Introduction
My current streamer the allo.com Sparky plus Kali plus Piano 2.1 DAC has finally given up the ghost, 'twas a lovely device, very cheap and delivered a great sound. Old age coupled with Volumio's failure to update it's own library (libspotify) has signalled the end. Time to replace!

What do I replace it with? Before I talk about that, what do I want?
My System
Breve Turntable
Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista Vinyl Phono Stage
Thomas Mayer VT52 Preamp.
2 X Quad 405-2, upgraded with Net Audio Dual Mono Power Supply and amplifier boards (best sounding Quads I've ever had)
JBL L-300 Summit Loudpeakers
All cables by TNT-Audio (Interconnects and speaker cables)

New Streamer Requirements
I have a Spotify account so must be able to do that. It's legacy, the rest of the family have their own accounts (which I pay for), and I have a huge pile of playlists made up on it. Not impossible to recreate on other platforms, but a little daunting.
I have around 500gb of my CDs I ripped to SSD, so must be able to handle an external (or internal drive)
NO APPS - hate them! Totally unnecessary, if it has a web browser that suffices. I know I am limiting myself and cutting myself out of other solutions (such as Roon), but I only have the one set up on which I play music, so to have the capability to drive multi-room set ups is wasted on me.
Got to be reasonably good, I have a fairly nice system which will ruthlessly expose any cheap stuff.
A youtube plugin might be good, SWMBO is learning to play the cello (late starter) and looks at a lot of youtube stuff, but she'd also like to hear it on the big rig (her term)!
Ability to interface with other platforms QOBUZ, Tidal, etc.
Small and discrete, I have limited rack space, so the solution must be fairly compact (that's why I liked the Allo Sparky set up)
Low cost...

That'll do as a starter set of requirements.

Commercial devices - all in one
So I have looked and looked and looked.

The all-in-one boxes that are out there are pretty good, seem to do everything I require. The only issue being I could not find any that have a web browser as part of the set up and they are characterised by fancy costs, too!!

That means, plan B

Raspberry Pi boxes
These are out, Volumio does not work any more, as noted above, and the others all require some form of app to interact with the PI. I could in theory wait for a short time and some genius in the community will step up and fix the issue, but I'm not prepared to wait.

So...

Plan C

Roll your own!
So what do I need? For a roll your own set up?
A fanless system
A DAC
A network element
Internal or external storage

I know, maybe this: A NUC

www.pbtech.co.nz/product/BPCINT88321/Intel-NUC-10th-Gen-BXNUC10I3FNHN-i3-10110U-Mini-PC

These things are loud, and noisy, and small ( ). Don't forget the extras to make it work.

www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM981250/Samsung-980-250GB-NVMe-PCIe-30-M2-SSD-Read-up-to-2
www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMCRU079600/Crucial-8GB-DDR4-SODIMM-3200-MTs-PC4-25600-CL22-SR

OK, that's the base NUC, with storage and memory. It's got gigabit LAN connectivity, I'm not bothered by wi-fi.

Right it's a good start. I need to drop the NUC case though! It's the only way to get rid of the noisy fans.

Enter the AKASA Turing case

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089GS3Z84/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

A word of warning here, this case is specifically designed for Frost Canyon (10th Generation) NUCs. Careful matching required!!!

What is that thing? It's basically a massive aluminium heat sink. It sits on top of the processor with thermal paste. More importantly - no fan. Therefore silent. Goal achieved! Yay, me!!!

Need a DAC!!!

What DAC
Sigh, this is painful, I really liked the Marantz HD-DAC1, very pretty. Sadly the price was killer - NZ$3200 was way too rich. The Schiit Modi 3. the Topping E30 and lots of other DACS have all disappeared down their own supply chain problems. I cannot lay hands on them, even talking to the manufacturers direct yielded nothing but apologies, and in any case New Zealand is a very small country and that means we are last on the supply list.

Onwards! Alright I've had good experience with Allo products so let's go with this:

www.allo.com/sparky/revolution-dac.html

It's external, reasonably priced, and seems to have had good reviews. Result!

