NMT as a music streamer into DAC

What is a NMT?

The SPDIF is going to be engineered just the same as on a motherboard PC solution - if not more cheaply. RF etc is going to be engineered to make it work, rather than sound better. If it works better, that's down to chance.

You may be lucky that jitter is nearly non-existent so causing the nDAC no worries, but you are just as likely finding a sample that has a lot of jitter..

I have to say I'm looking forward to James N coming down here to try and hear differences - the UI I have through xbmc is stunning.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
What is a NMT?

Network Media Tank

NMT = Network Media Tank

Andy, that's what I figured. I wouldn't reckon the S/pdif to be any great shakes but possibly better than on the WD TV, you never know. Hence the question whether anyone has tried it. It'll be on the main AV system so AV2 will be the DAC.

For all that I'm curious about trying the WD TV on the nDAC...

Hi Richard,
i didn't test the WD but i saw this here....pretty cool!
QNAP NMP-1000 HD Mediaplayer

Richard - I was going to ask you about the WD player with the nDAC too, so I hope you'll let us know how you get on with it - particularly whether it gets the sync light on on the DAC. And no doubt you can fiddle with optical or wired connections too. It's also worth making sure your mediaserver isn't doing any transcoding.

I was just going to hook it up with a local USB attached drive with some WAV files onboard. The WD only has optical s/pdif, but that's probably a good thing in this instance. Watch this space. I'll give it a play 2nd week of August.

T38.45, the QNAP looks like a lower spec version of the PCH or HDX-1000. The latter looks interesting because it has the revised Sigma chip (passes full HD Audio) has twice the DDR RAM onboard and, most importantly, uses the alloy case to disperse heat, so no fan.

However, the downside is that it's not exactly "plug & play". YAMJ seems to be a popular choice for video UI and not too onerous to set-up. But not sure what Audio Jukebox program would work best here. For £150 its got to be worth a punt - if it's rubbish then no great loss.

Richard

I use the Popcorn A-100 as my main streamer, connected via a bridge to my router and attached NAS.

I'm quite satisfied with it and its sound quality in my system

The drawback, if you should call it that, is the user interface for audio playback when not using a TV-set for display.
I don't like these jukebox things at all so I don't have one on mine.

I use mostly mpd on the Popcorn and an mpod-client on my iPod. This has the disadvantage that the mpd implementation for the NMT doesn't support 24-bit at the moment (if we'll ever see it) and it will be truncated at 16 bits.

I use the NMT internal player to playback 24-bit audio which the NMT is perfectly capable of handling.
I use an MediatankControler iPod application to control the playback from my iPod.

PC-versions for both mpd and MediatankControler exist as well.

All in all I'm quite satisfied and am looking at UnitiServe for better UI and possibly (don't need to answer on this one Andy ) soundquality.

If there is a jitter problem (which I seriously doubt) I don't hear it.

-
aleg

You may (or may not) be interested in a thread from about a year ago on another computer audiophile related website/forum.

Entitled HDX-1000 as player/server it should be easily findable via Google.

Eloise

Eloise, thanks. Interesting thread. I'm sure if it was only music I was interested in, I would not choose an NMT. However, as Movie jukeboxes these things are great and PQ is better than you'd think.

I just thought that if it's there doing movies then surely it could be used effectively for music too. All my music is WAV anyway - I know, I know, I just don't trust compression, whether lossless or not (and is it just me or does ALAC sound worse than before?? For another thread perhaps) so I don't need lots of music file codec support. The UI though is the question...

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Dane:
Eloise, thanks. Interesting thread. I'm sure if it was only music I was interested in, I would not choose an NMT. However, as Movie jukeboxes these things are great and PQ is better than you'd think.

Have you tried XBMC? Seams to have good SQ (for music playback) to me and pretty good playback if used with a good graphics solution.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Dane:
Andy, that's what I figured. I wouldn't reckon the S/pdif to be any great shakes but possibly better than on the WD TV, you never know. Hence the question whether anyone has tried it. It'll be on the main AV system so AV2 will be the DAC.

For all that I'm curious about trying the WD TV on the nDAC...

Pop over and give my Popcorn Hours a go into an nDAC on mine if you're in the area ... haven't tried it myself yet. ;-)

Phil

Phil, thanks, although it's a bit far these days! Somehow I thought you might be running a NMT device... Are you using YAMJ?

Eloise, is XBMC not just for the X-Box then?

quote:

.. is XBMC not just for the X-Box then?

I have a copy running on my Mac; I think it is open source and will run on lots of computers and I think Play Station Linux (whatever a Play Station or X-Box are).