Starting out on streaming

If you search the streaming audio pages of the forum you will find several recent threads on just this topic - or rather these topics as the question covers a variety of aspects!

Whilst people ‘rip’ CDs some also rip  vinyl though it is a bit more speciaised. People wth streaming systems often purchase music on CD and rip, encoding at same resolution in a lossless format - flac seems the most popular. Some people play flac directly, others find they can hear a difference if it is transcoded to wav format on the fly by the server (but store in flac as there is no penalty and is more compact and has more consistent metadats handling. People also buy downloadable files in various resolutions, CD and higher (“high definition”- though it is not a given that the latter will sound better). 

There is also online streaming, from free (low resolution) and subscription (higher resolution) services, with pros and cons compared to purchase of files.

I note you say you have a DAC - you also need a player, or more specifically  a local storage device (computer, or preferably dedicated store which could be a NAS -network attached storage - or a specialised store designed for music), plus a renderer, software toconvert the digital music file to a digital stream to feed real-time to the DAC, which can be on a computer, for which audiphile grade renderers are available but best on a dedicated computer with RF isolation, or a specialised music player, including a variety of assemble-yourself systems (e.g. Microrendu and power supply), and including purpose-built devices.

as for playing in your car or on iphone, the same music files can be used - depending on the capacity of the phone and whether it is limited to Apple’s format. 

 I mentioned metadata: that is something needing care to get right from the start when you begin a collection - again some recent threads with lots of detail and advice.

If the other threads don’t help, then it would probably be best to offer detailed information about the rest of your system, an idea of budget, any inclination regarding future upgrading potential, and whether you want an off-the-shelf solutio. Or whether have interest in more DIY type setups that can provide similar sound quality but require some effort.

Thanks.

current system is LP12/Aro/DV XX2 into a super line into 252/SC/300/SL2.  Eventually plan to for Naim streamer but this is a toe into the water as a first step.  I suppose the question is how and where to buy music to enable the widest platform reuse.  So buy it once and play in the car, on  the phone and  in the system at home.  I suppose the question is where to buy online music from which gives the greatest portability.  I don’t want to buy CDs and rip as my family situation doesn’t allow that so I need to buy soft copies.  Is the best avenue just buy flacs from somewhere and then store them on my nas and download them into iTunes for the phone, on the hdd and then short term onto a stick and into the dac as o don’t want to start down the renderer route only to buy a streamer later on.

I would consider a free trial of some of the web streaming services, to see how you get on with it. Qobuz and Tidal are the two that offer lossless quality streams. You can download and store music on an iPhone for car use, and you can add the account to a (Naim) streamer later if you buy one. The advantage of these services is that they give you access to a huge amount of music for as long as your subscription is active.

Alternatively, you could start buying downloads and storing them on a NAS. CDs are cheaper though, especially used ones, if you can be bothered to rip them. 

As for hardware, you can add a DAC to a computer for as little as £100 and get surprisingly good results just to get you up and running while you save for an ND555;-)

For buying downloads, there are a variety of sources - to some extent the choice will depend on your musical taste, and it is worth checking different sources as prices can vary (considerably) for the same thing, and ease of browsing and searching varies too. Some sources: HDTracks, Qobuz, Primephonic, Amazon Prime. Also, with limited ranges, Bandcamp, Naim, Linn Records, 2L. Also some other  individual record labels, even some band websites.

As mentioned in my previous post, metadata is important, some players being very fussy - and the completeness or accuracy of metadata on downloads can be variable, especially with classical music (in fact ditto CD), and completely absent with vinyl rips. It really is worth looking into and understanding before you collect a lot of music, it being a lot easier to correct or add metadata immediately rather than waiting till you have dozens or hundreds of titles - and discover you your player can’t find it all.

Do you own cd's?  Many of us started by ripping our cd collection to a lossless format (flac is pretty common) and putting the files on a computer or small server (nas).  And instead of buying downloads, buying used cd's and ripping them yourself is way more cost effective!

Your car might not want flac files, and frankly a lossy format is typically fine in the car. 

For the home you might want to buy hi res files; these are overkill in the car, and most car players won't play them anyway.

