Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Best way to stream flac and hi-res downloads to F80 or M80?

Most of my music in fact all of my music is now stored on my pc in FLAC plus 4 or 5 hi-res albums which are also in FLAC, what is the best way of streaming my music to the F80?

Will the Squeezebox touch do the job?

I'm after something which is not expensive just something that will transfer the audio without interfering in sound quality, i plan on using the F80's DAC.

Regards Danny

Squeezebox is most excellent. I use an SB3 with an IR lead from the SB3's headphones socket to in front of the F80's IR sensor. I use the IRBlaster plugin to turn the F80 on (Optical source), turn it off, and turn volume up and down. It works really well. I then use iPeng on my iPhone to select everything.

I've not spun a disc or used FM or DAB for ages. It's all ripped CDs, BBC Radio via iPlayer, or Spotify.

Joel
Would a Squuezbox Touch be better here as it can deal with the High Res material he has???

Not sure if the SB3 can pass 24/96???

In theory should the F80 sound better with streamed FLAC?

I did have the F80 on home demo around 4 months ago and I compared the F80's own disc drive with streamed FLAC obviously both was using the F80's DAC and to my ears streaming to the F80 sounded just a tad better!

Regards Danny

You're correct Ronnie. The SB3 is limited to 48k (it used to "handle" 96k badly). I believe the Touch does handle 96k properly.

So it's just a simple case of a mini-jack to toslink cable between SBTouch & F80 and I'm away?

Thanks for the help,

Regards Danny

And I believe that the SBT sounds better on SPDIF than the SB3

(sorry Ronnie, couldn't resist )

Headphone socket on SB3?
In Front of IR Sensor on F80?
IR lead?

I'm confused.

Will Jitter be a issue on the SBtouch digital out? Also the touch will have absolutely no impact on how my music will sound will it? Because I'll be using the F80's DAC right?

But it sounds even better on the ID41

Whoops, are we supposed to talk about that yet???

Is Joel still alive or has he also been embargoed until August???

There is always some jitter over SPDIF. You'll be fine. It's an F80 not 5 DSP 8000's. I don't think anyone knows if an F80 has dejittering in it. But all SqueezeBox products have had reasonably low jitter. Just because you are using F80 DAC does not mean it's immune to source jitter (nor is 861V6 immune).

George,

The SB3 has a 1/8" headphone jack on the back that can also be used with an Infrared emitter plugged in to generate IR commands to nearby equipment.

IRBlaster is the Squeezecenter plugin that is used to send the IR Command instructions to the SB3.

I've read about all of this in the past, but haven't ever set it up myself.

Dan