My VTA ST-120 is on the way .....and other loose ramblings of an old fart

Excellent, sounds really interesting guys and I will PM Skiz in a bit regarding a good CD ripper. And we can certainly discuss a building a “Music Server”, Android compatibility would be perfect (not interested in Home Theater in this context).

However, here’s the present system configuration so you know what’s goin on with my rig.

First there’s my recording/playback console (input mixer, guitar effects processors, keyboard, 32-track software recording, blah, blah, blah) where we work with  multiple .wav files and mix down to a master stereo .wav file, etc. This is run by a dedicated PC with Windows 7 and a couple 2TB of hard drives. I also have some CD’s ripped to MP3 and saved there. Monitors are bookshelf powered Edifier.

There is a stereo feed from this recording console to the VTA ST-120 / VOTT via my A/B switch and stepped attenuator (Source A)

My good old Pioneer PD-4500 CD deck (was a factory production sample built by me personally at the plant way back) feeds directly as “Source B” of my A/B switch to the stepped-atten, VTA ST-120 / VOTT

One other thing to note, the whole damned house (all lights, A/Cs, TVs, etc) is automated with Samasung SmartThings and controlled by shouting at Alexa (we have not touched a lightswitch in over a year). I have Amazon Prime and  Alexa is further linked via Bluetooth (may change to a hard-wire interconnect) to the recording console and thus easily be routed to the VTA ST-120 as “Source A”.  Given the Alexa thing, I can shout at her to play virtually any song from Amazon Prime Music and I believe we have a Pandora account too.

https://www.freac.org/  easy peasy program  Has CDDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB support so should render album artist and track titles on the fly every time.

Another great one is Exact Audio Copy http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/ which has an additional benefit - as well album/artist/track info on the fly it will provide some indication of the quality of the rip/cd: others who have ripped the same track will hash them and this hash is then compared to your own and it will show a % of accuracy using Accurate Rip http://www.accuraterip.com/ as well as provide some settings to make EAC perform best with your dvdrom drive in your pc..

Have a look at the various dacs on offer from Allo Cletus - combined with a little raspberry pi 3 it makes for a pretty good sounding connected solution which you can operate from your smartphone and just stick that pi and dac somewhere out of view. I have the Allo Boss dac - has a very nice output stage which gives my beloved old Denon DCD 2560 a run for its money.. https://www.allo.com/sparky/boss-dac.html
https://www.allo.com/sparky/piano-dac-2-1.html is a nice one if you run something with a subwoofer or two - fully programmable active crossover in it.

Roy wrote:https://www.freac.org/  easy peasy program  Has CDDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB support so should render album artist and track titles on the fly every time.

Another great one is Exact Audio Copy http://www.exactaudiocopy.org/ which has an additional benefit - as well album/artist/track info on the fly it will provide some indication of the quality of the rip/cd: others who have ripped the same track will hash them and this hash is then compared to your own and it will show a % of accuracy using Accurate Rip http://www.accuraterip.com/ as well as provide some settings to make EAC perform best with your dvdrom drive in your pc..

Have a look at the various dacs on offer from Allo Cletus - combined with a little raspberry pi 3 it makes for a pretty good sounding connected solution which you can operate from your smartphone and just stick that pi and dac somewhere out of view.  I have the Allo Boss dac - has a very nice output stage which gives my beloved old Denon DCD 2560 a run for its money.. https://www.allo.com/sparky/boss-dac.html
https://www.allo.com/sparky/piano-dac-2-1.html is a nice one if you run something with a subwoofer or two - fully programmable active crossover in it.

Yes, the raspberry pi 3 solution is very appealing indeed

Ok this may be a stupid question (no morning coffee yet), but I seem to be missing piece of the puzzle.
In the RPi solution, where are the CDs ripped to / files stored? There must be a hard drive somewhere  ....with that, I will proceed to brew a cup of the finest coffee I can find in the kitchen!

hehe ^^  same here  Near 1500hrs now and I need that pep..

