01-Dec-2020, 09:30
A follow up to @thumb5 :
- In order to use Roon you have to have Roon software running on a computer but you can control Roon from it's remote app running on an iOS or Android device.
- If you connect an external HDD to the Airport via USB, you are going to have to use your main computer because that's the only device you've mentioned on which you can run the Roon software.
- You can avoid using your main computer by connecting another computer to the Airport. There are options here. One is to use something like a Raspberry Pi to which you connect the USB drive and run Roon on the Raspberry Pi. Another option is to use a music server which can run Roon. There are a lot of options here. Roon has its own Nucleus and Nucleus+ servers, there are a number of other options from manufacturers like Innuos and Antipodes which can run Roon and you can connect a USB drive or use an internal drive with them, and there are some NAS drives from QNAP and Synergy which can run Roon's ROCK operating system and Roon software. My experience is with a Roon Nucleus+ but I briefly used an older model Antipodes server prior to that. There's probably a lot of info available on Roon's site including in their user forums on setup and use of all of those options. Control of Roon in each case would be via Roon's remote app on an iOS or Android device.
If you don't want to use Roon for some reason, there are other options such as streaming devices to which you can add an external drive but Expert models and early Expert Pro models without the CI board have limitations on the streams they can accept. Running Devialet's own AIR software isn't an option on such devices and that means that you're likely to be limited to connecting to the Devialet via USB rather than ethernet and you may need to have your computer running as well. Just what you can do and how you connect to the Devialet is going to depend on the device you choose.
Based on my own experience when I started thinking about streaming, the biggest problem facing you at the start may well be just deciding how to go about it. One big decision concerns whether you want to have a large music library sourced from your own CDs which you rip and from downloaded files which you've purchased on your own drive or whether you are mostly going to stream from a service like Tidal or Qobuz or Spotify. The options I outlined above assume you're going to have a library of your own on a drive connected to your network. Things are a bit different if you're going to use a streaming service and it may well be possible to access some of them from an app on an iOS or Android device and have the service stream to your Devialet directly over your Airport ethernet connection. Alternatively, some of the streaming devices available can connect to one or more streaming services and have their own apps for control.
That question about whether you want to stream from files stored on your own drive, from a streaming service, or a mix of both is really the first thing I think you have to decide because that's the issue which really determines what sort of things you're going to have to connect to and run on your network or handheld device. Since you mentioned an Airport Extreme I assume your computer is a Mac. With a Mac you can stream to the Devialet from a drive connected to your Mac using iTunes and Devialet's AIR driver or use a free trial of Roon's software, and you can run software from a streaming service on the Mac and use the AIR driver as well. That's probably your simplest and cheapest starting point and relatively easy to get up and running. Once you're doing that you can try it for a few months and decide whether you want to stream from your own files as your major source, or stream from a streaming service as your major source, and once you've made that decision you're probably in a much better position to think about what software and hardware you want to use in the longer term.
- In order to use Roon you have to have Roon software running on a computer but you can control Roon from it's remote app running on an iOS or Android device.
- If you connect an external HDD to the Airport via USB, you are going to have to use your main computer because that's the only device you've mentioned on which you can run the Roon software.
- You can avoid using your main computer by connecting another computer to the Airport. There are options here. One is to use something like a Raspberry Pi to which you connect the USB drive and run Roon on the Raspberry Pi. Another option is to use a music server which can run Roon. There are a lot of options here. Roon has its own Nucleus and Nucleus+ servers, there are a number of other options from manufacturers like Innuos and Antipodes which can run Roon and you can connect a USB drive or use an internal drive with them, and there are some NAS drives from QNAP and Synergy which can run Roon's ROCK operating system and Roon software. My experience is with a Roon Nucleus+ but I briefly used an older model Antipodes server prior to that. There's probably a lot of info available on Roon's site including in their user forums on setup and use of all of those options. Control of Roon in each case would be via Roon's remote app on an iOS or Android device.
If you don't want to use Roon for some reason, there are other options such as streaming devices to which you can add an external drive but Expert models and early Expert Pro models without the CI board have limitations on the streams they can accept. Running Devialet's own AIR software isn't an option on such devices and that means that you're likely to be limited to connecting to the Devialet via USB rather than ethernet and you may need to have your computer running as well. Just what you can do and how you connect to the Devialet is going to depend on the device you choose.
Based on my own experience when I started thinking about streaming, the biggest problem facing you at the start may well be just deciding how to go about it. One big decision concerns whether you want to have a large music library sourced from your own CDs which you rip and from downloaded files which you've purchased on your own drive or whether you are mostly going to stream from a service like Tidal or Qobuz or Spotify. The options I outlined above assume you're going to have a library of your own on a drive connected to your network. Things are a bit different if you're going to use a streaming service and it may well be possible to access some of them from an app on an iOS or Android device and have the service stream to your Devialet directly over your Airport ethernet connection. Alternatively, some of the streaming devices available can connect to one or more streaming services and have their own apps for control.
That question about whether you want to stream from files stored on your own drive, from a streaming service, or a mix of both is really the first thing I think you have to decide because that's the issue which really determines what sort of things you're going to have to connect to and run on your network or handheld device. Since you mentioned an Airport Extreme I assume your computer is a Mac. With a Mac you can stream to the Devialet from a drive connected to your Mac using iTunes and Devialet's AIR driver or use a free trial of Roon's software, and you can run software from a streaming service on the Mac and use the AIR driver as well. That's probably your simplest and cheapest starting point and relatively easy to get up and running. Once you're doing that you can try it for a few months and decide whether you want to stream from your own files as your major source, or stream from a streaming service as your major source, and once you've made that decision you're probably in a much better position to think about what software and hardware you want to use in the longer term.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
