Have you seen anywhere the idiots guide to setting my ideal system up. Id have thought it is standard fayre but Im getting more and more confused.
Thank you
In a world of online streaming services, support for local music libraries has become more of a niche market. Which is probably why finding a single perfect 'consumer focused' device/setup for a sensible price is harder than it should seem.
The DIY market is slightly better served with Raspberry Pi based solutions like
Volumio and
PiCorePlayer (LMS) offering local USB music indexing and playback, but they tend to require configuration and are less plug-n-play than their commercial counterparts.
If money was no object it would be easy,
Roon Nucleus +
a ‘Roon Ready’ network streamer. What’s tricky is suggesting a path that doesn’t involve those costs yet doesn’t require you to jump though loads of hoops and configuration.
The BlueSound is probably the best value-for-money, an all-in-one commercial device that does what you want, but directly attaching an external USB drive does have
some limitations. I don't own one myself so hard to say how much those limitations will impact you in practice.
Adding
a small 2 bay NAS to your setup would allow you to use lower cost devices like the Yamaha WXAD-10 and give you a place to store your music files centrally on your network. But they also require setup and some networking experience and a certain degree of ongoing maintenance thereafter. So it’s worth bearing that in mind if you’re not technical and want a more plug-n-play setup.
Additionally if you had hopes of running Roon Core on the NAS down the road you’d need to step up to the
models with an Intel processor like the DS220+ or DS218+ and also upgrade the memory to 4GB and while it will likely work fine with average usage, Roon doesn’t recommend this configuration.
If Roon is your end goal you’d be far better off skipping the NAS and getting a dedicated x64 (Intel/AMD) based computer to run your Roon Core. My choice would be an Intel NUC (something like a ~£195 used
Intel NUC 7 i5 NUC7i5BNH) as you can
install Roon Rock on it which make everything super simple re. setup. But you could also use a old laptop, PC or a used
MacMini (ideally a model with an SDD drive) — the latter has the advantage that you can directly connect it to one of your Arcam's digital inputs using a
mini TosLink to TosLink cable. You can then either store your files on an internal drive or attach a external ~£50
WD Passport USB HDD to it.
If you don't want to (or can't in the case of a NUC) connect the computer running the Roon Core to your Arcam using a optical/toslink cable, you can instead use either a
Chromecast Audio or a
£7 AirPort Express (connected via a
mini TosLink to TosLink cable) to act as a cheap but perfectly functional
Roon Endpoint/Output that will use the DAC inside your Arcam. The Yamaha WXAD-10 can also function as an AirPlay endpoint for use with Roon but is limited to only having analog outputs and costs a lot more than a £7 used AirPort Express if that is all you need it for.
In terms of guides Roon has their
Knowledge base and
forums. The
architecture page is probably the best place to start in terms of getting your head around how it all works.
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Hope that helps and hasn't added even more confusion...I guess in short.
Standalone device route (like BlueSound Node)
- Pro: easy to use / configure, allows direct attachment of a USB drive of music files.
- Cons: Limited options re. suitable devices within your price point, some limitations re. indexing when using a USB drives directly connected to a Bluesound Node. Tied to one audio manufacturer/vendor in multi room setups.
NAS / DLNA/UPnP / Media Server route
- Pros: wider range of (lower cost) network transports/streamers, possibility of using the NAS's other functions. In addition to use as a basic DLNA server you can also use free/low-cost audio/media server packages like Audio Station or LMS to output to low-cost bridge devices like a Chromecast Audio, AirPlay Express or a Yamaha WXAD-10.
- Cons: requires additional cost of NAS and technical configuration of media server and other settings on the NAS
DIY route using a RPi based streamer (ie.
Volumio,
PiCorePlayer)
- Pros: cheap, good and tend to have excellent support for local music libraries and directly attached USB drives
- Cons: requires you to get your head around setup and configuration, not for users wanting plug-and-play, interfaces and apps can be a bit of a mixed bag depending on the distro/software used.
Roon
- Pros: absolutely superb interface and features, great multi-room support, vendor neutral re. devices it can stream to / wide range of low-cost endpoints/bridge options (if existing hardware not supported directly).
- Cons: Licence costs, (ideally) requires a Intel NUC to run the Core on and possible requires a seperate Roon endpoint/output device (although this can just be a £7 AirPort Express).
Thinking about it, although I have never used one, if your OK using Apple devices then
a used Mac Mini might
make for a perfect all-in-one device to run the Roon Core on as you can connect it directly to your Arcam optical input using a
mini TosLink to TosLink cable and use the Arcam's built in DAC. Alternatively a cheap NUC based Roon setup would be a used
NUC7i5BNH running
Rock and a used
AirPort Express connected to your Arcam with a MiniTosLink->TosLink cable.
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But before buying anything if you still have the Yamaha then you can
trial out Roon on your current desktop PC or Mac (it will connect to the Yamaha via AirPlay and you can control it using your desktop or iPad) and while your there also try the Yamaha app with some local FLAC files hosted on your PC by installing a
UPnP/DLNA server on your PC and see how they compare.