I'm digitizing all my CD's - best way to listen to them?

I picked up a used Acronova Nimbie CD ripper and am gradually making my way through converting about 1500 CD's to lossless. I chose ALAC format since most of our gear is apple though I could easily convert to FLAC. The music is stored on a synology NAS. Synology has a few medial library servers options including an itunes server.

But what are the best options for listening in the house?

I have an Anthem 720 Receiver with my apple TV connected via HDMI. I'm a bit doubtful of the expensive DAC's on the market. They seem highly overpriced. I 'm not adverse to something raspberry PI based though. I've got a spare with a good quality audio daughter board (pisound) for music making. But the apple TV is probably more convenient.

Any suggestions?

Thx!

I am not up to date with the options that support ALAC, but I'm pretty sure they are many. FLAC is pretty universal.

If you are looking for something to manage and enhance the experience with your music, I suggest having a look at Roon https://roonlabs.com/. It can do so much with all the metadata that is available for the music. It is a bit much to get started with as it consists of needing a core server and an endpoint(your RPi can be used as an endpoint), and some are put off by the cost, but for me, I find it excellent and can't imagine not using it, but I also got lucky and got a lifetime subscription before the price increase.

Another option, and less costly, is using a device with BlueOS. The Node 2i is pretty popular, but I have no experience with it. It can also be used with Roon. https://www.bluesound.com/products/node/

As you have said, since you are Apple-centric, the AppleTV is easy and convenient.

I did something similar except I'm not an Apple guy. I ripped all our CDs to FLAC and, like you, have them stored on a Synology NAS. I run a Plex Media Server on my Synology NAS and a Plex client on my Amazon Fire TV Cube which is connected to a Marantz AVR. I love this setup for music but I also use Plex as an OTA DVR for a few things - comes in handy when the internet is down like last week when ATT sub-contractors cut the fiber to our house.

I sometimes use Plex for movies but not music. I didn't really like it for music but I could try it again.

So what's the value for Roon? It handles streaming and also organizing your music library, but you still have to have a DAC?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blingleberry

So what's the value for Roon? It handles streaming and also organizing your music library, but you still have to have a DAC?

---

It is so hard to describe Roon. It does so many things. There are many articles written about it if you do a google search.

You don't "need" a DAC, but you do need a Roon endpoint.
https://roonlabs.com/howroonworks

Since you are Apple-centric, this might be a good article for you to read on Roon.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-t...s-alternative/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blingleberry

I have an Anthem 720 Receiver with my apple TV connected via HDMI.

---

Yep, that has a DAC in it that should work more than fine. I'm not sure why you'd even consider an outboard DAC here.

I have most of my music ripped to ALAC and on a Synology NAS as well. I just run in through my HT receiver.

Thx!

How do you search and find what you want to listen to? Just browsing the folders?

Do you need to run some kind of librarian management server like itunes or plex?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Blingleberry

Thx!

How do you search and find what you want to listen to? Just browsing the folders?

Do you need to run some kind of librarian management server like itunes or plex?

---

You could do it by browsing folders or whatever, and sometimes I do that, but I also run Plex on the NAS itself. Plex has some oddities but it works well enough.

My entire library is digitized. I have a lifetime subscription to Roon. I also run Plex for my movie library and can access my music via Plex on my home theater system. There are many competitors to Roon but none of them can organize a gargantuan library the way Roon can. Given the size of my library, it was the natural choice.

My opinion is that FLAC is wasted space. Drive space is cheap so I understand why people want "lossless", but the human ear cannot distinguish from high quality compressed audio and FLAC. High quality means V2 (APS) or V3 (APX) or 320CBR on LAME encoded mp3 files after extraction of the .wav files using an errorless ripper (like Exact Audio Copy). LAME is the best mp3 encoder on the planet.