7 for 10 days to 2 weeks

Looks very comfy!  And soon excellent music will appear from the magical devices!

 

[steved21]

  As I outlined a few pages ago, I'm using Chromecast Audio which casts or streams music from the cloud or your computer over wifi. It connects to the DAC with Toslink. If I use Google Music as the software interface from phone and computer it has a great interface with albums/playlists/etc. and it plays FLACS but downsamples to 320kbps. But if you use Bubble or Flex or?, you can stream full bits from FLACS on your computer to the DAC.

Ok,, I'm sure that works well for you but it seems to be to be a parallel to using an an apple TV, streaming apple lossless via Toslink  to my Yaggi. I was hoping to make a step up on that.  
Currently i go from a NAS via ethernet cat 6 to a network switch, ethernet cat 6 to a mac air running audirvana, USB to a Wyred, to a Yaggi and on to amp and or headphones / Speakers.   
I want to A eliminate USB and B not stream the audio. Both of which improve the sound. The former more than the latter. Briston has a one box $3,000 solution (Bryston BDP2) which beats all comers by a mile.  I'm just trying to do it cheaper, by about $2,000 or more.

 

[earnmyturns]

  <snip/>
 
I want to A eliminate USB and B not stream the audio. Both of which improve the sound. The former more than the latter. Briston has a one box $3,000 solution (Bryston BDP2) which beats all comers by a mile.  I'm just trying to do it cheaper, by about $2,000 or more.

Something doesn't add up here. I don't know what you mean by "stream the audio". Whatever feeds the Yggy has to "stream" the digital signal into the Yggy in the sense that the Yggy has minimal digital input buffering, so sender and receiver have to work in near synchrony (still allowing for DAC-internal reclocking if clock drift is relatively high-frequency noise; if it isn't, I don't think the Yggy will be very happy). What we care about is the timing in the DAC-incoming digital signal, not how much it was buffered upstream. Unless your server, renderer, or network are awful, they will be plenty capable of presenting bits to a final minimally buffered device that will clean up clock and waveform shape for best ingestion by the DAC. It could well be that the BDP2, by integrating renderer and digital signal-shaping stages, using a very good PS, and generally keeping electrical noise away from its DAC connection, will do an exceptional job compared with separates you have worked with, but there's no mathematical reason for that, nor for USB being necessarily inferior to other digital connections. It all depends on the particular implementation.

 

[steved21]

Sorry my bad on the use of words.  As opposed to stream, i meant send by WiFi. I can hear a different between using a cabled cat 6 connection and sending via Wifi.   not sure what the Bryston does correctly , and as you mention maybe it just does a good job at keeping noise away from the connection to the DAC, but when ever it is , it seems to be done right.  

 

[artur9]

   
Excepting the usage fees I would think Roon could clean up in this market as they're already way ahead of the DLNA/UPnP stuff, but there are few end-point options at the moment and the software requires a machine (Mac or PC at the moment) to run a "server" process as well a Roon compatible end-point.  

Roon, sadly, does not recognize all of my music.  Only discovered that after paying for it <grrr>. I was shocked that it did not know a composer whose pieces were performed by Miles Davis.  And it's not compatible with most of the devices I own.
 
So I use MinimServer on a Mac, MPD on a NUC and a combination of (iOS) PlugPlayer, mPod and started trying out Linn Kazoo last night.  BubbleUPNP on Android (when I had one) was much better than the first 2 but liked what I saw of Kazoo.  There are bugs in both Kazoo and upmpdcli that make them incompatible with each other unless one gets the latest of each.
 
MPD on the NUC is going into a W4S uLink then into various devices via its TOSLINK/Coax outputs.  Just got a Lyngdorf that has a digital out so sometimes I listen to that directly and sometimes I listen to my UberFrost.  For now, I don't think the UberFrost is as good as the Lyngdorf's DAC, so I need to upgrade it to something. Waiting for my bank account to be fruitful and multiply and then I'll get the Yggy.

