I think yes it can be done, look at this site for details. As of now I can see only last.fm and soundcloud on my Rocki app. As per there official site the spotify is yet to be launched. But the link above is supposed to enable it albeit with a back door entry. Also in the same link you can see the app AirPlay which does stream from iTunes and playback on the Rocki. I am yet to try the same.
Has Computer Audio Reached Mainstream?
- Thread starter venkatcr
- Start date
I think yes it can be done, look at this site for details. As of now I can see only last.fm and soundcloud on my Rocki app. As per there official site the spotify is yet to be launched. But the link above is supposed to enable it albeit with a back door entry. Also in the same link you can see the app AirPlay which does stream from iTunes and playback on the Rocki. I am yet to try the same.
I have stopped using it after I received my Raspberry Pi
. So haven't checked or updated the firmware. Let me try this weekend if possible, there are some bugs in the playlists/shuffle but overall stable. With Pi i am able to use the ODAC for music playback as well as movies using the Openelec OS. I can control the same using an app and my music/movies are on the network, so did not find the need to go back to Rocki for music.Are you running pi headless using only an app? That would be nice, I was looking for something like that for my secondary system. Can you tell me which model of pi you bought and which app you use for music playback.
Santy, I brought my Pi from a online store located in Bangalore (Raspberry Pi BeagleBone Black Online Store India Best Prices) for around 3.5k including the case. I am running Openelec OS which has XBMC built-in. Hence I run it headless for music playback and control the playlists/songs via iPhone/Android mobile and switch on the TV for playback of the movies. Also I SSH'ed to the Pi and enabled the ALSA, so I can now map the ODAC as the default audio device which automatically gets picked up for only music playback and when the movies are played back as its over HDMI the video/sound comes via the TV. If you do not want to run Openelec on Pi and use it only for headless music purpose only then you can install MPD and use its app/browser and you should be good to go.
Thad E Ginathom
Well-Known Member
What is a virtual CD drive? It's a new one on me.
Yep. I should google. Will do later... have to go out now
Yep. I should google. Will do later... have to go out now
There is a software called Magic Disc (FREE) that allows you to create virtual drives on your PC.
Freeware MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM(MagicDisc) Overview
Each of these drive behave as a stand alone CD/DVD drive and you can load CD/DVD images on these drives just as you load a physical CD/DVD on a physical drive.
At the end you get as many drives as you want with the CD images of choice loaded in them.
My philosophy - HDD and storage is cheap. So rather than going for FLAC or High bit rate mp3s, I keep disc images of my CDs on my drive.
Load them, play them as per my mood.
At times I do flip a CD in the tray but for most of the time I span my virtual library as I mostly listen to music when I work.
Freeware MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM(MagicDisc) Overview
Each of these drive behave as a stand alone CD/DVD drive and you can load CD/DVD images on these drives just as you load a physical CD/DVD on a physical drive.
At the end you get as many drives as you want with the CD images of choice loaded in them.
My philosophy - HDD and storage is cheap. So rather than going for FLAC or High bit rate mp3s, I keep disc images of my CDs on my drive.
Load them, play them as per my mood.
At times I do flip a CD in the tray but for most of the time I span my virtual library as I mostly listen to music when I work.
The advantage is, I avoid a "rip". Bit perfect or otherwise. Additionally I save some time.
The other advantage is, all the CD images serve as a backup.
Not technically... lossless means exactly that, lossless and any lossless rip can replicate/duplicate the CD the same as the original.
I am not sure how much of an improvement a virtual drive offers over playing ripped files, but along those lines arguments have been made in favor of RAM discs to improve playback/SQ. I have tried it with Foobar and its hard to say... some files I perceive an improvement in SQ and then others I don't. Hard to say unless a blind test can prove it conclusively.
Sounds good until you start talking of 2000, 3000... 50,000 CDs, unless of course you have reached Nirvana with your existing collection and don't intend to add more CDs.
PS - After crossing 8 TB with my Blu-Ray rips I realized the solution is not to keep adding HDDs... not unless I want to maintain a mini server farm. Again perceptions vary... but a 4-6 GB rip (with DTS) looks the same as a 20-30GB Blu-Ray rip and most will not be able to tell a difference... hence nothing wrong with "economical" rips of Audio CDs and movies.
Thad E Ginathom
Well-Known Member
I was thinking along technical, rather than musical, lines. I am with you on lossless meaning lossless, and the music from a FLAC-->CD disc should be identical, which is what matters. My thinking, though, is that only an iso would produce a perfect image-to-image content, including all the non-musical information and formatting.musicbee said:
Purely an academic, technical, and, perhaps, completely unimportant piece of hair splitting on my part
Just to clarify once more, a virtual drive does not improve any sound quality. It is a virtual CD drive that loads a CD image. A CD image is a exact image of a CD (not ripped). Audio CD images are mainly BIN CUE files and not ISO files. Alternatvely they can be Nero NRG files. I use this method as it is convenient to me, and everyone should stick to their convenience.
I have around 850 CDs imaged. Each is roughly 700 mb in size. That would be 595000 mb ~ 595 gb and yet to fill up my 1 TB HDD.
Nirvana or not, I have not bought anything new for the last 10 years.
No clue about blu-rays though.
reignofchaos
Well-Known Member
Should be pretty good bang for the buck. Make sure you setup your computer properly for audio.
Just came across another product in this series. This product is being crowd funded.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-core-wireless-speaker-system
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-core-wireless-speaker-system
As this appears to be turning into a fairly general discussion about computer audio, I am wondering if anyone has looked into isolating the power supplies for each of their components within their CAPS or equivalent.
This seems to be a fairly big topic on the Computer Audio Forum (which sometimes gets very extreme)! I am planning to get two battery packs for the SSDs - one of which will solely hold the OS and the other used for playback and isolating the Lynx sound card with its own PSU. Not sure what all this will result in but the idea is only to reduce any contamination with noise.
I also have started unplugging my individual USB external hard drives from the CAPS in an attempt to avoid the drives spewing back any noise into the system.
Would love to hear if anyone else has gone down this route as yet please....
This seems to be a fairly big topic on the Computer Audio Forum (which sometimes gets very extreme)! I am planning to get two battery packs for the SSDs - one of which will solely hold the OS and the other used for playback and isolating the Lynx sound card with its own PSU. Not sure what all this will result in but the idea is only to reduce any contamination with noise.
I also have started unplugging my individual USB external hard drives from the CAPS in an attempt to avoid the drives spewing back any noise into the system.
Would love to hear if anyone else has gone down this route as yet please....
Thad E Ginathom
Well-Known Member
Lynx engineering: Just trust it! Really. They were probably doing audiophile before anyone thought up the word. Well, metaphorically, at least
--- but they do go back a long way, and this is studio-quality stuff.I wouldn't worry about noise on a Lynx card unless I had a really bad power supply, to which the fix would be fairly obvious.
However... I can and do worry about stuff that happens with USB-powered DACs.
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