Hi-res and streaming - again.

[Guest]

I have recently 'got religion' and am now convinced that there IS an audible improvement from hi-res. I would appreciate advice, from people who have already been on this pilgrimage, on how best to stream from my NAS without buying a Linn/Naim etc at stupid prices.

I already have a Sonos (no hi-res) and a Sqeezebox Touch (24/96 capability) both of which can sound acceptable. The trouble is, track for track, neither of these sound as good as playing directly from my Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet via USB. One answer MAY be that the tablet is isolated from the mains and the LAN.

From the tablet, I am simply playing the music with Media Monkey. All three sources are using the same Benchmark DAC2 directly into a Bryston 4B SST and PMC OB1i speakers.

Why is the tablet so much better and how do I get streaming to be as good as that?

[Stunsworth]

Probably not much use to you, but I use a Mac Mini connected via USB to my DAC (an Audiolab M-Dac).

On the Mac I use iTunes and the Audirvana player software. Apart from a question of sound quality, this automatically adjusts the Mac's output sample rate and bit depth to correspond to that of the recording. For example if the Mac is set to replay audio at CD standard (16/44.1), playing a high resolution file (say 24/96) using the standard audio driver will leave the digital output at 16/44.1. Using Aurdirvana means that the sample rate automatically changes from 16/44.1 to 24/96.

I don't think the same limitation applies to Windows.

[richardfinegold]

I have recently 'got religion' and am now convinced that there IS an audible improvement from hi-res. I would appreciate advice, from people who have already been on this pilgrimage, on how best to stream from my NAS without buying a Linn/Naim etc at stupid prices.

I already have a Sonos (no hi-res) and a Sqeezebox Touch (24/96 capability) both of which can sound acceptable. The trouble is, track for track, neither of these sound as good as playing directly from my Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet via USB. One answer MAY be that the tablet is isolated from the mains and the LAN.

From the tablet, I am simply playing the music with Media Monkey. All three sources are using the same Benchmark DAC2 directly into a Bryston 4B SST and PMC OB1i speakers.

Why is the tablet so much better and how do I get streaming to be as good as that?

Can your NAS be used simply as an external HD,connecting by USB to a computer? Or do you have to rely on the Ethernet connection?

[Nevalti]

Can your NAS be used simply as an external HD,connecting by USB to a computer? Or do you have to rely on the Ethernet connection?

The Dell tablet is a full Windows 8 computer, with a spec. easily the equivalent of most laptops. Connected directly to the DAC, that works brilliantly BUT, I really do want to stream from my NAS as it contains a great deal of music, AND I want to have an app on my iPhone (etc) to browse and to control the music in much the same way that I can with Sonos and Squeezebox. I understand that most streamers have that facility - to one extent or another.

It is the quality lost via those two existing streamers that I want to understand before wasting my money on something else. Theoretically, they both provide a 'bit-perfect' supply to the DAC but the sound quality is very clearly inferior when it arrives from the NAS, or a remote PC, either via wifi or LAN. Something is spoiling the sound; I am trying to understand what that is in the hope that I can achieve the same excellent quality when playing directly from the Dell into the NAS.

I am currently assuming that it is some sort of interference but that is only a guess. If you play either the Sonos or Squeezebox, without doing a direct comparison with the Dell (direct to DAC), it sounds perfectly acceptable, pretty good in fact, certainly as good as my CD player. It is only when doing a close comparison that you can tell that the direct connection is noticeably better. I only stumbled across this problem because I was trying to listen as carefully as possible to hi-res tracks (on the Dell) to see if I could tell any difference.

[johnb]

I already have a Sonos (no hi-res) and a Sqeezebox Touch (24/96 capability) both of which can sound acceptable. The trouble is, track for track, neither of these sound as good as playing directly from my Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet via USB. One answer MAY be that the tablet is isolated from the mains and the LAN.

You should get very good results from your Squeezebox Touch as long as it is set up correctly.

I presume you are streaming from Logitech Media Server running on a computer (or possibly a NAS) and are feeding the co-ax digital out into your DAC.

Are you using WiFi or wired to connect to the Touch? If WiFi it is important that the Touch has a good signal strength - the higher the better for hi-res files as they have three times the bit rate of 16/44.1. I have no problems streaming hi-res files to my Touch, but its signal strength is between 85% and 100%. (You can see what the signal strength is at the Touch in LMS/Settings/Information.)