Oh yes - you would need to hook up a drive to sómething.. Could be to your router if it has usb ports - this way any device in your home can access it. Or directly to one of the four usb ports on the rpi3 - you can leave that running 24/7 pretty much as it uses very little power and  other hardware could access that too when set up properly.

400 cds would amount to about oh I reckon 120gb if you rip to flac



Sorry to hear about your brother by the way. Some people give a shine to life and from what you wrote it seems your brother did just that

I have not looked into it myself but I think the software I use on my pi, https://osmc.tv/ ,  in its Music menu has an option to scan áll music in the music library and render normalizing values for all of them without actualy altering the music files themselves - can set the attenuator on the vta to something you like and then just  sit back. the https://volumio.org/ software might be more expansive in its options though Music wise - OSMC is an all round sort of thing.

I have a Rpi running OSMC/Kodi for my home theater solution.   .....having had some GREAT Colombian Dark Roasted coffee:

I will like to build a dedicated Rpi / Allo DAC stuff probably sourcing the files from one of the Studio Music computer's 2TB hard drives. I have a Nexus 7 Android tablet that can be dedicated as the wireless GUI I guess.
......Am I on the right track here or too much coffee?

..sorry what was that? The bubbles in my La Chouffe are véry loud XD

yeah pretty much the only thing we still use our old nexus for too ^^ that and roland piano software

CletusB wrote:Ok this may be a stupid question (no morning coffee yet), but I seem to be missing piece of the puzzle.
In the RPi solution, where are the CDs ripped to / files stored? There must be a hard drive somewhere  ....with that, I will proceed to brew a cup of the finest coffee I can find in the kitchen!

I have literally spent 100s of hours ripping CDs and LPs to my NAS drive array (Synology DS214).  The two disc array is in mirrored configuration so if I lose a drive I always have a backup.  Each drive is 2TB but have only used up 1TB of capacity in 6 years of doing this.  About once per year the NAS is backed up to an external drive.  Never needed it though.  

An older (but not terribly slow) computer is employed to access the NAS drives (Ethernet) and playback the files via USB to a DAC.  Access is near instantaneous when selecting files randomly after everything was converted to gigabit Ethernet speed.

Need to find a better CD ripper to properly extract the CD metadata (artist, title, album, etc).  Some of my 80s CDs do not have this info so each track is manually edited to add.  In the end it has been well worth the effort.  Playback SW is via Foobar2000 with an Anamon skin for looks.  Foobar2000 is free and the skin cost me $15.  The Anamon wrapper allows remote control via an iPhone or iPad on a shared network.

Then try Exact Audio Copier arledgsc - it is as good as it gets. Saying yes to the accurate rip and cddb in that should give you 99% coverage on most cd's for metadata and rip accuracy comparisons. What remains would be obscure and interesting enough to manually enter album artist track by hand and uploading to the databases for others to enjoy the fruits of your labour

IMHO, Flac is the way to go. Most of the other formats have some "correction" software built into them.
I have an Innuos Zenith:
http://www.innuos.com/en/catalog/go/zenith-mk2-std
Comes stock with a 1 TB ss drive. There's an output for extra drive capacity/backup if you want. I have several hundred CDs ripped in Flac and haven't even made a dent in the storage, maybe 12 percent.
To really do it justice, you'll need a decent DAC as well. I use an Aqua Hi-Fi La Scala:
http://www.aquahifi.com/la_scala.html
The tubes in there aren't just buffers: they're actually part of the volt-amp circuitry.
Both are made by very small companies but built like tanks. The Innuos line is from Portugal and the Aqua in Italy. The list prices are way over-stated as they include the European VAT which at least in the western hemisphere we can dodge. Customer support (Innuos in the UK and Aqua in the U.S.) is superb. You usually get the CEO who designed the machine on the first hop, and both have dealers and product support in the U.S.
I think sKiZo uses Flac as well.
This is one area where I have splurged a bit on cabling and terminations. The ripper and the DAC are ideally connected by decent USB 2.0, then the DAC to the preamp via XLR. You can use standard RCA between the DAC and the preamp, but XLR is slightly recommended *if* you have the capability. I've run it both ways and do prefer XLR, but only by a little tiny bit.