 

[artur9]

 
 
Claud
 
I have to say i like the chair. 

You need an audiophile chair!  
 
There is a cheaper one.... that I cannot find right now.

 

[claud W]

As good recliners go, that one was not overpriced. Its recycled leather and power, although the remote control is wired ( see hanging over left arm of chair. )  It's a Lazy Boy. 
Using my Ether Cs, I can not hear the wife, so if she wants my attention, she has to appear before my throne.

 

[steved21]

To start, you can either enable (or download from QNAP, via the built-in package downloader) a DLNA/UPnP server for your existing NAS device.  It was either called "Music Station" or "DLNA Media Server", from memory - and I think it's available for your particular NAS.  That piece will make your music files available via the DLNA protocols on your network.
 
There are many possible "Control Points" (this is the client software that lets you browse your music collection in various was and select/queue files to play), available for phones and tablets.  The "Lumin" (by "Pixel Magic Systems") player is very nicely done, and free as I recall.  I know it's available for iOS, not sure about Android or Windows.  There are many other possible "Control Points" available, Linn have a couple (one requires their own server, one is raw DLNA), but that type of software is referred to as the "Control Point".
 
You download that, point it at the server name that is exposed by the DLNA server software on your QNAP NAS, and then you'll choose where to "render" (output/play) the music.
 
Some renderers, such as the Linn and Lumin players combine the streaming component and the DAC into a single unit, and that's the "normal" definition of a "renderer".  However, as far as the server and control point are concerned, the renderer doesn't have to have a DAC inside it.  So things like the Aries, Aries Mini, Sonore Sonicorbiter SE (no COAX there) will work, as will various Raspberry PI setups with a digital out (e.g. Hifiberry Digi+) and a suitable audio-centric boot-image/distro.
 
The Aries Mini will do what you want, in concert with your NAS and a free DLNA or OpenHome control point from either the App Store or Google Play.  Once it's set up it's fine, but the "Lightning DS" app is a bit fragile and frustrating if something goes wrong, since it generally won't tell you WHAT is wrong.  The Aries Mini has built in-WiFi, a DAC if you ever want to use it, optical and COAX outputs, and runs about $549.  I'd use one myself if I wasn't a Roon user (I just prefer Roon to the DLNA stuff) and didn't want to use AES/EBU.
 
TORQ
Thanks very much for this,  using Music Station ( already installed as native on the Qnap) and a Hifiberrydigi+ with a Raspberry Pi looks pretty straight forward.  FYI the Moon mind 180 is pretty much this except offering a AES connection and their own app as an endpoint ( which I have to say is one of the best I've used to date. ) I'll spend some time to get this set up and let the thread know.

 

[Tbone289]

   If I use Google Music as the software interface from phone and computer it has a great interface with albums/playlists/etc. and it plays FLACS but downsamples to 320kbps.

 
Google Music doesn't store FLAC files, so it can't play them.  FLAC files are downsampled to 320kbps as they are uploaded to the cloud.  They aren't downsampled from FLAC as they are played.
 
 

 

[noshortcuts]

   
Google Music doesn't store FLAC files, so it can't play them.  FLAC files are downsampled to 320kbps as they are uploaded to the cloud.  They aren't downsampled from FLAC as they are played.
 
 

True, I think I said that .... BUT also understand that Google Chromecast Audio is happy to play FLAC streamed over wifi from your computer storage. You just have to use a different interface than Google Music like bubble or Plex. I'm listening at 48 x2 right now. 

 

[Tbone289]

  True, I think I said that .... BUT also understand that Google Chromecast Audio is happy to play FLAC streamed over wifi from your computer storage. You just have to use a different interface than Google Music like bubble or Plex. I'm listening at 48 x2 right now. 

Well, not exactly...  You said Google Music plays FLACs and downsamples them.  Google Music doesn't play FLAC at all--it only plays mp3.
 
