Best way to use NDX

Nothing wrong with your proposed set up at all and from a sound perspective should be great. A couple of considerations more in terms of usability:

- is the Linksys also your Internet router with wireless? I'm not a big fan of Linksys but there you go, I have my NDX and Asset/NAS on a different switch to main Internet router - not always necessary but some people occasionally suffer issue with cheap Internet routers (multicast/throughput etc)

- how will you control the NDX, do you have an iPad - this would be ideal

- Longer term maybe consider a NAS device, if you like Asset (which is very good) then may be a dedicated NAS that runs Asset - you don't have to then think whether your laptop is switched on before you play music

Good luck

Dear Jack,

Thank you very much for your post.

My listening room in the basement so

no internet access there. A Wifi router

does not 'see' the place, so I have to

use a switch.

What is wrong with Linksys routers/switches

in your opinion ? Could you recommend me

reasonably priced NAS devices that could

run Asset ?

Cheers,

Hi, your setup is good, and it is better to use a dedicated switch as you are ( no issue I am aware of with a regular Linksys switch ) rather than play the lotto and rely on the switch built into a consumer Internet router.

As said above you will will probably want wireless for your control point if you want to use Nstream or equivalent.. I can't recommend enough the simple Apple Airport Express as a wifi access point. It will also serve as a DHCP server if you should want it. Importantly it supports multicast ( which some consumer Internet/wifi routers don't support correctly). These are special data frames and packets of data used for synchronisation and device discovery when streaming. You can plug your AE into your switch.

BTW I wouldn't bother with fancy 'audio hifi' type Etherent patch lead between switch and NDX. You will probably have a better result when you  tweak later and slap a ferrite choke ( a few quid) over a regulat Cat 5e lead.

As far as little servers for your Asset, if you shop around on google/ebay you can see some refurbished micro PC for around £90 or less. For OS, I recommend windows home server for simplicity, and it is optimised for remote config, so you don't need keyboards and screen on your little PC server.

Simon

Had a bad experience with Linksys many years ago but things may well have changed, I now use Netgear PRO/Safe.

Anyway you definitely want wireless in the basement so you can use an iPad/iPhone etc to control things. You could consider Asset NAS (find the HFX site) which is effectively a NAS running WHS with Asset UPnP all configured etc - looks very nice. Ripcaster also do RipNAS which is similar to AssetNAS but also lets you rip - I guess it depends how much you want to spend

I have not used either BTW. I have a QNAP NAS which I would highly recommend, however, it wont run Asset (does run Twonky) so I have to have another computer running Asset. Quite a few people take this approach but the drawback is that it's a two box solution.

Hi Mates,

Thank you very much for the posts sent so far.

Maybe a stupid question, do different UPnP servers

make difference in sound quality as well ? Is there

any difference in SQ when the signal comes from a

NAS or from a PC or from an USB/SPDIF converter

for example ? What is your experience ?

Cheers

Hi Pz -

My small, isolated W7 PC running Asset has been providing UPnP service without error or restart for many, many months.  I love this reliability, and also its flexibility.  Asset converts my FLAC files to WAV on the fly.  Some say they hear a small improvement in sound quality using WAV versus FLAC, but I don't.  What I like about WAV is that it is a more universal format, so my Denon AVR and all of my Apple products (running PlugPlayer) can also share this common UPnP service. 

But I prefer FLAC over WAV for ease of tagging, as well as for a small economy in storage space (I rip using FLAC level 0). So, in my mind, Asset allows me to have the best of both worlds!

Good luck!

Hook

I recently went from wirelessly streaming WAV (transcoded from FLAC) using Asset on a laptop, to hard wired NAS (Synology) streaming WAV (transcoded from FLAC) using Synology UPNP server.  The difference in sound quality was very significantly better; I assume because of the use of cable versus wifi, although I don't understand why...