CD -- streaming music from server

[LooneyTunes]

Hoping someone might have already been through this process and be able to offer some thoughts/suggestions...

In a nutshell, I've decided that I'd like to try to move away from CD to something that will give me more multi-room options in the future, but don't really want to go down the route of compressed music formats - instead what I want to do is migrate all of my CDs onto a central server/NAS in uncompressed form and retain the ability to use hi-fi grade DACs on a decent main system, whilst having the flexibility to also play music via lower-spec devices in say the kitchen.

So, obvious issues around HDD capacity aside, what's the best way to go about doing this? I.e:
What will give me the best extraction from CD (multiple scanning to avoid read errors?);
What audio format do I go for... want it to be a one-time exercise and future-proof;
How can I best feed a DAC once the music is transferred?
Should I also be thinking of video as well?
What have I missed (probably lots)?

...don't really have a budget in mind at this stage, as I'm more interested in whether it can be done.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.

[LooneyTunes]

Thanks guys - is FLAC the most mainstream of the formats these days? Looking on their site it seemed to be saying that it wouldn't work with iPods unless you hacked the firmware?

The Sonos kit looks interesting, and would work for the "informal" rooms, but not sure it will do the purer hi-fi end I'm looking for... ideally, and I don't know if the kit exists, I was hoping to be able to feed a high quality separate DAC directly from the NAS (sort of like if you had a 2-box CD-DAC combo).

I found this CD player from Musical Fidelity that will let you use its DAC if you feed it a digital signal from USB... but that means I need PC and display sat there as well.

[LooneyTunes]

Thanks - looks like a tricky one then... unless there's something that will encode as FLAC + MP3 at the same time (like some digital cameras do RAW + JPEG)?

Network capacity shouldn't be a problem as I put wired gigabit to all the major rooms when we first moved in, with wi-fi around the place for less intensive applications.

[LooneyTunes]

Great! All I need to do now is get things set up to feed a few hundred discs through it... still, should hopefully only be a one time task and it isn't going to get any easier if I keep procrastinating.

[LooneyTunes]

itsnotarace said:

mrmr96 said:

Is there a big difference between how 320kbps mp3 and CD audio sounds?

Yes, but as always it depends how good your hearing is. Some people can't tell the difference and others can.

Put simply - do you listen to the music to hear the stereo, or do you listen to the stereo to hear the music?

Valid points, but for me it comes down to giving the hi-fi the the opportunity to make the most of what it's presented with... rather like taking care of your vinyl, avoiding dust/scratches, etc in the pre-digital era.

[LooneyTunes]

mike_knott said:

I looked into this about 18 months ago and did the following:

Ripped CDs to flac format using Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
Tagged with mp3tag
Artwork downloaded with album cover art downloader
Converted to mp3 with foobar2000
Stored on a netgear readynas and streamed over a wireless G network to a Squeezebox boom and a Squeezebox radio (the network will cope with different playlists on each device simultaneously).

It doesn't really matter which format you rip to as long as the initial rip is lossless (but don't use .wav as it doesn't support tagging!). Converting to other lossless formats theoretically does not change the sound quality, and it is only a couple of clicks in foobar2000 to convert your entire collection. I chose flac mainly because the streaming media player I had an eye on played it natively, it supports tagging and compresses files to around 50-60% of their original size.

There is a good thread on the hydrogenaudio forum, in which one of the more knowledgeable posters recommends DBpoweramp as more suitable for most people's needs.

I have subsequently ripped my DVDs in a mixture of .mkv and .iso format and added a netgear NTV550 to watch. I haven't yet increased the capacity of the nas so can't yet comment on the network performance.

HTH,

Mike...

Thanks Mike - most appreciated.