Roy wrote:Then try Exact Audio Copier arledgsc  - it is as good as it gets

Found it and it looks great.  Has many options for configuring and formatting CD metadata.  Thank you!

Exact Audio Copy download...

Yup, FLAC is the way to go to conserve disc space.  No loss and the data can be fully recovered unlike MP3.

Another usefull program for those who want to keep their data/music safe and recoverable
http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
good practice 10% recovery volumes of any given set of data

I've downloaded and playing with EAC   .....me likee so far! .....and using FLAC as my standard

That la scala look nice Deepee - should feel good too with that Nextel coating ^^ too rich for my blood though I might just order some Nextel grey to lather onto my rpi3 for fondle factor

Roy wrote:That la scala look nice Deepee - should feel good too with that Nextel coating ^^ too rich for my blood though   I might just order some Nextel grey to lather onto my rpi3 for fondle factor

@Roy, as I mentioned, these are small companies and prices (absent the VAT) are negotiable.
@Cletus, please do expound upon EAC. How does it sound?
The Innuos software imports all the metadata, which are then visible on your iPhone or whatever.
I eschew all Apple products generally, but iPeng appears to have the upper hand. I've heard rumours that Innuos will have their own control programme sometime later this year that will be cross-platform.

Have a bunch of Rpi stuff here and available (the Pi, WiFi dongle, Power Supply, 8GB SD card, 32GB Flash drive, case). Want to experiment with an Rpi, HiFiBerry DAC+ – Pro, 2TB USB Hard Drive and Nexus 7 tablet solution.
Only thing I need to order is the HiFiBerry

Looking at this with great interest
https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-music-player/

NICE! ....the EAC app is ripping away making FLAC and jpg files in the background! ......I think I'm falling in love again!

not the dingleberry - boss ! =}

deepee99 wrote:
I think sKiZo uses Flac as well.
This is one area where I have splurged a bit on cabling and terminations. The ripper and the DAC are ideally connected by decent USB 2.0, then the DAC to the preamp via XLR. You can use standard RCA between the DAC and the preamp, but XLR is slightly recommended *if* you have the capability. I've run it both ways and do prefer XLR, but only by a little tiny bit.

Yup - FLAC is lossless and stores tags internally, eliminating the need for "sidecar" files for tags and covers.

Don't forget the other end of the USB cable. Lots of competition on the USB channels built into a computer that can result in noise, so I went with an "audio grade" expansion card here. Creates a unique channel, and only thing plugged into it is the DAC and an ADC that I use for ripping vinyl.



Actually paid more for that than I got into the DAC if I include the separate power supply. That bypasses the computer's power rail (another common source of noise) entirely.



Add a nice high end cable, and difference is night and day.

Any suggestions for an Android app for the Nexus 7 to control the player?

I tried various free ones - easy enough to find. Since we mostly use our OSMC for visual media playback have not bothered to find a really good (free) one since the tv is on anyways.. For music I reckon Volumio is the way to go on that vta connected pi and for that the official Volumio app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=volumio.browser.Volumio&hl=en at 99 cents seems a good way to go though I read every other update there are some annoying issues they do seem to do their best to fix them but end up breakign something else later lol.. One I did try and liked was Kore though that was some time ago ( for osmc/kodi ) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kore

Yeehah! it works!
I now have me a Rpi Music Server ....just ordered me a HiFiBerry DAC+ – Pro
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MF77LH9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Couldnt get the Allo Boss then or other reason why you thing the berry will do better from eying the boards?