Devices > JRiver Id -- Hardware by JRiver
JRiver Synapse -- Would you consider a $395 Audiophile DLNA Renderer?
JimH:
I split LIV Wave to a new thread. I'll move it to the Hardware board later.
hlesser:
Not sure why my prior post didn't show.
Any chance that you'll use the Intel NUC with Thunderbolt? That'd be ideal for those of us who might want local storage by Thunderbolt while using the USB for the DAC. No bus interference, higher speed transfers -- what's not to like?
akira54:
--- Quote ---Is this interesting?
--- End quote ---
I would only be interested if it also did film/video in which case the NUC specs might not be good enough.
kenterickson:
I would vote 'maybe'. I have a rather simple view compared to many of the posts here. What I would like to see is a complete solution for all the things that JRiver promises.
- Audiophile quality audio
- Media Center capabilities for video and images
- JRemote and Gizmo capabilities as at present
- HDMI for video and audio
Right now I use my PC as a server and stream music to my AVR via DLNA functionality. My AVR, as I think is the case with practically all of them, is not capable of rendering video or images (audio only). So I am using an older WDTV player with an external HD to play movies, videos, and photos through my AVR to my TV. The WDTV has an abysmal UI and I would love to have everything in one device with the great JRiver UI on my iPad.
A turnkey solution for non sysads would easily be worth $400 to me. I think I would prefer Windows to Linux unless JRiver winds up providing support for the Linux aspects because I don't want to learn anything about Linux at this point in my life.
6233638:
Returning to this topic two weeks later is interesting, as a couple of things have happened since.
1. I bought another television - a small 32" Panasonic which was reasonably cheap. (and puts out a surprisingly nice picture)
This has WiFi and a DLNA renderer built in. I didn't have a chance to test it with Media Center and see if it worked well for images or videos, but it seems that most displays even at the lower end of things are coming with DLNA support built in now.
2. A family member wanted to get a "streaming box" as they put it, so I had to do some research into this. They ended up with a box from their ISP that cost $16 (a rebranded Roku) and supports all the major streaming services here. (Netflix, Spotify etc.)
Apparently you can also install Plex on this thing too - can a Plex client stream from Media Center? (I'm not familiar with it)
Now this box is obviously not an "audiophile" product (though it does output everything over HDMI) but for an extremely low price, this now does everything they wanted from an audio and video perspective, and will stream from a PC via Plex. (or possibly MC)
$400 seems a lot for a DLNA renderer - especially if it's only doing audio.
The NUC hardware does not have audiophile credentials in my opinion - the analog output is certainly not audiophile quality.
The only digital audio output is HDMI - no S/PDIF connection.
The device has a fan which is, again, not something an audiophile would accept. (if all you're doing is PCM playback, it would probably be unlikely to spin up to audible levels though)
The device is not going to be fast enough to support DSD playback other than bitstreaming.
If it was custom hardware in a fanless enclosure (or utilizing a "silent" fan such as Noctuas) which was capable of DSD conversion, and offered S/PDIF and multichannel analog audio in addition to HDMI, then I think you start to have an exciting product. But you probably don't have something which costs $400 either..
I think going down the route of some low-power ARM device like that CuBox-i which can do stereo, S/PDIF and HDMI seems like it might be the best solution as a client.
Edit: looks like the CuBox-i will only do S/PDIF or HDMI, not analog audio. But there seem to be a million similar ARM devices, so I'm sure that something will offer the outputs you want.
--- Quote from: hlesser on March 12, 2014, 10:21:40 am ---Any chance that you'll use the Intel NUC with Thunderbolt? That'd be ideal for those of us who might want local storage by Thunderbolt while using the USB for the DAC. No bus interference, higher speed transfers -- what's not to like?
--- End quote ---
I don't think any of the current generation NUCs have a Thunderbolt port on them, only DisplayPort.
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