Both Sonus and the Touch can stream bit-perfect but they have to be set up in a certain way. With the Touch you need to check the following settings in LMS:

Using the Logitech Media Servier web interface:

Click 'Settings' (bottom right hand corner), then -

Click on the "Player" tab
Click the drop down menu "Basic Settings" and select "Audio", then check the following:

Crossfade: Set to "None"
Smart Crossfade: Set to "Disable"
Volume Control: Set to "Output is fixed at 100%" *
Bitrate Limiting: Set to "No Limit"
Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain: Set to "No Volume Adjustment"

After making changes click on "Apply"


* The is the one you most likely need to change. If the volume control is not set at 100% you will be losing data with hi-res files. (With 16/44.1 files the volume control is more tolerant as the bit depth in converted to 24 bits within the Touch, before volume adjustments are applied, but even so I prefer the volume to be always fixed at 100%.)

[johnb]

It is also worth asking the question whether your tablet/Media Monkey/USB is actually producing bit-perfect data. You recognise a difference and you believe that the tablet/Media Monkey/USB is superior but that doesn't preclude the possibility that the audio is being processed in some way by the tablet (especially if it is running Windows!).

I'm not familiar with Windows tablets but with desktops/laptops I understand that you need to use an ASIO driver, etc, etc to get the best results.

[Dave2002]

nevalti

The trouble with discussing hi-res or even just high quality CD audio is that differences may be measurably small (or not measurable at all) and also subjective, as different people perceive the differences, if any, in different ways. There are of course other factors, such as expectation bias (mentioned on another thread recently, about DACs), and also the sheer difficulty of keeping track of all the possible combinations of equipment and systems. Some people may report one system as being very good, but this may not be generally replicated, and a piece of kit which works in one system may not work well in another.

I don't know enough about your system to be able to make more than a stab at a few points. There are several ways of driving a DAC via USB, and some use the DAC clock, while others use computer based clocking. I think the better form is so-called asynchronous USB, which allows the DAC to do the clocking, and that can minimise some problems, such as jitter. I only use USB occasionally to drive a DAC, and none of the DACs I have do hi-res via USB, so I don't have much experience there. I find USB adequate, but no claims to very high quality, but that's because of limitations of my equipment and connectivity.

Re the Touch, is the output (input to the DAC) via optical or coax digital? Personally I don't think there's much to choose between them (see para 1!), but some people claim that coax is better, and that reflections on optical cables can cause problems. Certainly some cables may be better than others, so it's not all necessarily phooey, and I've seen waveform diagrams of signals sent over coax compared with optical cables. Visually the optical cables appeared to be worse, though since the signals are to be fed into a digital system with appropriate threshold detectors and digital processing, I would still argue that there would be no significant difference at the DAC - but particular kit may show up problems which other units would not. Optical cables on the other hand should be immune from electrical interference on the digital signal lines, though again most electrical interference should not affect digital equipment.

Re the LAN connectivity, personally I decided to go for wired versus wireless connectivity, and I use ethernet switches. However, I can't say that there was always an obvious difference with some units providing that the Wi-Fi signal for a wireless link was sufficiently high. I did have good results using a Squeezebox Touch using wireless over a much further distance than I expected. Perhaps that unit has a really good receiver for the Wi-Fi signals.

One other factor might be activity on the computer, or NAS unit. Most NAS devices use a variety of Linux I believe, and probably not a very high powered computer is included within the box. Whether that's significant I can't really say. However, using regular computers, some people like to ensure that as much processing which is irrelevant to audio is turned off when listening to music. It is possible that your Dell tablet does not have as many active tasks as some other computer based systems - though I'm not really too convinced about that.

I think Audirvana for Macs not only keeps the bit rate of the source files matched to the DAC, but also shuts down processes on OS X which "might" interfere with audio. My suspicion is that unless you really have golden ears that that is clutching at straws for an explanation, but I could be wrong. I just don't have the ability to test that myself.

Lastly, you mentioned battery power. Some have indeed claimed that battery power makes a difference, and that was also one of the reasons for the posting on the thread re the Fiio DAC, as someone has elsewhere claimed that running that particular DAC off a fairly simple battery pack gives very good results - I think with hi-res files. However, I note that you don't think that DAC compares well with others you own.