AndyS posted:

Thanks.

 

current system is LP12/Aro/DV XX2 into a super line into 252/SC/300/SL2.  Eventually plan to for Naim streamer but this is a toe into the water as a first step.  I suppose the question is how and where to buy music to enable the widest platform reuse.  So buy it once and play in the car, on  the phone and  in the system at home.  I suppose the question is where to buy online music from which gives the greatest portability.  I don’t want to buy CDs and rip as my family situation doesn’t allow that so I need to buy soft copies.  Is the best avenue just buy flacs from somewhere and then store them on my nas and download them into iTunes for the phone, on the hdd and then short term onto a stick and into the dac as o don’t want to start down the renderer route only to buy a streamer later on.

The vast majority of purchasable downloadable audio is no longer protected (though there are theories that there may be subtle watermarks embedded and sometimes purchase ID in metadata), even iTunes these days is DRM free for audio, but avoid buying in iTunes as it's not lossless.

I assume you have an iPhone.

iTunes won't handle FLAC, but provided you buy non-DRM audio you can easily convert to ALAC if you want to use that using various tools.

Personally however I hate the Music implementation on iOS which is confusing when it comes to locally stored vs streaming from Apple Music or iTunes Plus/Cloud if you have such services.

I've never tried Tidal as I signed up for Qobuz a few years ago - I have their Sublime subscription which offers access to most of the CD quality catalogue on the desktop via their app, in iOS or Android devices, or in a web browser when signed in.  There are other devices and apps which can allow you to sign in to them as well.  I don't think they offer the basic Sublime subscription anymore, only the more expensive Sublime + which offers streaming of HD files from participating labels/artists as well as CD quality.

Qobuz, I suspect other services too, will allow offline storage of audio to play on the go - so for example I have dozens of CD quality albums on the Qobuz app on the iPhone that I use in the car of via headphones/Airpods.  Naturally the downloads will cease to function at some stage if your subscription lapses.  The point I'm making really is that you don't need iTunes in the equation if the services has an appropriate app for your desktop or mobile device. 

Downloading purchases is something to look out for too - some services only allow a one off download, others allow repeated access so long as the title is still available in their catalogue.  Once you've downloaded purchases, make a backup or too promptly.  The files should be easily transferable to the HDD in the car, you may need to change format (Qobuz allows you to download in several formats/qualities up to the best one you purchased).

So in reality, I'd test a few services Tidal/Qobuz/Spotify etc and see what floats your boat, though while I think digital is maturing I still prefer the LP12 for much of my listening, though itching to hear the ND 555.

How are you planning to send data to the DAC?   Laptop hookup or similar?  A cheap option to test might be a Chromecast audio dongle which can output optical in hi res where the service Chromecasting allow (Qobuz does, as I assume do other providers), naturally this is a cheap and some might say nasty way of feeding a DAC, but Naim have Chromecast services built-in to their Uniti and newest streamers (as well as Airplay, Bluetooth).

One other thing - many albums are not available in Hi Res download formats, and if you're intent on purchasing, crazily CDs are often 30-40% of the cost of the equivalent quality download so there are often financial incentives for 'rolling your own' audio files, though as noted many services will allow you to download CD quality streams to use on the go while your subscription is valid, though services may limit the number of devices you can be logged into concurrently.

Thanks guys,  really insightful.  Best do some research then ????. Will check out the services mentioned and have a play.  Thanks again, really appreciate the support,

In case it is unclear, the sources I listed in my last post are for purchaseable downloads that you then own and can keep amd play indefinitelyas you wish. ONline streaming services such as mentioned by Alley Cat are different, and you nood tomaintain a subscription to keep being able to play anything. Som suppliers offer both options -e.g Qobuz, also, O think, Amazon Prime. The other main online streaming providers are Tidal and Spotify fomer offering CD quality and higher, the latter a free service but only lower resolution. The different services suit different people differently - for me, only purchase except for using Spotify (and other free services like uTube) to sample music new to me.

incidently there is a useful thread on here where people post tips when they see something at good value: https://forums.naimaudio.com/t...special-offer-thread