Offline Music Storage & Playback Recommendations


Really a 2 Question Post. Hoping for some good advise....and hoping I placed this in the right category...

I live in a very rural area, cell phone coverage is spotty, and my Wi-Fi is bleak (very bleak as in 2-4 mbps) when it works, so I have built a dedicated audio room (20' by 30') and have a nice "mid-fi" system. I have a Tidal account and have 5-6000 tracks downloaded to my phone which I can play in "offline" mode through my system as well as a large CD collection I often enjoy. So my system and listening environment is basically an offline system. (photos / gear all listed in my profile) 

Question 1) Recommendations for a very nice Music Storage component that I could burn all my CD's into which does not require wi-fi  to operate. Something like the Naim Uniti Core Music Server? It would be OK to have something that operated through an app?, but lack of wi-fi is the issue. 

Question 2) Currently I play a lot of music from my Tidal downloads on my phone, and I simply Bluetooth from my phone to my Marantz 8006 source then from the digital coax out through my Pontus II and out to the Luxman 509X My question is if I would see a significant SQ improvement running from my phone through a nice USB cable (Audioquest Coffee?) and going directly into the DAC vs Bluetooth??

Any Advise is appreciated!

carzmaguy88

Showing 1 response by yage

For storing music from your disc collection, you can use ExactAudioCopy with a USB CD-ROM drive connected to your PC to rip CD audio. Then store all that music in a folder and share that folder over your local network. The Marantz should be able to find the shared folder and play music from it.

If the shared folder doesn't work, Windows has a built in DLNA server. Just do a search for 'windows dlna' to get instructions on how to enable it. Make sure the audio files are in the 'Music' directory.

Bluetooth uses lossy compression to send audio to the 8006. That’s not ideal for Tidal. If possible, try switching to UPnP instead. That will stream uncompressed audio.

If UPnP isn’t an option, then directly connecting the phone to the 8006 would get you the same sound quality.

Don’t worry about buying a fancy USB cable. As long as you don’t hear any dropouts or glitches, the data is getting from your phone to the Marantz intact.