There are definitely people out there who believe that running DACs off battery power gives better results. Some also go further and try to run amplifiers, though that's a harder task, and tends to need much larger batteries - such as car batteries, which many of us perhaps don't want to have in a domestic environment. Even modest battery packs should be capable of driving most DACs. It's something I've been meaning to try for quite a while, though whether it will really give much better results I can't say at present.

[johnb]

Most NAS devices use a variety of Linux I believe, and probably not a very high powered computer is included within the box. Whether that's significant I can't really say.

Running LMS on a NAS is quite a popular choice and it is usually very successful, with one proviso. Some low powered NAS boxes struggle to cope with LMS when transcoding is required (e.g. when playing a format not natively supported by the Touch). However even low powered NAS boxes usually perform quite satisfactorily when there is no transcoding, e.g. when FLAC is streamed 'natively' to the Touch.

(Even though LMS can happily run on low powered devices, some low power NAS boxes exhibit very slow searching and very slow scanning.)

[richardfinegold]

The Dell tablet is a full Windows 8 computer, with a spec. easily the equivalent of most laptops. Connected directly to the DAC, that works brilliantly BUT, I really do want to stream from my NAS as it contains a great deal of music, AND I want to have an app on my iPhone (etc) to browse and to control the music in much the same way that I can with Sonos and Squeezebox. I understand that most streamers have that facility - to one extent or another.

It is the quality lost via those two existing streamers that I want to understand before wasting my money on something else. Theoretically, they both provide a 'bit-perfect' supply to the DAC but the sound quality is very clearly inferior when it arrives from the NAS, or a remote PC, either via wifi or LAN. Something is spoiling the sound; I am trying to understand what that is in the hope that I can achieve the same excellent quality when playing directly from the Dell into the NAS.

I am currently assuming that it is some sort of interference but that is only a guess. If you play either the Sonos or Squeezebox, without doing a direct comparison with the Dell (direct to DAC), it sounds perfectly acceptable, pretty good in fact, certainly as good as my CD player. It is only when doing a close comparison that you can tell that the direct connection is noticeably better. I only stumbled across this problem because I was trying to listen as carefully as possible to hi-res tracks (on the Dell) to see if I could tell any difference.

My experience with NAS is that the ethernet connection just doesn't cut it in comparison to every other digital connection, including high quality high resolution wi fi DACs. Why this should be baffles me. It was one reason I gave up on networking in frustration and just settled for the "Mac and Dac" solution. I also have a Marantz NA 7004 streamer and it is buggier than hell. The ipad app for it was horrible. I have the current issue of High Fi News and they are reveiwing a Marantz successor to the NA 7004 and the reviewer (I think it was Andrew Everard, who also reviews audio equipment for Grammophone) has the exact complaints about the newer model.
If I was in your shoes I would transfer the files from the NAS to an external HD that will connect with your Dell via usb and then be happy with that and your dac. It will be cheaper than a streamer and probably work better. Probably no one else will make this suggestion, but in all honesty that is what I would do.
Failing that, streamers from Cambridge Audio, Musical Fidelity, and Project have gotten reasonable reviews, will handle High Res material, and while not cheap at least are not stratospherically priced. I have heard the earler Cambridge Audios were also buggy but that their latest may be better.

[richardfinegold]

nevalti

The trouble with discussing hi-res or even just high quality CD audio is that differences may be measurably small (or not measurable at all) and also subjective, as different people perceive the differences, if any, in different ways. There are of course other factors, such as expectation bias (mentioned on another thread recently, about DACs), and also the sheer difficulty of keeping track of all the possible combinations of equipment and systems. Some people may report one system as being very good, but this may not be generally replicated, and a piece of kit which works in one system may not work well in another.

I don't know enough about your system to be able to make more than a stab at a few points. There are several ways of driving a DAC via USB, and some use the DAC clock, while others use computer based clocking. I think the better form is so-called asynchronous USB, which allows the DAC to do the clocking, and that can minimise some problems, such as jitter. I only use USB occasionally to drive a DAC, and none of the DACs I have do hi-res via USB, so I don't have much experience there. I find USB adequate, but no claims to very high quality, but that's because of limitations of my equipment and connectivity.

