Transporter or External DAC - Advice Needed

[John_Dumke]

Sorry if this has already been covered before (I am sure it has), but I have been out of the loop for while. Recently I thought that my Duet Receiver took a dump, which got me thinking about upgrading that portion of my system. I have a need for two Players. One through a Niles whole home stereo with about 40+ speakers through out the house. This was where the Duet was placed. The Second player, a Transporter, was for the separate high "Listening" Stereo. Old infiniity Kappa 9's, Parasound AMP. I would like to stick with LMS and iPeng, as it is up and running on my WHS 2011 and it works. My background, I am a reluctant techy. I do build my own computers, and maintain them. Have a BSME degree from 30 years ago. But there are battles that I choose and battles that choose not to fight. For this reason, the Transporter is the low effort move.

Thinking that the Duet Receiver had taken a dump got me looking. I noticed that Transporter SE's are $585 on ebay. But in reading the forums for a while it looks like there are other alternatives.

One alternative that looked interesting was to use the Duet Receiver and optical out to an external DAC. This might be a way to buy a product that can then be used later should LMS no longer be an option. This is doable, correct? If so, what DAC's in the $200-$1,000 range might you all suggest. Are there other options for the transporting the data portion (receiver portion)

Are there other options. The Rasberry line had me a little confused..... Do they interface with LMS?

If anyone can point me in the right direction, it would be appreciated.

[DJanGo]

Hi,
my apologise i should not read that subforum.

tbh: RPI works very well - but you should know already something about linux or have the will to learn that. There are out of the box builds.

If you dont play radio streams lms is the way to go.

right know Michael did a great job over the years and when the time is gone - and no doku is left - i can live with my setup for a long time.

There might be newer linux Versions that someday didnt work with lms anymore - but that scenario could be covered with a own private subnet for the players and the server that has no connection to the bad internet and therefor didnt really need to be up2date.

But right now the lms lives and even when someone pulls the plug in xyz years - it was a great time and still is.

Again i should not read that subforum a dac for 1.000 euro bucks is far to ²³ for me. A DAC is not rocket science - the marketing for these high price things is rocket science.

There is always some Salesman who sells an fridge to the Inuit in the middle of Greenland.

[Fizbin]

If you're prepared to spend over $1000 for a DAC, then I'd go for the Transporter.

You may also want to try the Emotiva DC-1. I've read really good reviews from various sites. You can return it within 30 days if you don't like it.

[Steve Agnew]

If I was in your situation, I would buy a Raspberry Pi 2 with a HifiBerry Dac+ Pro and the matching HifiBerry steel case, which is about the best and cheapest high quality replacement for your receiver. Just install PiCorePlayer and you are done. Check on the PiCorePlayer web site for supported wifi USB sticks if you are on wireless, otherwise you are good to go as you already know how to use iPeng and LMS. There's no real need to spend big bucks and you don't have to be a Unix expert. I hope my Transporters won't ever die on me but I have some Pi's ready to drop in if they do.

Regards, Steve.

[John_Dumke]

If I was in your situation, I would buy a Raspberry Pi 2 with a HifiBerry Dac+ Pro and the matching HifiBerry steel case, which is about the best and cheapest high quality replacement for your receiver. Just install PiCorePlayer and you are done. Check on the PiCorePlayer web site for supported wifi USB sticks if you are on wireless, otherwise you are good to go as you already know how to use iPeng and LMS. There's no real need to spend big bucks and you don't have to be a Unix expert. I hope my Transporters won't ever die on me but I have some Pi's ready to drop in if they do.

Regards, Steve.

Perfect, nice to see this future proofing of the original Slimdevices concept. Thanks for your reply. So in summary it looks like
A Rasberry Pi 2 is a little computer, The HifiBerry Dac+ pro bolts on to the RPi2 to add quality Audio, put it in a little box and you have basically a Squeezebox Receiver.
Then PiCorePlayer is loaded on the RPi2 (maybe on a separate micro flash card?) and the LMS sees the PiCorePlayer as a Squeezebox. Or PiCorePlayer can replace LMS even?

Sounds like there is no worry about the future of my system. Do I have it right? Now I just have to decide if I wan't to pick up a Transporter SE for the better sound quality and/or convenience. I will read up on the sound quality of the HifiBerry Dac+ Pro. Thanks for the overview. Lots of progress happens when you step away from the forums for 5 or so years.

Found this handy link.

http://www.easysqueezebox.com/index.php/projects/raspberry-squeezie-pi-squeezelite/

[Fizbin]

Let me know if you get the Transporter. I was thinking about getting one myself. I think you need to spend well over $1000 to make the Touch sound better.

[John_Dumke]

Let me know if you get the Transporter. I was thinking about getting one myself. I think you need to spend well over $1000 to make the Touch sound better.

Yes! Just pulled the trigger on a 2nd transporter for my setup. Certainly the Rasberry Pi looks brilliant. I almost want to get one just to play around with it. But for now. I have two transporters and two duet receivers as backup should I ever have the need. Long live the Squeezebox Platform!!!!

[Spin]

Yes! Just pulled the trigger on a 2nd transporter for my setup. Certainly the Rasberry Pi looks brilliant. I almost want to get one just to play around with it. But for now. I have two transporters and two duet receivers as backup should I ever have the need. Long live the Squeezebox Platform!!!!

Right decision !! The Transporter's my favourite bit of kit. Despite getting a little long in the tooth it still measures a lot better than many modern DAC's and still looks the business (apart from the chrome handles, which I don't like but I've removed them and fitted custom bungs instead).

[Golden Earring]

Re: Using both a Transporter AND an external DAC

BTW, I'm getting exceptional results with a Transporter linked to a Mytek Brooklyn DAC which has a very low jitter (claimed to be 0.82ps compared to internal jitter for Transporter of around 20ps) word clock output. I've used the AES XLR digital output, although I would imagine any of the other digital outputs would give equally good results with the DAC acting as the master clock (this requires a quick adjustment in the audio sub-menu of the player menu in settings of the Logitech Media Server software): I just like XLR connector plugs! The only downside is that you have to tell the DAC which sampling frequency to apply, so you may need to adjust this in-flight if you are listening to a playlist of mixed signals. The adjustment can be made in Windows or Mac OS GUI using supplied Mytek software if you run a USB link from the DAC to your computer.

The Brooklyn is actually rather good value since it incorporates both a discrete 6W headphone amplifier capable of supplying a balanced headphone feed for long cable runs if required (or 2 unbalanced feeds) AND a high quality MC/MM analogue phono preamplifier if you're a vinyl aficionado (or are an old git like me & still have your 1980's LP12!).
Obviously if you already have such discrete components or have no requirement for them it's not quite such a good deal. It is pretty future-proof though, with PCM capability up to 32 bit/384kHz and supporting delta-sigma modulated digital streams up to DSD256. It also has MQA decoding capability, although it remains to be seen whether this system will achieve any mainstream support.

Just thought I'd chuck this in for information now that unused Transporters are available for under $500, although if you don't live in the States you'll have to factor in International Shipping & (often quite substantial) Import Taxes. There don't appear to be any stocks of Transporters for sale from any other country than the US, unfortunately.

Happy listening,
Dave