OK...I am 70-yrs old...so bear with me.... I have a basic question about wiring within my set-up. Something I am not quite grasping, perhaps. I have built a NUC/ROCK Server... Set-Up: NUC Running ROCK....Power connection, Ethernet Connection. I have two "Room Set-Ups"
Office: Mercury Streamer (hardwired ethernet) Running Volumio with Roon Plugin…AES connetion to DAC, Balanced Connections To Headphone Amp. This streams Qobuz wonderfully.
Living Room: Volumio Rivo Streamer (hardwired ethernet) Roon EndPoint…Connected to Pontus II via USB then into system. Sounds great streaming Qobuz
Here is my question. I have now downloaded CD Rips to the internal hard SATA drive on my NUC. They show up in my library appropriately. When I play a Rip from my library…in each of my room set-ups the only way the rip gets to my ears is thru the ethernet connection to my music streamers (right?)…what is going on here?..and am I losing music quality of my rips?
Is there a better way to wire and direct my Roon setup to get the most out of my stored files on The NUC?
This system took me quite a while to get together, get the data back-ups going, etc…I am so proud of all the studying (and help from you guys!) that I have done to get this all going…but can someone give me some insight about best scenario for stored file playback in a system such as mine. Thanks.
Just data up to the streamer, so irrelevant to the sound, unless you’re esoteric.
Using AES from streamer to DAC may have an impact on sound,
since the DACs clock gets slaved to the streamer’s clock.
Just data up to the DAC, so irrelevant to the sound, unless you’re esoteric.
No need to change anything, unless you hear some non-musical additions to the music.
No. The data from your stored files is taking exactly the same route to your endpoints as the data from the streaming services. As @Marin_Weigel says, stick with what you have. It’s fine.
intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.
“esoteric philosophical debates”
Thanks for sharing your Cappuccino, Bram…but of course I am esoteric…I am using Roon…and asking tech questions about it here, esoterically… Is there a prefered method to connect my Mercury to the DAC? (Photo attached to show options) …on the topic of my original question…My thinking was that there may be a sound benefit to connecting the NUC directly to the DAC when playing stored hi-rez files. Am I off track there? Thanks for responding.
If you can accommodate the units close enough together, there may well be a benefit to a direct connection via USB, thus giving the DAC‘s clock full control of the decoding process rather than slaving it to the streamer‘s clock - that’s what I did already hint at in my first post.
Yes…I got your “hint” …but did not want to “assume” USB…I am not an ACE at this stuff. Yes…the units sit side by side …so in my office it would be easy for me to try USB from the streamer to the DAC… I will give it a shot…Thanks again.