Re the Touch, is the output (input to the DAC) via optical or coax digital? Personally I don't think there's much to choose between them (see para 1!), but some people claim that coax is better, and that reflections on optical cables can cause problems. Certainly some cables may be better than others, so it's not all necessarily phooey, and I've seen waveform diagrams of signals sent over coax compared with optical cables. Visually the optical cables appeared to be worse, though since the signals are to be fed into a digital system with appropriate threshold detectors and digital processing, I would still argue that there would be no significant difference at the DAC - but particular kit may show up problems which other units would not. Optical cables on the other hand should be immune from electrical interference on the digital signal lines, though again most electrical interference should not affect digital equipment.

Re the LAN connectivity, personally I decided to go for wired versus wireless connectivity, and I use ethernet switches. However, I can't say that there was always an obvious difference with some units providing that the Wi-Fi signal for a wireless link was sufficiently high. I did have good results using a Squeezebox Touch using wireless over a much further distance than I expected. Perhaps that unit has a really good receiver for the Wi-Fi signals.

One other factor might be activity on the computer, or NAS unit. Most NAS devices use a variety of Linux I believe, and probably not a very high powered computer is included within the box. Whether that's significant I can't really say. However, using regular computers, some people like to ensure that as much processing which is irrelevant to audio is turned off when listening to music. It is possible that your Dell tablet does not have as many active tasks as some other computer based systems - though I'm not really too convinced about that.

I think Audirvana for Macs not only keeps the bit rate of the source files matched to the DAC, but also shuts down processes on OS X which "might" interfere with audio. My suspicion is that unless you really have golden ears that that is clutching at straws for an explanation, but I could be wrong. I just don't have the ability to test that myself.

Lastly, you mentioned battery power. Some have indeed claimed that battery power makes a difference, and that was also one of the reasons for the posting on the thread re the Fiio DAC, as someone has elsewhere claimed that running that particular DAC off a fairly simple battery pack gives very good results - I think with hi-res files. However, I note that you don't think that DAC compares well with others you own.

There are definitely people out there who believe that running DACs off battery power gives better results. Some also go further and try to run amplifiers, though that's a harder task, and tends to need much larger batteries - such as car batteries, which many of us perhaps don't want to have in a domestic environment. Even modest battery packs should be capable of driving most DACs. It's something I've been meaning to try for quite a while, though whether it will really give much better results I can't say at present.

Dave, in the first sentence of his OP he states that he "got religion" and believes that there are differences in High Res versus CD Quality. I am not sure why you feel compelled to persuade him otherwise. I believe as he does, although I also believe that current digital reproduction has gotten really good, and that with sanely priced equipment it is possible to make the humble CD sound much better than we ever could have imagineda decade or so ago. I am listening to Kubelik's
Schumann Fourth as I type this with my MacAir feeding my firewire dac, and while it doesn't hit the finest quality that an SACD or high res downloads can muster, it's close, and a far site better than I remember.

[Nevalti]

It is also worth asking the question whether your tablet/Media Monkey/USB is actually producing bit-perfect data. You recognise a difference and you believe that the tablet/Media Monkey/USB is superior but that doesn't preclude the possibility that the audio is being processed in some way by the tablet (especially if it is running Windows!).

I'm not familiar with Windows tablets but with desktops/laptops I understand that you need to use an ASIO driver, etc, etc to get the best results.

Presumably there is no way I can tell if it is bit-perfect?

As I understand it, you need an ASIO driver for 24 bit. Given that Windows tablet Control Panel gives me a simple option to select 24 bit, I rather assumed that I didn't need to worry too much? You indicated that there may be other settings. Any suggestions where to look?

I forgot to mention before, but the DAC does confirm that it is getting a 24 bit stream - both from the Touch and from the Windows tablet.

Thanks also for the recommended settings, I will check them and respond separately.

[neiltingley]

I'm tempted to get a new rasberry pi II and see how that copes with running LMS (logitech media server) and http://code.google.com/p/squeezelite/ .

I've got a USB DAC (the Ayre QB-9). I plug that into a 'nettop' Acer PC that I bought a few years back. The Acer runs ubuntu. LMS comes as a debian package so easy to install. Squeezelite binaries are available. I really ought to package it up as a deb and make it available for people with the init scripts etc.

The solution I have works fine for me. The Acer PC is connected to wired network, mounts my NAS over NFS.

For control I've got the LMS webinterface, and Squeezer app on my tablet and phone.

LMS has the qobuz plugin that let's me stream pretty much anything I ever want bar Hyperion and Testament labels. If I fancy I hires recording then I can download and copy to the NAS.

