I was considering getting a used M1 Mac Mini for streaming in my basement speaker system so I could play my large-ish FLAC collection stored on a local Synology NAS, via Audirvana, which is how I access it in my reading room headphone stack. Last evening I realized that both my iPads (my wife's old one is doing retirement duty attached to my basement speaker system's Schiit stack streaming Apple Music) running VLC Media Player can see the audio files served up from the DLNA server on the NAS. I had forgotten that I had set up the server sometime last year.
Saturday evening, I let the basement gear (which includes Freya N and Gungnir Multibit) warm up while we prepared and ate supper. I then went down to have a listen to the FLAC audio streams. Until then I had listened to Apple Music there, ensuring the audio stream was playing at the highest possible quality. The audio via that method is quite good. I highly recommend giving a listen to Widespread Panic's "Warfield 2000 # 4 (Live)" collection for near-perfection in live audio recording. Anyway, I listened to some familiar Jazz and Neil Young FLAC files, and wow. I mean,
wow. Clarity, dark space between instruments and vocals, immersion, all the good things in audio we lust over and quest endlessly for. For convenience i.e. control via an app while my butt is planted on the couch, I just ordered a WiiM Pro streamer for playing only local FLAC files. I got the Pro specifically because it has COAX out and a network jack, unlike the WiiM Mini, and I don't need any of the features of the higher models. I won't be using its built-in DAC, so this was the one that made sense.
I'm now putting the focus on the basement speaker system. I'll move the Lokius down there and put the Loki Mini + upstairs in the reading room stack with the Piety and Asgard 3. I'll get another Lokius for that stack sometime, as I consider it an essential component for any system. I switched the output to RCA-COAX from the DDC to the DAC in the reading room headphone stack to squeeze out the best sound quality. Switching the CD player there to RCA from RCA-COAX is not a big deal.
My Vali 2++ has been a bit neglected in my den/hobby office, so I'll move that down to the basement for occasional headphone use there, leaving the Magni 3+ for powered-speaker duty in my den. When the dust settles from my recent astronomy purchases and I sell some or all of my watch collection, I'll look at getting a Schiit speaker amp or amps next, and move the Asgard 3 to the basement stack once I eventually get a Mjolnir 3.
This Schiit-storm all started January 11, 2022 with the innocent purchase of an Asgard 3. Silly, naïve me.
Here's the current basement config, once the Lokius arrives back from Schiit this coming Wednesday and I know which Input Select spot it fills on the Gungnir MB. Schiit's support is awesome. Turns out there's nothing wrong with the Lokius. The inductors were picking up some EMF.
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It will make a young woman happy and stop her cats from clawing on the window screens. After that I can get back to building for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This week I also receive a couple old tube devices from a gentleman on here. A 40 watt Sherwood amplifier and an FM tuner that may well be from the late 1950’s.
) that a team of French Canadian electricians restored power to his, and his neighbor's, houses yesterday. Awesome support from the Great White North!
