Technophobe considering Naim Mu So purchase - few very basic questions

Just realised (I'm slow on the uptake) that Mike's comment about bad and worse related specifically to 'badly recorded' music.

I do agree with him, although I think my post above is still valid in respect of FLAC vs WAV.

Huge posted:

Craig,

I have to agree with Mike-B; even with quite poorly recorded music, MP3 just makes it worse.

Me too. Storage is pretty cheap these days, as long as you don't buy it from Apple, and lossless FLACs are quite a bit smaller than WAVs if you have a large collection to store.

Don't forget that if you rip to FLAC, but then want MP3 for use on a SQ limited portable device or for car use you can get the MP3 from the FLAC file.

If you try it the other way round you'll already have lost quality in the MP3 file and you can never get this back again.

Hmack posted:

Craig,

I don't know for sure, but I don't think the Muso will be able to power an external USB hard drive, so that discounts any hard drives that requires power from a PC or other device.

It may not be the answer you want, but you will have a much better control capability in any case, and a much better user experience if you were to purchase a decent cheap NAS (say, a single bay Synology or QNAP). These would come with their own media (uPnP) server, and would be very easy to set up and use. You can't install a media server on a standard external drive, because the drive is just a drive. A NAS enclosure is actually a computer in its own right, and can run programs (or apps) such as a uPnP or media server.  

You would then need to connect the NAS to your router using standard (say, cat6) Ethernet cable, and rip your CDs to the NAS. You would also require a PC or Mac (which you obviously already have) in order to configure the NAS and to install and 'switch on' the media (uPnP) server that comes bundled with the Synology or QNAP NAS.

The Muso itself would not need to be connected to the NAS directly, unless you want to be able to stream high resolution music files. You should be able to stream standard CD quality music from your NAS to the MUSO over Wi-Fi without any difficulty, assuming not too much distance from your router,   

 

I think for anything >= CD quality i.e. WAV/FLAC, wifi won't cut it, unless you have a high-bandwidth, reliable, uninterrupted network. The effort and cost is better spent on a NAS, and connecting the Muso to the router. The only trouble is neatening the cabling around the house.

It will depend on a number of things. Our dining room MuSo and shed QB will will receive over WiFi WAV files up too and including 24/96 using uPnP. 192 is a non starter.

Since I'm replying, I'll just throw in my own opinion of less than lossless MP3 FWIW. To me it sounds like what it is - low quality rubbish. But these things don't really need validating. Anybody's ears are perfectly capable of listening in situ and reaching an informed conclusion. As have mine, on a number of occasions.

Performance over WiFi is dependent on a lot of things. I have a Mu-so qb on Wifi and that plays 24/192KHZ fine. The best way is to download a single 24/192 track from Qobuz and see how it sounds. Generally, if there is a problem the play will keep pausing as your network can't stream the large files fast enough to play. Ripped CDs should be 16/44 FLAC files and shouldn't cause a problem. If you can compare one of your ripped CD tracks with a high res version that would be a useful exercise.

manicm posted:

Hmack posted:

Craig,

I don't know for sure, but I don't think the Muso will be able to power an external USB hard drive, so that discounts any hard drives that requires power from a PC or other device.

It may not be the answer you want, but you will have a much better control capability in any case, and a much better user experience if you were to purchase a decent cheap NAS (say, a single bay Synology or QNAP). These would come with their own media (uPnP) server, and would be very easy to set up and use. You can't install a media server on a standard external drive, because the drive is just a drive. A NAS enclosure is actually a computer in its own right, and can run programs (or apps) such as a uPnP or media server.  

You would then need to connect the NAS to your router using standard (say, cat6) Ethernet cable, and rip your CDs to the NAS. You would also require a PC or Mac (which you obviously already have) in order to configure the NAS and to install and 'switch on' the media (uPnP) server that comes bundled with the Synology or QNAP NAS.

The Muso itself would not need to be connected to the NAS directly, unless you want to be able to stream high resolution music files. You should be able to stream standard CD quality music from your NAS to the MUSO over Wi-Fi without any difficulty, assuming not too much distance from your router,   

 

I think for anything >= CD quality i.e. WAV/FLAC, wifi won't cut it, unless you have a high-bandwidth, reliable, uninterrupted network. The effort and cost is better spent on a NAS, and connecting the Muso to the router. The only trouble is neatening the cabling around the house.

If the cabling is really not possible all the way back to the router just connect the NAS and streamer together via a switch so they can play UPnP over wired Ethernet. Stick an Airport Express on the switch too, so you have a wireless leg back to the router for internet access, and keep the streamer's wifi module out of the equation.

ChrisSU posted:

If the cabling is really not possible all the way back to the router just connect the NAS and streamer together via a switch so they can play UPnP over wired Ethernet. Stick an Airport Express on the switch too, so you have a wireless leg back to the router for internet access, and keep the streamer's wifi module out of the equation.

Yes that works fine; and the WiFi / Airport Express link also provides connectivity for the Naim app to control the streamer.

PeterJ posted:

Yes, I can easily tell the difference between FLAC and MP3 on my Mu-so. I would suggest that you load dBpoweramp (it costs less than £50) onto your PC to rip all the CDs as FLAC files to your NAS and then this will look after album covers and metadata (track listings, artist/album names etc). The quality will be the same as the original CDs. You can get away without a NAS by using your PC as a music server but you would need to leave it on all the time.

Going forwards you can download future albums from the various sources (e.g. Qobuz and Highresaudio) that sell high quality albums at roughly the same price you'd pay from Apple or Amazon for MP3. You can also download music that is higher than CD quality from these sources and, yes, I can tell the difference between a CD quality FLAC and a Hi Res FLAC on my Mu-so.

The only problem you then might run into is known as upgrade-it is. My Superuniti sounds even better than my Mu-so (I bought it a few months afterwards) but it was much more expensive and requires speakers.

That's interesting,  I have my doubts but I am going to try this experiment.  I can hear the difference between mp3 and ALAC