Squeezelite is easy to set up and pumps the digital audio directly into the USB interface on my Acer via ALSA. It's 'pure' and doesn't attempt any kind of resampling. It a little bit of playing to get the buffering etc. right but lots of help available from their forums.

Obviously this is a techie's solution somewhat but it's simple and very effective.

It may be a lot easier to set up via windows but I've not tried:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?100893-HOW-TO-Squeezelite-player-on-Windows-8-step-by-step

[neiltingley]

The clue is in the name - 'NETWORK attached storage' - you need to expose the NAS file shares (virtual directories you create for different things) via CIFS.

Your NAS should be connected to your modem router via an ethernet cable. Your PC or laptop can connect via cable or your wireless WAN. The NAS will obtain an IP address from the router (in the same way any device attached to your local network does). The NAS will be reachable via it's IP address .

CIFS is the windows file sharing protocol. Most NAS boxes let you create 'windows shares' that you can then map with the windows explorer. It used to be called 'Map network drive' in XP and windows 7. I've no clue about windows 8 I'm afraid.
e
In the windows explorer you should be able to type:

\\<my nas server IP or name>\\<share name> and 'explore' it. (make sure you have enabled the correct access permissions on the share for this to happen)

Then map the share as a network drive to 'Z:\\' for example. It will appear locally as another drive just like C:\ and D:\. You can set Z:\ as the LMS music folder.

The instruction and/or CD that comes with your NAS will have full details.

http://www.foobar2000.org/ is great music player. You can set the Z:\ to be the music folder, plug in your DAC and go.

(Foobar maintainer doesn't recommend using ASIO drivers - http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_out_asio)

[Nevalti]

My experience with NAS is that the ethernet connection just doesn't cut it in comparison to every other digital connection, ........................ If I was in your shoes I would transfer the files from the NAS to an external HD that will connect with your Dell via usb and then be happy with that and your dac. It will be cheaper than a streamer and probably work better. Probably no one else will make this suggestion, but in all honesty that is what I would do. ...................

Thank you. Yes, the tablet plus an SSD is an obvious way of retaining the quality I can currently hear BUT I really would like to understand the problem and also the cure. PRESUMABLY the mega expensive streamers from Linn, Naim etc have cured the problem but I'm certainly not going to pay their prices just to avoid playing from a tablet or laptop.

[Nevalti]

You should get very good results from your Squeezebox Touch as long as it is set up correctly.

I presume you are streaming from Logitech Media Server running on a computer (or possibly a NAS) and are feeding the co-ax digital out into your DAC.

Are you using WiFi or wired to connect to the Touch? If WiFi it is important that the Touch has a good signal strength - the higher the better for hi-res files as they have three times the bit rate of 16/44.1. I have no problems streaming hi-res files to my Touch, but its signal strength is between 85% and 100%. (You can see what the signal strength is at the Touch in LMS/Settings/Information.)

Both Sonus and the Touch can stream bit-perfect but they have to be set up in a certain way. With the Touch you need to check the following settings in LMS:

Using the Logitech Media Servier web interface:

Click 'Settings' (bottom right hand corner), then -

Click on the "Player" tab
Click the drop down menu "Basic Settings" and select "Audio", then check the following:

Crossfade: Set to "None"
Smart Crossfade: Set to "Disable"
Volume Control: Set to "Output is fixed at 100%" *
Bitrate Limiting: Set to "No Limit"
Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain: Set to "No Volume Adjustment"

After making changes click on "Apply"


* The is the one you most likely need to change. If the volume control is not set at 100% you will be losing data with hi-res files. (With 16/44.1 files the volume control is more tolerant as the bit depth in converted to 24 bits within the Touch, before volume adjustments are applied, but even so I prefer the volume to be always fixed at 100%.)

Thanks John, that has proved very educational for me. There are settings in the LMS of which I was unaware and many that I still don't understand.

The wifi strength was reported as only 68% when I checked. I will consider a booster or a permanent LAN cable BUT when I temporarily hooked it up with a cable, I could hear no improvement over wifi, even at only 68%.

I have now removed the cross-fade options and set volume to fixed in the LMS all as you recommend. Previously I had the SBT volume set at maximum on the assumption that would stop the signal being corrupted but maybe the LMS set to fixed will be better?

Now that I have made the adjustments you recommended, I need to repeat the comparisons all over again. Next week sometime.