Trolling

[Antoine]

You are right Antoine, I have just ordered a Moon Mind 180D because it seems to be the best sensibly priced streaming transport for Devialet.

Again, Windows doesn't appeal to me and I see that you are running an Audiophile Optimiser (a 100€ software) over a Microsoft Server R2 (which to my knowledge is a couple of hundred) with JRiver which is another 50 bucks piece of software which also charges a fee for each generational upgrade. Adding to that the cost of hardware your solution looks neither exactly cheap nor quite straightforward.

I continue to view UPnP as a much simpler, more elegant and enjoyable solution and at least on par, sound quality wise, with Air.

Congratulations on your purchase of the Moon!

Everyone chooses his own best solution. I'd never say "my solution is the best" but it is for me, at this moment. Regarding this setup, it is in fact a very straightforward one. All one needs is a PC. The hardware for this PC can be tailored to taste, e.g. a case that resembles a HiFi component, fanless or not etc. The Devialets offer ethernet and WiFi so it doesn't even have to be in the same room as the Devialet. I did choose to place it near the Devialet as that's where my TV is as well. My system is a dual boot system, Server 2012 dedicated for music playback with JRiver and an Airplay receiver for Airplay and a Windows 8.1 partition for XBMC/HTPC, more video related work.

The installation of Windows Server 2012 is as easy as installing Windows 8. Then one just has to install the drivers for hardware that isn't recognized by Windows, JRiver (or another music playback program) and AIR (and/or the Devialet USB driver) and finally run the Audiophile Optimizer (AO) software that automatically optimizes the system. From there it's set&forget. Do you need help and the manual doesn't help? No problem, the AO maker gives you excellent and fast support. All the tweaking, testing and guesswork is done by the maker of AO and his beta team. I leave the PC up&running 24/7 but one press at the power button it shuts down and another press and it boots again and a few seconds later you can press the play button on your tablet/phone.

If you'd like to store your music on a NAS because you already own one and it's there already, fine, just point JRiver to the NAS folder(s). Or store your music locally on your music server and sell the NAS.

The costs aren't that high. You don't need the fastest hardware around, a basic PC of say 300 euro's is more than enough. Luxurious options like for example a Streacom case, a fast low power i7 CPU and linear PSU's etc. etc. could make it more expensive but these are all optional. Also I know that a lot of people don't even buy the Server 2012 software and run the trial. It can run 180 days and after that this can be extended two or three times. After that they reinstall Windows etc. which takes you about 30 minutes at most.