After speaking to Steve J at HiFi Lounge BBQ he was extolling the virtues of having a MAC Mini just to control his music from his server/RAID thingy.
Is there a anyway decent way of doing this with a Raspberry Pi?
Please keep answers preferably in low syllable count and in plain english please.
My setup :-
HP Proliant 2 x @Tb raid drives - 8 way Netgear GS 108 - iMac/iTunes - Terradak USB converter (RCA) - Kit DAC - NAC 52.
At the moment all music data is on the server but controlled by iMac.
I thought the Raspberry Pi is an interesting device but I reckon you need a project in mind before buying so thought this might fit the bill.
Thanks in advance.
Howard.
Posted on: 29 July 2014 by gert
You should run mpd (music player daemon) on the rasp. There are some apps for android and also iOS to control it. The most simple way would be to use a ready configured linux distribution with mpd. I do not have any experience with this, but already looked into this topic some days ago:
http://volumio.org/
http://www.raspyfi.com/project/
(I guess there are a handful other distributions out there)
Posted on: 29 July 2014 by gert
Oh one thing: You need a "digital out" for the raspberry pi. There are some sound cards that you can set on top of the pi. Maybe an external USB sound card does work. I do not know, but am very interested in this, too. The problem: Some soundcards to transcode everything to 44.1kHz/16bit instead of handing through some higher resolutions. So this is a topic to pay attention for.
Posted on: 29 July 2014 by DavidDever
The Wolfson Audio Card for Raspberry Pi works very well (is passable using the analogue outs and not bad at all using the SPDIF coax output). MPD works fine but can be a bit clunky, especially when compared to the Apple Remote / iTunes pairing.
You will also find that a good 5V supply (terminated with a micro-USB connector for the Pi) makes a big difference; the same (albeit with a mini-USB) applies to the BeagleBone, which I find to be far more sophisticated (go for older BeagleBone White, no HDMI or eMMC flash storage)....
Posted on: 29 July 2014 by BigH47
I hear what you are saying James, I was just trying to save a few quid. Sally wants a MUSO and the TV has just blown so an economy system might be good. Maybe wait and have play in those dark winter evenings. Maybe some S/H Hugos on the market after the next big thing breaks? 
