Check out the TEAC UD 503. I own one and even though I don’t have an NAS I use it with my Mac mini and USB hard drives. It has everything else you listed. It’s a fine piece of gear.
Need a headphones amp/dac solution that I can stream to from my NAS
Title kina says it all. I am looking for a piece of gear
that is:
A) headphone amp
B) DAC
C) can stream to from Network NAS without using any of my other
components so ethernet connection
D) Will work with JRiver (my current s/w)
E) Volume remote would be nice, but not a deal killer
F) Can work with a wide range of headphone impedances
G) Good sounding, does not have to be the best as I am just getting into the headphone aspect after years of being away
It will need to be something that will be recognized by the software as another
zone that can be streamed to.
I have found bits and pieces but as yet nothing as a single component, although I am not against multiple pieces if they have everything listed above.
HELP please you Oracles of Audio....11 responses Add your response
I have an Antelope Platinum DAC connected to my PC via USB. The JRiver acts as the server to retrieve music from the ethernet NAS to the PC and out to the headphones connected to the DAC. I would be sure most similar DACs would be the same eg Chord, Ayre etc. It is the PC that does the music handling, not the DAC. |
While I appreciate the suggestions and I have looked up several of the suggested units they mostly fail to address the network as I would prefer to run data over the 1gig network rather than a usb or some variation. My current set up uses a PS Directstream connected to the network but since I am using the balanced outputs I suppose I could use the singlended output from the Directstream to the headphone amp. I would have prefered a solution that did not require me to power up any of the other components but was looking for a amp/dac that could tie into network. The files stored on NAS are uncompressed flac files, so there is a lot of data to move. |
Topping DX-7 or 7s dac is getting some outrageous talk about how good it is, for I think $199 through Mass-drop Thought they need their own thread. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/topping-dacs-d-50-dx-7-and-dx7s Cheers George |
USB will handle 24/96 HD audio and you would not appreciate the definition over that until you get expensive. Check that the NAS itself does not have player software on it that will play out via your DAC (via IP address). Most common NAS servers Synology, QNAP etc will have 2 or 3 open source players available. You will need a PC or iPad to access the NAS in any case. Why do you feel the need to move files from the NAS? You said you were using JRiver on a PC. This can access the NAS and direct the output to the DAC. You will be hard pressed to find a pure DAC with ethernet on it. |
I think that I need to clarify my inquiry for suggestions. I am currently investigating the availability to get a single component that I can attach to my network so that I could (using JRiver) stream from my NAS to the heapphone amp/dac so I can use headphones without the need to turn on any of my main systems components. I have two computers in my listening area but DO NOT want to have them used as source to amp/dac other than routing the file data through them to the ethernet to the amp/dac. I am not sure if this clarified anything but I hope it does. I think I just might end up using the directstream to headphone amp and let it go there, not my prefered method but I believe it would work fine.....thoughts? |