Streaming Spotify to a Naim NS01 / HDX

Yesterday I wrote how I had installed the Linux drivers for the HiFace onto my laptop and then streamed Spotify on my laptop via the HiFace into my nDAC.

It occurred to me that rather than take my laptop into the living room I could, perhaps, stream Spotify across my network and access this via the NS01 vTuner.

I should point out that I have a local LAN with permanent IP addresses on all my various boxes.

So what will the vTuner consume?

Looking on the Naim vTuner website (http://myradio.naimaudio.com) there are various flavours of stream it can use, including mp3 and OGG Vorbis.

So, how could I make such a stream available locally?

I use Linux (Ubuntu) on my laptop.

A quick bit of research pointed me at Darkice, Icecast2 & PulseAudio.

PulseAudio is loaded on Ubuntu 11.10 by default, and acts as middleware, allowing you to route audio from sources to sinks.

Darkice is termed as the client software, this acts as the audio 'transmitter', and is set up to determine what kind of stream is provided & from where, in my case from PulseAudio as OGG.

Icecast2 is the server, it takes the stream from Darkice and makes it available - e.g. http://192.168.3.20:8000/mystream.ogg

The blogs that helpd me set things up are:

http://askubuntu.com/questions...-audio-in-my-network
and
http://ubuntuforums.org/archiv...x.php/t-1867956.html


I now set up the 'radio station' as SpotifyLocal via http://myradio.naimaudio.com using my private LAN IP address, example above.

On my laptop I:

Started Icecast2
Started Darkice

I then hit the NS01 web interface, from my laptop, and voila there was SpotifyLocal, I then selected and played it .......and it bufferred and played.

Going to the HiFi I then selected the NS01 and  ......music.


The quality is the same as the HiFace, but soooooooo much more convenient.

M