AV receiver or alternative method to play music from NAS?
Discussion
Hi all,
I currently have a QNAP Nas with all my media on it. I use my PS3 to stream to the TV in the lounge via my Sony AV receiver. All well and good for movies etc... but the media interface on the PS3 is truly pants for playing music, I don't seem to be able to stream more than 1 song at a time.
So, after having looked to see what's around to improve things it seems I have two main options, buy another box to stream media directly to the av receiver/tv (sonos?) or upgrade the AV receiver to one that has DNLA and can stream the NAS contents directly.
I'm veering towards upgrading the AV, mine is about 6 years old and although very, very good and faultless it would be neater to avoid having yet another box.
The Denon AVR-2113 looks like a potential replacement as it has the wired network connectivity and an APP to act as a media server interface.
What's your thoughts, am I heading the right way or should I be looking in another direction?
I currently have a QNAP Nas with all my media on it. I use my PS3 to stream to the TV in the lounge via my Sony AV receiver. All well and good for movies etc... but the media interface on the PS3 is truly pants for playing music, I don't seem to be able to stream more than 1 song at a time.
So, after having looked to see what's around to improve things it seems I have two main options, buy another box to stream media directly to the av receiver/tv (sonos?) or upgrade the AV receiver to one that has DNLA and can stream the NAS contents directly.
I'm veering towards upgrading the AV, mine is about 6 years old and although very, very good and faultless it would be neater to avoid having yet another box.
The Denon AVR-2113 looks like a potential replacement as it has the wired network connectivity and an APP to act as a media server interface.
What's your thoughts, am I heading the right way or should I be looking in another direction?
Piersman2 said:
Hi all,
I currently have a QNAP Nas with all my media on it. I use my PS3 to stream to the TV in the lounge via my Sony AV receiver. All well and good for movies etc... but the media interface on the PS3 is truly pants for playing music, I don't seem to be able to stream more than 1 song at a time.
So, after having looked to see what's around to improve things it seems I have two main options, buy another box to stream media directly to the av receiver/tv (sonos?) or upgrade the AV receiver to one that has DNLA and can stream the NAS contents directly.
I'm veering towards upgrading the AV, mine is about 6 years old and although very, very good and faultless it would be neater to avoid having yet another box.
The Denon AVR-2113 looks like a potential replacement as it has the wired network connectivity and an APP to act as a media server interface.
What's your thoughts, am I heading the right way or should I be looking in another direction?
Most of my devices (PS3, TV, AV Receiver) will stream from my NAS but found that none of them do it as well as I'd like!I currently have a QNAP Nas with all my media on it. I use my PS3 to stream to the TV in the lounge via my Sony AV receiver. All well and good for movies etc... but the media interface on the PS3 is truly pants for playing music, I don't seem to be able to stream more than 1 song at a time.
So, after having looked to see what's around to improve things it seems I have two main options, buy another box to stream media directly to the av receiver/tv (sonos?) or upgrade the AV receiver to one that has DNLA and can stream the NAS contents directly.
I'm veering towards upgrading the AV, mine is about 6 years old and although very, very good and faultless it would be neater to avoid having yet another box.
The Denon AVR-2113 looks like a potential replacement as it has the wired network connectivity and an APP to act as a media server interface.
What's your thoughts, am I heading the right way or should I be looking in another direction?
I have an Onkyo receiver with DNLA functionality and found it to be rather clunky and can only really describe it as 'ok'. In my experience and with my devices, I couldn't recommend this route as a satisfactory way forwards, for me it just doesn't work...takes time to turn on all the equipment, menu's are a bit slow, takes ages to scroll through the media, randomly stops playing music..the list goes on! Unless a Denon owner can say they have the device you;re looking at and can say it's top notch, I can't recommend this as a suitable route forwards!
Due to all my devices being far from perfect at streaming, I bought a Popcorn Hour C300. It streams video and music, plays everything I throw at it and in my experience is a brilliant bit of kit. The first draw back is that it's bit of a faff to switch everything on and find what you want to play but is only a minor niggle. The biggest draw back is that I also use a Sonos setup! Since having this, everything else feels inferior! Open app on phone, hit play, job done!
I haven't used it yet, but have been loaned a Sonos Zone Player (I think it's now called 'connect'. This box essentially turns your existing kit (amp and speakers) in to an extension of any other Sonos kit you may have. I personally would rather access my music via Sonos than the Popcorn Hour or any other device I have, it just works faultlessly and can't imagine I'd use the Popcorm hour for music again!
The beauty of using the Sonos device is that you can expand it and have another player (Play 3/5) in a bedroom and play through that also. All you need to do from your phone is say what zone you want to play in (living room or bedroom), choose your music and off you go. You can of course play different stuff in different rooms or make them play the same stuff across all devices.
Ultimately in your position I'd want somebody to say the Denon DNLA functionality works perfectly, has a good interface etc! If they can't and you only want to stream music, I'd look in to using some Sonos hardware in to mix to get the NAS and your existing amp talking.
