I am putting my CD collection as the lossless (original quality) .flac files on a Lacie 2Big NAS RAID1 network drive.
I would like to play this music via devices (streamed) around my home such as the Revo PicoStation. This is so that I'm not tied to the PC in one place.
However many of these devices support streaming/playlisting in MP3 format.
Is there a dedicated networked media hardware appliance device that can read from FLAC (or WAV) files and stream to MP3 on the fly?
I'm not looking to have complete mp3 files generated alongside their FLAC originals. By on the fly I mean not convert the whole file to the mp3. All I need is for the device to read a chunk of the FLAC file at a time, convert it to a chunk of MP3 and stream it - much like any radio station streaming server would do.
I'm looking for a dedicated hardware network media application solution rather than any sort of hobbyist PC based solution, on the grounds of cost, size, lower noise, quicker startup time, aesthetics (nice looks) and less involvement in tinkering and setting up and maintaining (e.g. software updates etc.). I'm an experienced computing professional but I really don't want to come home and have to deal with computers when I've been doing it all day.
I don't want to convert my music collection to mp3. I'm investing time in ripping the stuff from CD and when storage is cheap why use anything less than the original fidelity?
Eventually devices may support streaming FLAC - yes this format CAN be streamed - see the official page for it (on sourceforge I think). But in the meantime I need something that can convert from flac to mp3 on the fly. The lower bandwidth mp3 streaming is also efficient for network bandwidth usage.
I would like to play this music via devices (streamed) around my home such as the Revo PicoStation. This is so that I'm not tied to the PC in one place.
However many of these devices support streaming/playlisting in MP3 format.
Is there a dedicated networked media hardware appliance device that can read from FLAC (or WAV) files and stream to MP3 on the fly?
I'm not looking to have complete mp3 files generated alongside their FLAC originals. By on the fly I mean not convert the whole file to the mp3. All I need is for the device to read a chunk of the FLAC file at a time, convert it to a chunk of MP3 and stream it - much like any radio station streaming server would do.
I'm looking for a dedicated hardware network media application solution rather than any sort of hobbyist PC based solution, on the grounds of cost, size, lower noise, quicker startup time, aesthetics (nice looks) and less involvement in tinkering and setting up and maintaining (e.g. software updates etc.). I'm an experienced computing professional but I really don't want to come home and have to deal with computers when I've been doing it all day.
I don't want to convert my music collection to mp3. I'm investing time in ripping the stuff from CD and when storage is cheap why use anything less than the original fidelity?
Eventually devices may support streaming FLAC - yes this format CAN be streamed - see the official page for it (on sourceforge I think). But in the meantime I need something that can convert from flac to mp3 on the fly. The lower bandwidth mp3 streaming is also efficient for network bandwidth usage.