Music Streaming anyone?

[70tno]

Hi, any of you guys into music streaming of hi res (mainly flac) 2 ch audio?
Have been involved in hifi for years and am well up to sorting through the bullshit given by salesmen on that side of it but am a streaming newbie.

Am currently using an old laptop on Windows 7 outputting via Jriver through USB to an external DAC, FLAC files stored on a simple NAS server connected via ethernet.

Would like to ditch the laptop and get rid of Windows as it is a bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, don't want to go down the Mac route so is Linux the best option? If so, anybody got any suggestions that don't cost the earth please?

There are a few things advertised, but most have in-built DACs, which are superfluous for me.

[Twinspark]

Raspberry Pi running some kind of Linux would be the best option, I'd have thought.

Have a dig around here:

http://www.raspbmc.com

[70tno]

Many thanks for that, should have mentioned, but have actually tried the Pi with a program called Raspyfi and had problems with drop-outs on anything above 16bit 44.1k files due to a problem inherent to the Pi sharing the same bus (or something) for ethernet and USB. There is talk about a future fix for it though.

[Twinspark]

How long ago did you try the Pi?

The current Model B is twice the memory of early models, which I believe fixes a lot of the issues early machines had.

[70tno]

Pi was recent, it is the new version, but thanks to your prompt I have looked into it a bit more and may give it another try.
Otherwise there is a more advanced option apparently with Udoo

[slparry]

I have two Blackberry Playbooks, one of which is dedicated to being a music hub.

I can stream over wifi to it from most of the places I need, ie web and NAS and being 64gb have a few cd's ripped onto it.

It connects to my hifi via a Blackberry Music Gateway which is a bluetooth device specifically designed for the job.

The Playbook was on offer, new, at £99 and the music gateway was £15 I think, oh and I got a docking station so it "sits" neater and is permanently charged, that was a couple of quid on offer too.

As a plus, with having a Blackberry phone too means my phone can act as a remote control for the Playbook

[Merecat]

Just caught up with this thread.
I have a similar Win7 setup using a redundant desktop. This archives my photos, music and movies which are then backed up to separate portable drives.
I use a Pi running the latest version of RaspBMC to stream video and music to my TV and surround sound.
Because of the buffering issues streaming large video files ( >2Gb MKV files)
I switched from wireless to ethernet using a 200Mbs powerline and make sure all video files are encoded 1080P MP4
I never had issues streaming music wirelessly although my collection is all MP3.
I also use Plex to stream video and music to my Ipad

[70tno]

Hi Mike, thanks for that, it may be worth me trying Raspbmc rather than Raspyfi, (which has now become Volumio).
Tried a couple of different software settings but still have some drop-outs on 24/96k files.
Apparently there is a way of getting the digital audio out of the HDMI socket, but how is beyond me at present!
Am also investigating using a Cubox, which has more processing power.
Bring back vinyl!