Building a New Streamer.

[jon]

Introduction
My current streamer the allo.com Sparky plus Kali plus Piano 2.1 DAC has finally given up the ghost, 'twas a lovely device, very cheap and delivered a great sound. Old age coupled with Volumio's failure to update it's own library (libspotify) has signalled the end. Time to replace!

What do I replace it with? Before I talk about that, what do I want?
My System
Breve Turntable
Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista Vinyl Phono Stage
Thomas Mayer VT52 Preamp.
2 X Quad 405-2, upgraded with Net Audio Dual Mono Power Supply and amplifier boards (best sounding Quads I've ever had)
JBL L-300 Summit Loudpeakers
All cables by TNT-Audio (Interconnects and speaker cables)

New Streamer Requirements
I have a Spotify account so must be able to do that. It's legacy, the rest of the family have their own accounts (which I pay for), and I have a huge pile of playlists made up on it. Not impossible to recreate on other platforms, but a little daunting.
I have around 500gb of my CDs I ripped to SSD, so must be able to handle an external (or internal drive)
NO APPS - hate them! Totally unnecessary, if it has a web browser that suffices. I know I am limiting myself and cutting myself out of other solutions (such as Roon), but I only have the one set up on which I play music, so to have the capability to drive multi-room set ups is wasted on me.
Got to be reasonably good, I have a fairly nice system which will ruthlessly expose any cheap stuff.
A youtube plugin might be good, SWMBO is learning to play the cello (late starter) and looks at a lot of youtube stuff, but she'd also like to hear it on the big rig (her term)!
Ability to interface with other platforms QOBUZ, Tidal, etc.
Small and discrete, I have limited rack space, so the solution must be fairly compact (that's why I liked the Allo Sparky set up)
Low cost... ( )

That'll do as a starter set of requirements.

Commercial devices - all in one
So I have looked and looked and looked.

The all-in-one boxes that are out there are pretty good, seem to do everything I require. The only issue being I could not find any that have a web browser as part of the set up and they are characterised by fancy costs, too!!

That means, plan B

Raspberry Pi boxes
These are out, Volumio does not work any more, as noted above, and the others all require some form of app to interact with the PI. I could in theory wait for a short time and some genius in the community will step up and fix the issue, but I'm not prepared to wait.

So...  

Plan C

Roll your own!
So what do I need? For a roll your own set up?
A fanless system
A DAC
A network element
Internal or external storage

I know, maybe this: A NUC

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/BPCINT88321/Intel-NUC-10th-Gen-BXNUC10I3FNHN-i3-10110U-Mini-PC

These things are loud, and noisy, and small (   ). Don't forget the extras to make it work.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM981250/Samsung-980-250GB-NVMe-PCIe-30-M2-SSD-Read-up-to-2
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MEMCRU079600/Crucial-8GB-DDR4-SODIMM-3200-MTs-PC4-25600-CL22-SR

OK, that's the base NUC, with storage and memory. It's got gigabit LAN connectivity, I'm not bothered by wi-fi.

Right it's a good start. I need to drop the NUC case though! It's the only way to get rid of the noisy fans.

Enter the AKASA Turing case

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089GS3Z84/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

A word of warning here, this case is specifically designed for Frost Canyon (10th Generation) NUCs. Careful matching required!!!

What is that thing? It's basically a massive aluminium heat sink. It sits on top of the processor with thermal paste. More importantly - no fan. Therefore silent. Goal achieved! Yay, me!!!

Need a DAC!!!

What DAC
Sigh, this is painful, I really liked the Marantz HD-DAC1, very pretty. Sadly the price was killer - NZ$3200 was way too rich. The Schiit Modi 3. the Topping E30 and lots of other DACS have all disappeared down their own supply chain problems. I cannot lay hands on them, even talking to the manufacturers direct yielded nothing but apologies, and in any case New Zealand is a very small country and that means we are last on the supply list.

Onwards! Alright I've had good experience with Allo products so let's go with this:

https://www.allo.com/sparky/revolution-dac.html

It's external, reasonably priced, and seems to have had good reviews. Result!

Everything ordered. No idea how long it's going to take to arrive. Next post will occur then when we prise the mobo out of its case on the NUC, ready for the move to it's new home in the AKASA Turing case/

[Mechanic]

I would recommend going down the PC route - plenty of fanless units around or use a tablet that the DAC can plug into - gives a lot of flexibility.

I've got a mixture of HRT (High Resolution Technologies) and Cambridge Audio DAC's - both are excellent

Since 1999 i've been using otsav, over 1300 albums all taken directly from CD and stored lossless, program does have to be licenced (I've got 3 licences for different PC's) but for the money I feel it's worth it as it works very well, can quickly build playlists which can be stored.