Everything ordered. No idea how long it's going to take to arrive. Next post will occur then when we prise the mobo out of its case on the NUC, ready for the move to it's new home in the AKASA Turing case/

I tried a mini PC rather than a NUC. An AINOL. It worked OK but was much easier to just use a Bluesound.

I'm glad the Bluesound worked for you. It won't do for me...

It uses an APP (Aaargh!!)

It has a normal web page as well, BLUOS Controller.

Or did you want something that doesn't use computers/mobile phones and only like a remote control? Confused...

Which is why I prefer to stick with analogue!

Shoot, it does? Bumsville! I looked at that, saw the app and rejected. Sigh!

What's wrong with apps anyway?

You can buy a cheap phone, for use with the app, if you don't have a spare phone/don't want to use your phone/tablet.

Its then just the same as a dedicated remote control after all.

To explain, my phone has a web browser (as does my PC and my tablet). I want to be able to connect to whatever streamer I use with that browser. There should be no need for an APP. You mention the BLUOS Controller, my understanding is that's an APP. Or do I have that wrong?

I'm with you on the analogue front, by the way.I like my turntable.

From Chrome web browser on my PC



But still don't get it.

An app is just another interface, especially if using a phone. There's no real difference between using the web browser cf the app except the app is probably more efficient on a phone!

If using a computer only, then apps are not meant to work with them. They work with phones.

I don't like Apps because in the early days a lot of apps 'phoned home', and they still do with good reason (updates and so on). I ran a check on what some of these apps where doing and realised that they were doing exactly what they said they did, PLUS doing extra for the maker of the app.

I've been leary of apps that do extra ever since! Put it down to individual idiosyncratic behaviour on my part!

Using a web browser on a phone is a pain, as there is usually too much info put into such a small space.

The app will usually make it phone friendly. Layout the buttons and menus in a more friendly way etc

I can understand if you are not using a phone, as a full sized web browser on a computer is also my preferred choice.

Jun 23, 2022 16:40:15 GMT 12 jon said:

I don't like Apps because in the early days a lot of apps 'phoned home', and they still do with good reason (updates and so on). I ran a check on what some of these apps where doing and realised that they were doing exactly what they said they did, PLUS doing extra for the maker of the app.

I've been leary of apps that do extra ever since! Put it down to individual idiosyncratic behaviour on my part!

And you don't think a web browser does similar! 

I've been using a 2nd hand HP mini with Windows 10 Pro and other software. And found it quite good. Total cost of the setup would be about $700 all up.
I use C Cleaner to remove trackers on it.

Citroen, I really appreciate your comments and questions. They've made me think (painful process, thinking!) and for that I thank you.

It's too late for me to change course on this particular adventure... but maybe next time

OT perhaps,

I've recently been looking at and playing with KodiTV.
kodi.tv/

I was quite pleased to find that the remote control app for iOS would work with as low as iOS 9.3.6 (I think) on my daily iPhone 4S and ...
my inherited mothers early iPad 2 running the same, and so I can put it to use as a remote control over WiFi for in this instance a main Win 7 installation.
I look forward to testing it with other platforms... Mac & Linux maybe. I do have a 5S waiting screen repair... all old tech. But it works! ;=}))





~ RdM

I too have ~ 500GB of flacs, increasing.
I am still looking at ways to display organise and play them.
It's an open ended question.

Transcribing LPs after cleaning, and CDs, more space and time.

Personal preferences. It can all add up...

But a nice visual interface is desirable too.

So ...

Yeah, the OS is important. What to use. Ok, I admit I've already decided!

Tell you later

Jun 23, 2022 16:37:15 GMT 12 Citroen said:

From Chrome web browser on my PC



But still don't get it.

You have lots of  Artwork Too Large  notices, I notice;-

I spent a lot of time embedding cover artwork at 500x500 pixels (for personal historical reasons) (older colourful imacs) in all my flac & mp3 & etc files.

So that would be a software discussion, but also look at what defaults are existing in the program or web page.

Regards!

Parts arriving! The NUc, with SSD drive and Ram



The silent case with all the bits for it!



Now to put this together...

