Private internet radio at home...?

As a short-term and relatively inexpensive option Sonos will do a better job than any (compressed) radio stream.  About GBP 200 (second hand) for a Sonos Connect that plugs into a local amp and lets you play simultaneous CD quality.  Not just your own library but also services such as Qobuz.  

VLC media player (commonly known as VLC) is a portable, free and open-source, cross-platform media player and streaming media server written by the VideoLAN project.

And others: 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...ming_Protocol#Server

Sorry, I don't understand this at all... I use VLC daily to play video files and I don't see any option to force it to become a "radio station" that a dedicated internet radio receiver could identify and start playing. Where would I even input the name of that station so that the receiver can find it in the list of the thousands of internet stations...?

http://m.wikihow.com/Use-VLC-t...work-Using-Multicast

I've read this twice, carefully, and I think you did not understand my issue.

VLC can stream music to a network client.

I don't have a network client. I have a dedicated internet radio receiver (not a computer!) - 3 of them in fact, in 3 rooms. Each of them has an ethernet socket (in one case wi-fi) and a display where you can scroll through the list of all internet radio stations in the world, sort them by genre, country, choose favourites, etc.

So are you saying I can set up VLC so that suddenly a new Internet Radio Station will show up in the display of all my 3 little radios in 3 rooms? Because that's my objective. To essentially set up a private internet radio station (albeit visible only on my LAN, not in DMZ, due to the firewall in my router, of course).

Hope this explains better... I apologize for any confusion - English is not my native tongue.

Google for icecast and shoutcast to read more about personal streaming.

That starts to look interesting... I'm reading their web sites and reading about them on Wikipedia, but one thing I cannot figure out is: do they use proprietary protocols, or is there one, universal protocol for devices to recognize radio stations? Also - if my Denon CHR-F103 searches for new stations on the Internet, will it find a new one that's on the LAN, rather than the Internet...?

Your "internet radio receiver" is a network client.  Connecting to an "internet radio station" is no different than connecting to naim.com -- each "internet radio station" is simply an IP address that your client ("internet radio receiver") can connect to.

Your "internet radio receiver" also includes code so it can store a number of network locations that it can connect to -- "internet radio stations." 

I think that your question comes down to (A) whether you can have your "internet radio receiver" connect to IP addresses inside your home network (192.168.x.x type addresses most likely), and (B) whether you can set up a server at home that will serve music in a way you like.

(A) probably needs to come from the documentation for your "internet radio receiver."

As for (B), as you've seen from posts here, there are home solutions for streaming at home.  But let's think about what you are wanting to do; do you really want to set up a home type "internet radio station?"  Do you want it playing music 24/7 whether no one is listening or not?  Do you want control over the playlist? 

I don't THINK you're really wanting to duplicate "internet radio" services at home; I think you just want to be able to stream to your pre-existing hardware ("internet radio receivers"), simultaneously.  First see if that hardware has any provision for connecting to network addresses inside your home network.

Thanks, Bart, this is really helpful! Yes, I just want to stream music from the NAS to the internet radio receivers in 3 rooms. As to whether the music is playing 24/7 or not and if I have control over the playliist - I assume this can be easily controlled on the server software side, so it's not a problem.

Yes, my receiver has an IP address obtained from the DHCP on the home LAN main router, so it's got the 192.168.xxx.xxx range address, same as all devices on this LAN. As to whether it can see streaming hosts on the LAN I don't know and I'll have to test it, although I don't know how. This may actually be a problem, because such receivers are designed to play the stations on the Internet, not on local LANs... The question is how they identify the list of stations (go to some URL on the internet that lists them? This is not described in the manual of any of those devices...)

One thing's for sure: when choosing an internet radio station to listen to e.g. on a Denon you can't put in its URL or IP Address - you have to find it by scrolling alphabetically by Genre or Country, similar to how it's done on my ND5XS with nStream. Coming to think of it, I think nStream also doesn't have provisions for putting in a URL of an internet radio station that you can't find in its list of stations... but I may be wrong here.

So I would have to install some software on my NAS (Synology DS-214Play) or a PC on the same LAN that would allow me to define a "radio station", define it's Name, Genre, Country, itd., and then go to Denon and hope it can now be seen in its scrollable list of stations for that Genre or Country.

I don't think there's any other way to make those dedicated internet radios to play the music from my NAS, honestly.

PS. OK, there's one more possibility: all those radios these days have a USB port to play music from a memory stick, just like ND5XS. So if somebody builds a box that plugs into the Ethernet LAN (or connects via WiFi) and a USB cable coming out of it, which can be plugged into a radio and PRETEND it's a MEMORY STICK, that would work, too Only problem might be that the receivers tend to read in the table of contents of such memory first, and if the pretend "memory stick" contains my entire NAS (1TB of FLACs), it would take 10 hours to read in the contents, probably.

I have spent an hour reading the minimserver manuals and searching theif forum for all topics related to "Radio", but I can't see anything relevant to what I'm trying to do.