[willbewill]

RPi running Picoreplayer with LMS, and using Spotty plugin for Spotify worked well for me, but I went back to a PC based Vortexbox just because I prefer it and it does ripping, although cover art is now broken (not a big deal for me as I already have my cd collection done so it's just a matter of manually adding cover art as I rip the occasional cd).

[mikeyb]

Worth looking at Logitech Media Server on your NUC then use Material Skin on the Logitech Media Server Web page to control everything. Both free. Gives me access to Nas drive, Qobuz, Spotify, Tidal, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, Internet radio, YouTube plus lots of other plugins.

I used to run a Pi4 as endpoint but have moved onto a Logitech Transporter into my Denafrips DAC.

LMS and Material Skin ( free but can donate ) are fully supported with regular updates and modifications.

Screenshots to give you an idea what it looks like on my iPad, I use either my phone or my iPad to control everything, I have endpoints in my pc room and outside in the gazebo all controllable from one device and can be synced to play the same or different music at the same time.


Check out the Forum for Logitech Squeezebox for more info.

https://forums.slimdevices.com

[jon]

Thanks for the LMS stuff. Definitely a candidate.

[ian]

Hi Jon,
That DIY route is not that cheap is it 

I'm not sure why you are so averse to apps to control the streamer. I use an Auralic Aries mini with an internal SSD.  It'll stream all the usual services but it does require an app that only runs on iPad/iPhone devices.  I picked up a 2nd hand iPad mini for not much to hold the front end. The Aries mini is discontinued but they do pop up occasionally.  The internal DAC is more than decent but it can output to an external dac if you want.

Malcolm mentioned the Vortexbox which has the advantage of easy ripping.  With the Aries you'd have to rip to your laptop then transfer to the Aries.  Innuos sell their own version of a vortexbox which I've owned, the Innuos mini is very good and can be controlled using LMS on your laptop which is how I used mine.

[jon]

I'm not sure why you are so averse to apps to control the streamer.

I don't like apps because in the early days a lot of apps 'phoned home', and they still do with good reason (updates and so on). I ran a check on what some of these apps where doing and realised that they were doing exactly what they said they did, PLUS doing extra for the maker of the app. I've been leary of apps that do extra ever since!

Along with that, I am IT support for the family, and my wife has Apple products, I favour Samsung and my kids don't care as long as it works!!! That's an awful lot of extra things to check!

Put it down to individual idiosyncratic behaviour on my part!

[jon]

Parts arriving! The NUc, with SSD drive and Ram



The silent case with all the bits for it!



Now to put this together...

[jon]

So, basically, complete. I followed this build post on Anandtech:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16191/akasa-turing-fanless-case-review-noiseless-nuc-nonpareil/2

Which was useful. Including the correction of an error in the build manual of the Akasa Turing case.



This one with the RAM and M2 SSD inserted.

You'll have to play in the BIOS to get it to boot from USB stick, so you can load your chosen system into place. Remember to turn off Secure Boot.

[Austrokiwi]

Well done, I will be awaiting new posts with anticipation.   I am also  looking at a streamer/music server replacement.  I purchased a Magnat MMS 730, a DAB+ Tuner and streamer a sometime back.  ON my system it has turned out being the weakest link( audio wise). Now I am in the process of collecting the parts to make a fanless PC.   At the moment trying to work out if I have the ability to use Audiophile Linux( I suspect it might be beyond my frustration tolerance).

[jon]

Right, apologies first. I've been abroad...

However I'm back, the Revolution DAC has arrived and I've been playing around with a bunch of software!

More anon

[wenig watt]

Hmm,
I know my thoughts and actions come from a different time.
Do you have no problem with the fact that every software update could dispossess you?
I had several hundred CDs running on a Windows laptop with Itunes.
Updating itunes made it so that hardly any song would play without jerking.
My wife uses Audible. It happens that the sh... does not work. Oh, suddenly you have nothing!
Streaming is the biggest theft of all time!
I almost only listen to vinyl now. Sometimes I have to search a bit longer for the record... but I know it's there and I can play it.

Best regards

Arndt

[jon]

Windows not involved...

Bluntly it's a resource hog. Best avoided.

[jon]

I almost only listen to vinyl now. Sometimes I have to search a bit longer for the record... but I know it's there and I can play it.

I'm the same - I want the streamer so I can check out new music and new albums! If I like what I hear I buy the vinyl.

[wenig watt]

I understand,
I let younger friends keep me up to date. Maybe if I knew more about computers and software, my attitude would be more open. But as long as physical recordings are available...
Vinyl has proven its usability and longevity. 

Kind regards

Arndt