Music from laptop to living room

You can pickup a used Aurender music streamer/server many of these units have been around now for 10 years and they work using a Ethernet connection and a USB audio (they need a outboard DAC), these units come with (based on the Model) 2TB- 12TB of internal storage. The Aurenders are some of the finest sounding digital devices on the planet. A used N100C (4 TB’s of storage) goes from $1500-$2000 used.Using the Aurender is the best way to store/archive/retrieve all your digital music in one awesome place using a APP called the Conductor it runs on a ipad or smartphone and makes listening/ finding/manipulating any of those files a real joy (did I mention the Sound? Its amazing) .  I wouldnt listen to digital music without one. 

https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lisbhcb8-aurender-n100-2-year-warranty-music-servers-docks

Matt M

this is the back of your unit

https://outlawaudio.com/images/2160IIrp.png

Top Left, USB Play. 

Manual, pg 26 Playing from a USB source

https://outlawaudio.com/outlaw/docs/RR2160MkIImanual.pdf

@mattmiller 

+1 

An Aurender will also automatically find you music on your NAS and can download it. You do not need a ethernet cable from your router. You can just place a small extender near the Aurender and plug into that. 

Hey @chichikov, it appears to me like your Sony streamer does not allow you to stream music files over the network, hosted on a separate hard drive. As far as I can tell, your Sony streamer only allows you to listen to music files you have stored on their internal hard drive, or from an external hard drive connected directly to the streamer. The Sony manual does state that you are able to copy files from a hard drive on the network onto your Sony hard drive using their HAP Music Transfer application. In my personal opinion, that seems very constrained in terms of streamer functionality. You can't do what you want to do with that streamer.

I stream over my network. My setup is a little bit more complicated, but there may be some things you can take away, depending on how much you're willing to tinker with hardware and software. I love the Jplay controller application. It's based on the UPnP standard. It's a lot like Roon. I actually replaced Roon with JPlay. I host my music on a hard drive on a computer in another another room. To make that hard drive available to the JPlay controller application, I have the MinimServer application always running on that computer. 

Most streamers these days support the UPnP standard, which makes my setup hardware-agnostic. I'd guess that like 98% of streamers are compatible with UPnP. That allows me swap in and out streamers, like if I want to hear out they sound different--and I continue to have the same great user experience. I don’t have to deal with Roon being buggy, or clunky Qobuz, or Tidal dropping a stream mid song. It just works. And somehow, it sounds better than Roon, too. Hope this helps. 

Thank you all so much! I couldn’t make a decision without your informed suggestions and that means a lot. I have some decision making to do because of the interesting options. So, I’m going to balance ease of use and cost and come away with something great. Thanks again!