Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/volumio-primo-music-playerstreamer

Volumio seems to rely on the library’s file structure for organization, but it provides no library-management tools, and the documentation says nothing about how it expects a library to be configured. I have set up most of the directories and files in my library by date added and not by artist, work, etc. Other programs, like JRiver and Roon, are okay with this: They use flexible, sophisticated metadata tagging. Volumio’s system, however it works, didn’t play as well with my library. Search often returned incongruous results, and the standard views, such as Albums, Genres, Artists, Playlists, and Favorites, failed to display cover art for a substantial part of my collection. (Why didn’t it discover all the cover art in my library?) Maybe this wouldn’t happen if I were a more scrupulous curator, but it has not been a problem with other servers I’ve used. Also, Volumio seems unable to search by file format, and it cannot tell me a file’s sampling/ bit rate until after I start playing it.

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/aurender-a30-caching-music-servercd-ripperstreamer/

Moving over to Tidal and their MQA Master files I selected Jan Lisiecki and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No.1 in G Minor, Op. 25, MWV O7 – 1. Molto allegro con fuoco. [2019 Best of Tidal Masters].Growing up in a home where my father is a professional piano player it was exciting to hear a piano recording sound so authentic. Fronting the orchestra, the piano had the right attack and decay. The tone was near live and the space between notes in the allegro was just that small space to show off the recording’s quality (and the pianists’ considerable skill!). The strings, horns and woodwinds played their support role with live energy and tonal accuracy. Over the years I would have needed an SACD or vinyl album in the house to enjoy this level of connection with a recording. To experience this connection via streaming was truly magical and illustrates how far audio has come over my lifetime. 

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“As I was nearing the end of the review period, a TAS colleague asked me if I could recommend a music server for a friend of his who wanted to dip his toes into the waters of streaming. The friend didn’t want anything fancy or complicated, nor did he want to spend a lot of money, but he did want something good and representative of both the quality and quantity of music available through streaming sources. Without hesitation I recommended the Node 2i. Truth in reporting requires me to point out that I’ve by no means even begun to audition everything that’s out there in sub-grand streamer/DACs. However, I have used the Node 2i daily for nearly half a year in superior sound systems where I was able to compare it directly to similar components costing over ten times its $549 asking price. So I am pretty confident saying you would be hard-pressed to find a package that dovetails convenience, selection of music, trouble-free streaming, build-quality, flexibility, and true high-end performance as impressively as the Node 2i. Add to this the fact that its provenance is NAD, a manufacturer with over four decades of making value-driven components that are synonymous with reliability and longevity. If all that isn’t persuasive enough, it costs less than most high-end cable manufacturers’ so-called “affordable” interconnects, and if you purchase it through the Bluesound website, you get thirty days to return it if you don’t like it. Meanwhile, if the streaming bug really bites you, the music server part of the 2i can be used in the clear with a more upscale DAC should you desire to go that route. (I used it into a Benchmark DAC3 and the DACs built into a McIntosh C52 preamplifier and a Marantz SA-KI Ruby SA-CD player, all with great results.)”

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“Primary auditioning of the N100SC took place in conjunction with the new $23,000 Esoteric K-01XD SACD player and the $19,000 Bricasti Design M21 DSD DAC, although the Aurender also saw action with the $150,000 Audio Note Fifth Element/Fifth Force 24bit/96KHz DAC and the $8,500 Audio Research DAC 9 Tube (review forthcoming). Operating the Aurender involved downloading the company’s app onto my iPad Mini, which would control the choice of accessing the internal hard-disk directly for playback, or to connect up to two external USB hard-disks, or to access the Tidal streaming platform via Ethernet. Digital cable was the Light Harmonics Lightspeed USB.

The Aurender was connected to my home network via an Ethernet connection through a pair of Zyxel Powerline adaptors, one near the Xfinity router in the other room that transmits and another one in the same room as the Aurender for the receiving end. During the review period, the transmitting module malfunctioned and derailed the auditioning process; good thing Zyxel sent me a replacement two days later. Price to pay for Ethernet until the day comes when a new standard would allow wireless connection all the way.”