Apologies for the hifi post…
We are in the process of moving house from our 3-bed Semi to a 4-bed Detached and our current plan is that we will have a dedicated Hifi/no-TV lounge (and seperate TV/Playroom). 
The new room is pretty much the same size as my current living room (~17ft x 11ft) so the core of the system I am very happy with, although I still have this plan to revisit a pair of ‘medium’ sized Tannoys when I find a pair.
I have got to the sate where my existing CD storage is full but I don’t want to buy any more CDs or storage until we have moved. I’ve mainly been buying Vinyl which is fine as I have space with my Ikea Expedit, standard.
I have been investigating streaming for the digital side, more for Internet radio and possibly multiroom for the new house. I have experience of Sonos but been looking at the Yamaha Musicast system too. The new house has a large sun-room which we plan to convert into a big Kitchen/Diner which will of course need music!
Then there are ripping servers, like the Bluesound products that seem very popular. I do have a Synology 2TB NAS but its mostly used for RAW Photos.
I had been looking for a small format CDP, as my Sony S9000ES is such a beast and getting on a bit but soundwise, I can’t fault it. And this starts the thought process…
Now, I don’t have a massive CD collection, I think in the region of around 500-550 CDs just eyeballing the amount on the shelves. I guess I’m at that point of ripping them all and going Streaming + Vinyl (store the CDs in the loft) or taking all the CDs out of the cases, save the covers and scrap the jewel cases to save space and continue to use the CDs.
Anybody gone through such as change recently?
Still on my faithful squeezebox here so not much help I’m afraid
Buy this and stick a SSD hard drive inside for your CD rips, and when you want to stream new stuff just join Tidal or Quboz which are integrated into the excellent Auralic Lightning app - as long as you have an iPad.
2 Likes
I use Roon Nucleus into the Dac of my CD player in listening room. Around the house I use Sonos and its great for casual listening.
1 Like
Given you already have a NAS, ripping in the CDs seems obvious. That said, a Qobuz sub is now just £15 per month, so depending on how eclectic your CDs are you could just not bother.
1 Like
I would ideally like to keep the current NAS seperate, there is well over 1GB of photos on there and its quite noisy .
That Auralic looks interesting, and local too. Quick look, and a 2TB SSD is around £200.
What is the SSD of choice. I’m yet to put one in the Nucleus.
I recently bought a Crucial BX500 for my ~9yr old Dell laptop (only 240GB @ £35) which has been great, althought that is in the last 3-months so no idea on long term reliablity (not much to go wrong really).
I got one of those Auralic Aries Mini Streamers for serving around the house and the main system into my AN DAC. I have my music in three locations (two are now for backup). With Bubble UNP on my phone I can use the Auralic to serve to my main system, the naim in the kitchen and the marantz in the bedroom…it is a great bit of kit.
For music my NAS is only used as backup. Although the NAS also serves photos and supports the CCTV reocrding. Our NAS is tucked away in the Kitchen and is whisper quiet.
1 Like
The NAS goes in a different room. Ideal is normally wired to the router.
In the listening room you have a streamer. You can choose cheap plus DAC, or expensive. There is all of the choice.
Yeah, I have this at the moment, the NAS is connected via LAN to the Router. It just so happens our Router is in our Living Room.
Well if you needed it to be quiet you could either get a new one (it’s usual for noise levels both of NAS devices and HDs to be published), or box it in (maybe with some foam inside) and shove on a 12cm fan plugged into a USB socket.
I’ve got a squeezebox Touch you could buy. Put LMS on your NAS or a small pc / PI and you’re sorted. Pm me if you’re interested
Do you use an internal HDD/SSD on the Auralic?
Can I connect a USB CD drive to the back and rip directly to an internal HDD on it?
yes, SSD, it came with a 1Tb drive, I’m going tohave to get a bigger one soon
I dont think so. I rip on a desktop PC. I did try ripping on my laptop with an external USB cd drive but it was much slower than my desktop.
I don’t really understand the all-in-one systems that do the ripping for you, unless you basically aren’t bothered. Any computer with free software can do a secure rip quickly, and get tags that are OK for most people. Then it’s into MP3Tag for a quick check (and change the genre, autoselect always sucks), and copy across to the NAS. It’s really easy to do it while you’re working or browsing, and you know it’s right.
Digital is subservient here however I’ve found myself listening to more digital in the past couple of months.
My cdp/Dac is modest. Marantz 8005, it plays SACD/CD and there’s access to the Dac via USB and I think all but AES/EBU. It also has a specialised Apple USB connection. Plug in an Apple device to the dedicated USB and away you go.
Laptop into the Dac and Spotify via the Apple input are meh, sounds okay but nothing to get excited about. CD sounds okay and SACD a little better, bearable but I didn’t play a disc for months.
Amazon timed it just right, my daughters started asking for music as HD launched so I trialled the family HD version and Spotify premium. Spotify, still meh but Amazon HD, it actually sounds pretty good. This via an old iPad. I put on a CD for the first time in a while the other day and again was underwhelmed, the streaming option is better via my setup.
Vinyl is still a ways ahead and that’s where I’ve invested but I can listen to digital now and not feel like I just want to turn it off. With it’s vast catalogue I do wonder what the point of my wall of CD’s is. I’ve a really good but broken CDP in the loft, also wondering if I’ll ever be bothered to fix it. I’m sure the current crop of Dac’s at least get close and with access to a much wider range of music via the streaming option.
A buddy is currently ripping several hundred of his CD’s, I’ll stick to cleaning records 
If I were starting in new room and looking for a digital solution it’d be a streaming option.
95% of my listening is Qobuz now tbh
Not surprised
Having dived head first into vinyl in recent years investing in a good Dac is a worry