So, basically, complete. I followed this build post on Anandtech:
www.anandtech.com/show/16191/akasa-turing-fanless-case-review-noiseless-nuc-nonpareil/2

Which was useful. Including the correction of an error in the build manual of the Akasa Turing case.



This one with the RAM and M2 SSD inserted.

You'll have to play in the BIOS to get it to boot from USB stick, so you can load your chosen system into place. Remember to turn off Secure Boot.

Right, apologies first. I've been abroad...

However I'm back, the Revolution DAC has arrived and I've been playing around with a bunch of software!

More anon

Vortexbox

I had some hopes for this, until I started doing research! It is currently abandonware, the maintainer has not done an update in 2 - 3 years.

At that point I stopped even assessing it. That's a shame.

It's all too likely that Covid caused these issues, and I do hope that the maintainer comes back to it and continues developing it.

Logitech Media Server

Another candidate. I will admit to never really investigating and assessing it. It turns out that LMS is a Media Server... it needs a renderer to actually play music.

As a server it is really good, quick to catalogue your music, provide pictures, and so on.

I was slightly put off by this, however many renderers incorporate LMS as their base Media server. You just need to be aware of it and plan steps to mitigate the issue.

I stopped doing this one, as I want a renderer and music server all in one.

Have you tried Snakeoil OS ?

Aug 27, 2022 11:42:01 GMT 12 Mike A said:

Have you tried Snakeoil OS ?

Looks pretty good, however it does not support Tidal, and that's an issue for me.

One to store up though and keep it on tap ready to go in the future

Long out of touch with these computer based systems, but I used to use Foobar. Had lots of plug ins, downloadable interfaces which were customisable. And was Free!

Ap-Linux or Audiophile Linux

Based on Arch Linux, and is a complete nightmare if you are not at least familiar with Lunix and what to do. I love Arch Linux for the power it hands to the user. I hate Arch Limux for the power it hands to the user. Configuring it is never easy. For example, and there was a lot more to get it to work:

fdisk -l              # find the disk / partition, in my case /dev/sda and /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1   # build the ext4 filesystem in the root partition
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt  # mount the new file system
time cp -ax / /mnt    # copy over the OS
                     # reported back cp -ax / /mnt 1.36s user 136.54s system 88% cpu 2:36.37 total
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash # run in the new system root
cd /etc/apl-files
./runme.sh            # do the rest of the install
grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda # make the new OS bootable part 1
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg   # part 2
passwd root           # set root’s password
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Pacific/Auckland /etc/localtime # set my time zone
hwclock --systohc --utc # update the hardware clock
./autologin.sh        # set the system up so that it automatically logs in
exit                  # done with the chroot session
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab # create the fstab for the new system

Ok, so one of the things I want is ease of installation. That's a fail right there.

On the other hand I liked the sound it produced, there was very little buffering and latency and jitter was virtually non-existent.

Moving on!

Daphile

Or more particularly Daphile RT. The RT stands for Real Time.

www.daphile.com/

Ok, switch to Download and download the RT version. Why RT? It is better than the standard version.

Ease of Installation - totally silly:

1) download ISO
2) Burn to USB Stick
3) Configure PC to boot from USB - for the NUC that involved turning off UEFI and enforcing an USB boot.
4) Boot from USB stick
5) Access Daphile from web browser.

There was then some further configuration:

Spotify - enter username/password and you are done.
Tidal - configure LMS account and go.
Youtube - enter account
Internet Radio stations were just a click away.

The whole thing took less than 10 minutes start to finish and was painless and easy.

The sound was on a par with AP-Linux, as expected, however there was less latency and buffering. It spotted and configured my external music hard drive, and downloaded cover art very quickly. It saw and understood the Revolution DAC.

I'm keeping this.

There are some downsides, it is best on a tablet/ipad type device. You can use a phone, it's a little more cramped but not enough to be a a big problem. It pages things, so look out for the usual 1>2>3... and those numbers are small. Since I have lost the sight in my right eye, that's a problem for me.

The whole thing is a big step up from the Raspberyy PI/Volumio thing I had (as were all the distros I tried).