Deterministic NL
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2005
- Posts
- 97
- Likes
- 20
Been using Raspberry Pi with assorted DAC's as my music servers for a couple years now. That kind of drove me to the Logitechmediaserver and Squeezelite world which is great but in my opinion dying a slow death.
Seems no matter how happy I was with the music delivery and source component there was always a noise or two in the Raspberry Pi that drove me nuts. Yesterday i finally abandoned (well not completely, keeping one system and one laptop configured with LMS) the platform.
I purchased a Mac Mini 2.5 GHz and I wish I'd have done it ages ago. In my entertainment center I have a tube stereo, a tube headphone amp, and audio out from the TV to my main stereo preamp. 3 DAC's. The VERY BEST FEATURE here is with the Mac Mini I can just hold the option key on the volume control and just select the output DAC I want to use. I literally replaced 3 raspberry pi's with one small form factor computer.
I'm running it headless although I will probably add a Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse and HDMI over to the TV and could use it as a computer if my MacBookAir ever craps out. The screen sharing app works elegantly and I have an app called VNC Viewer on my iPad and it controls the headless Mac perfectly as well. Way less lag than you would expect from a screen sharing app. Well done Apple.
Sounds great too. Using Bit Perfect with iTunes and Clementine for my FLAC library on an external hard drive.
I see some web pages where the chasers of the perfect sound have you disabling processes and swapping power supplies and such. While I might agree there could be some improvements there I'm not that guy. This is good enough and I consider myself very finicky. I love the sound I'm getting better than the Raspberry Pi and I loved it.
I have a Linux Laptop similarly configured and either the laptop or Mac Mini would have similar results I would imagine but the screen sharing thing seals the deal for me. i'm currently NOT running LogitechMediaServer and using the Spotify app, an app called Muse which is a wrapper for Pandora (opens it like an app and not a web page) and listening to TuneIn Radio via web browser. Those are the biggies for me. I also have my iTunes Library and Apple Radio and my FLAC collection ripped and listening via Clementine (hopefully in a bit perfect fashion). I can also control Clementine from my Android phone which is cool. Don't even need the screen sharing.
I love it. This is everything I have wanted to do for years wrapped up in one package. I'm really happy with this setup. I also have a couple old and newer Airport Expresses I can use to stream stuff too I think. If I can stream everything via Airport Express I can repurpose these Raspberry Pi's and do some serious mad scientist stuff.
Seems no matter how happy I was with the music delivery and source component there was always a noise or two in the Raspberry Pi that drove me nuts. Yesterday i finally abandoned (well not completely, keeping one system and one laptop configured with LMS) the platform.
I purchased a Mac Mini 2.5 GHz and I wish I'd have done it ages ago. In my entertainment center I have a tube stereo, a tube headphone amp, and audio out from the TV to my main stereo preamp. 3 DAC's. The VERY BEST FEATURE here is with the Mac Mini I can just hold the option key on the volume control and just select the output DAC I want to use. I literally replaced 3 raspberry pi's with one small form factor computer.
I'm running it headless although I will probably add a Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse and HDMI over to the TV and could use it as a computer if my MacBookAir ever craps out. The screen sharing app works elegantly and I have an app called VNC Viewer on my iPad and it controls the headless Mac perfectly as well. Way less lag than you would expect from a screen sharing app. Well done Apple.
Sounds great too. Using Bit Perfect with iTunes and Clementine for my FLAC library on an external hard drive.
I see some web pages where the chasers of the perfect sound have you disabling processes and swapping power supplies and such. While I might agree there could be some improvements there I'm not that guy. This is good enough and I consider myself very finicky. I love the sound I'm getting better than the Raspberry Pi and I loved it.
I have a Linux Laptop similarly configured and either the laptop or Mac Mini would have similar results I would imagine but the screen sharing thing seals the deal for me. i'm currently NOT running LogitechMediaServer and using the Spotify app, an app called Muse which is a wrapper for Pandora (opens it like an app and not a web page) and listening to TuneIn Radio via web browser. Those are the biggies for me. I also have my iTunes Library and Apple Radio and my FLAC collection ripped and listening via Clementine (hopefully in a bit perfect fashion). I can also control Clementine from my Android phone which is cool. Don't even need the screen sharing.
I love it. This is everything I have wanted to do for years wrapped up in one package. I'm really happy with this setup. I also have a couple old and newer Airport Expresses I can use to stream stuff too I think. If I can stream everything via Airport Express I can repurpose these Raspberry Pi's and do some serious mad scientist stuff.