However, it wasn't a wasted hour, because I found there a thread that solves my old problem with ND5XS (buffer constantly running out on some internet radio stations), that nobody on this forum was able to help me with!

1.  "Radio" is not the right English word to use to refer to what you want to do at home with your own server.  "Internet Radio" is a misnomer, created because it's really the ability to listen to legacy "terrestrial radio" over the internet rather than over the air broadcast.  Then all sorts of new feeds got created, and called "internet radio stations."  The technology is not called "radio" otherwise; it's mostly called "streaming."  These 'internet radio receivers' have pro's and con's -- they make it easy for people to listen to a very large number of feeds ("stations") by just scrolling a menu.  The receivers typically have some software embedded so that they connect to a service that keeps the menu up to date (Naim's internet radio capable devices do this).  You asked the right question -- in your devices, can you edit the menu yourself to add additional 'stations,' AND can the IP address of that station be on your internal home network??  That's what you'd need I believe.

2.  Start a separate thread and post about your ND5XS fix; it may help others!

Denon CHR-F103, and probably your other devices as well, use the vTuner internet radio database.

vTuner maintains a large database on the Internet with all (kinds of) internet stations which your Denon accesses to find stations and their URL. Radio stations register with the vTuner company.

So you cannot have a local radio stream as that will not be registered in the vTuner database.

For local playback your device needs to be able to accept manually entered URLs.

Bummer. I wish Naim had a simple little network player for non-critical listening in rooms other than the main listening room, a kind of UnitiQute without the built-in amplifier, at a third of the price of UnitiQute. Hope sprrings eternal...

You could always start your own radio station with something like the Icecast :-) and present it to the vTuner database. You could then pick it up again from the external IP-address of your own home.

I think Sonos may be your answer, at least until Naim answer your wishes.  Sonos Connect (the one without the amp) plugged into whatever amp you have got locally should not cost more than GBP 200 if you buy second-hand (they are readily available on a well-known auction site) and it will do everything you seem to want and more.

There are also similar things from Simple Audio and Bluesound.  They have the added benefit of 24/192 capability (Sonos is limited to 16/44) but they are a bit more expensive and not so readily available second hand.  They are also not yet as slick as Sonos in operation and they don't yet give native access to Qobuz.

My problem with Naim is that they don't do uncompressed multi-room playback at any price.

Copyrights, copyrights... I would probably have to pay some artists unions for everything I play

My guess is that multi-room simultaneous playback is something a relatively few want.  It's all relative, when you're among the few.

However, it wasn't a wasted hour, because I found there a thread that solves my old problem with ND5XS (buffer constantly running out on some internet radio stations), that nobody on this forum was able to help me with!

Hi Gajdzin

I too have a similar issue and would be extremely grateful if you could point me in the right direction to resolve it. Whilst I appreciate that links sometimes can't be used on the forum, perhaps you could kindly give me a clue what to search for to locate the thread you mention

I too have a similar issue and would be extremely grateful if you could point me in the right direction to resolve it. Whilst I appreciate that links sometimes can't be used on the forum, perhaps you could kindly give me a clue what to search for to locate the thread you mention

Oops... You know, I have been active on this forum for almost a year now and never noticed that we are not supposed to use links to other fora. OK, I hope I won't be violating any rules if I point you in the right direction. What they are discussing is NOT a MODIFICATION of Naim gear in any way (such as using non-Naim power supplies or even cabling), but getting a fully implemented streaming feature (subset of DNLA) to work, so I hope the administrators will allow it:

Go to minimserver forum, Minimserver section, Minimserver sub-section, "Configuring radio streams with minimwatch" topic. The topic was started on 15 Feb 2014. In post No 4, a user "largestgasman" (I wouldn't be surprised if he's lurking somewhere here on this forum writes:

"I too am trying to get HiDef (320kbps) radio to work on a Naim NDX. The buffer keeps emptying out and playback stutters and fails when using the inbuilt iRadio function of the NDX. One solution seems to be to route the traffic via minim streamer and UPnP. I have been trying to do this based on other posts in this forum.

I have created a M3U playlist containing the names and URLs of the radio audio streams and dropped it onto my Synology NAS in the same directory that my music is located.

I have been able to view the playlist in the N-Stream control point software on the iPad under "playlists" but when I click the name of the station I don't get playback. I don't know how to take this any further."

Several pages later the problem is solved. If I remember correctly, it had to do with the right syntax of the M3U file and disabling the UpNP Compatibility Mode in nStream, something like that. I'll study it in detail and try to duplicate later this month, when I have more time. I'll start a separate thread then, because I know this has been discussed on this forum more than once. For example, I was complaining of the same problem (buffer underruns in ND5XS on some 320kbps stations) in this thread: https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...io-stations-on-nd5sx in January. Nobody had a solution then. I think we have one now, if we are to believe the minimserver forum

Thanks very much for taking the time and effort to post such a comprehensive reply - much appreciated