I'm aware of what Chromecast can do, and I've used it and Chromecast Audio extensively with Google Music and BubbleUPnP.  IMO, Chromecast audio unfortunately has one fatal flaw that keeps me from using it anymore, and that's the fact that it must be connected to Google play services to work.  So, if you don't have internet access, there is no way that you can cast to it, regardless of what app or source you are using (local or cloud).  There are many other devices that accomplish what CC Audio does, and more, that don't require internet access.

 

[noshortcuts]

 
Well, not exactly...  You said Google Music plays FLACs.
 
I'm aware of what Chromecast can do, and I've used it and Chromecast Audio extensively with Google Music and BubbleUPnP.  Chromecast audio unfortunately has one fatal flaw that keeps me from using it anymore, and that's the fact that it must be connected to Google play services to work.  So, if you don't have internet access, there is no way that you can cast to it, regardless of what app or source you are using (local or cloud).  There are many other devices that accomplish what CC Audio does, and more, that don't require internet access.

I don't see anywhere that I said GoogleMusic plays FLACs, only that ChromecastAudio does when streaming from computer over wifi (but whatever, I think we're clear by now). Internet access is needed and CA won't be a solution without wifi. I appreciate that it's $35, easy to set up, easy to use (including maintaining playlists, thumbs up/down, etc), and sounds awesome. Much music sounds just as good at 320kbps but flacs play directly too if the computer is on.

 

[kazsud]

   
 
 
A lot depends on what outputs you need from the streamer.  If you just want TOSLINK and COAX there's quite a few devices out there.  Add well-done USB (as in, not just using whatever USB interface was built into the chipset for the SoC used) and the number shrinks significantly.  Add AES/EBU and you're down to a couple or three options.
 
Even the big Linn streamers fell down hard on the software front initially, but with Asset UPnP or Minimserver things got a lot better (Twonky was a nightmare).  Linn's DLNA/UPnP extensions (often referred to as "OpenHome") helped a lot, adding things like gap-less playback.  Lumin's control point software helped drive up the quality of the iPad control options, and Linn's own software has come a long way ... though is still a bit utilitarian looking.
 
Where it all tends to fall down is vendor-specific applications.  Auralic's "Lightning DS" is improving, but still has major issues.  For example, I got my Aries into a state where it wouldn't index a library without the app crashing, and then it decided it had completed the task - after which the control app crashed on launch consistently.  The only way back out of that was to delete and re-install the app after doing a hard-reset on the Aries, and starting over.
 
Even bigger-ticket gear, such as the Devialet Phantom, has app issues.  "Spark" was horrendous at launch, and I'm still not much of a fan (though it does at least work and is stable now).
 
Excepting the usage fees I would think Roon could clean up in this market as they're already way ahead of the DLNA/UPnP stuff, but there are few end-point options at the moment and the software requires a machine (Mac or PC at the moment) to run a "server" process as well a Roon compatible end-point.  I will, at some point in the near future, wind up doing a big round-up of Roon end-points ... as I like the idea of things like the Sonore Sonicorbiter SE but haven't had a chance to stack them up against more expensive and overtly engineered products like the Aries etc.
 
Shame about the Soundaware transport - that level of software nonsense is just not worth dealing with for me.  Call me burnt out from the early years of dealing with such nonsense with the early UPnP servers and control points, but at this point if a streamer can't work properly with the leading server and control points out of the gate, then no matter how good the hardware I won't have the patience for it.

 
 
Were you having trouble with the Soundaware transport with windows or osx?

 

[Torq]

   
 
Were you having trouble with the Soundaware transport with windows or osx?

 
I was commenting on @Currawong's experiences with the Soundaware transport - I've not actually used one.
 
Based on his write-up it's just not close enough to "being there" on the software side for me to want to explore it either - which saves me from a lot of potential frustration!