If you want a single device that will play audio and video and will play pretty much anything you throw at it, then a device like the Popcorn hour would be worth a look!
I stream from my NAS to an SB+ (basically, a modified squeezebox) which works well. However - that broke before Christmas and took a couple of weeks to repair, and during that time I was also using a popcorn to stream my music.
It wasn't ideal (I rip to FLAC, and although it played FLAC I couldn't select / skip tracks) but I assume you rip to MP3 if you're currently using the PS3 and I think that would work fine.
It is also excellent for video - it will stream pretty much anything and is much more flexible than the PS3.
If you just wanted a squeezebox, they can be picked up used reasonably cheaply and do a pretty good job (without taking up a lot of space).
It wasn't ideal (I rip to FLAC, and although it played FLAC I couldn't select / skip tracks) but I assume you rip to MP3 if you're currently using the PS3 and I think that would work fine.
It is also excellent for video - it will stream pretty much anything and is much more flexible than the PS3.
If you just wanted a squeezebox, they can be picked up used reasonably cheaply and do a pretty good job (without taking up a lot of space).
davek_964 said:
I stream from my NAS to an SB+ (basically, a modified squeezebox) which works well. However - that broke before Christmas and took a couple of weeks to repair, and during that time I was also using a popcorn to stream my music.
It wasn't ideal (I rip to FLAC, and although it played FLAC I couldn't select / skip tracks) but I assume you rip to MP3 if you're currently using the PS3 and I think that would work fine.
It is also excellent for video - it will stream pretty much anything and is much more flexible than the PS3.
If you just wanted a squeezebox, they can be picked up used reasonably cheaply and do a pretty good job (without taking up a lot of space).
Could be picked up reasonably cheaply. Prices appear to have started climbing since Logitech discontinued the line...It wasn't ideal (I rip to FLAC, and although it played FLAC I couldn't select / skip tracks) but I assume you rip to MP3 if you're currently using the PS3 and I think that would work fine.
It is also excellent for video - it will stream pretty much anything and is much more flexible than the PS3.
If you just wanted a squeezebox, they can be picked up used reasonably cheaply and do a pretty good job (without taking up a lot of space).
Thanks for the replies guys, it's very confusing trying to work out what is marketing bulls
t and what is fact when upgrading.
I've been looking at some more AV receivers this evening, only one Sony has DNLA and it seems to be just a player, so you need something else to send the files to the amp. Not impossible to arrange but seems yet another layer of complication.
What I need to investigate is the QNAP software and Apps, it may be that I have everything I need already. I have a sneaky suspicion from what I seen that I may be able to use a laptop or Android phone app to use the QNAP media server to 'send' to the PS3 as a DNLA device.
But I'm not sure whether I've got the wrong end of the stick possibly about this.
The Onkyos I've just looked at only seem to have wireless optional available which maybe explains the issues noted above about the problems of streaming, I don't think any wireless would be enough to stream movies as I currently do to the PS3 via wire.
t and what is fact when upgrading.I've been looking at some more AV receivers this evening, only one Sony has DNLA and it seems to be just a player, so you need something else to send the files to the amp. Not impossible to arrange but seems yet another layer of complication.
What I need to investigate is the QNAP software and Apps, it may be that I have everything I need already. I have a sneaky suspicion from what I seen that I may be able to use a laptop or Android phone app to use the QNAP media server to 'send' to the PS3 as a DNLA device.
But I'm not sure whether I've got the wrong end of the stick possibly about this.
The Onkyos I've just looked at only seem to have wireless optional available which maybe explains the issues noted above about the problems of streaming, I don't think any wireless would be enough to stream movies as I currently do to the PS3 via wire.
Piersman2 said:
Thanks for the replies guys, it's very confusing trying to work out what is marketing bullst and what is fact when upgrading.
I've been looking at some more AV receivers this evening, only one Sony has DNLA and it seems to be just a player, so you need something else to send the files to the amp. Not impossible to arrange but seems yet another layer of complication.
What I need to investigate is the QNAP software and Apps, it may be that I have everything I need already. I have a sneaky suspicion from what I seen that I may be able to use a laptop or Android phone app to use the QNAP media server to 'send' to the PS3 as a DNLA device.
But I'm not sure whether I've got the wrong end of the stick possibly about this.
The Onkyos I've just looked at only seem to have wireless optional available which maybe explains the issues noted above about the problems of streaming, I don't think any wireless would be enough to stream movies as I currently do to the PS3 via wire.
The QNAP should be runningTwonky if you enable the default music server (at least, that's what mine does). I wasn't aware that you could push to DLNA media players but have just found that Twonky Beam (iOs, Android) allows for this (scrubbing away one of my perceived advantages chalked up to the Squeezebox system). t and what is fact when upgrading.I've been looking at some more AV receivers this evening, only one Sony has DNLA and it seems to be just a player, so you need something else to send the files to the amp. Not impossible to arrange but seems yet another layer of complication.
What I need to investigate is the QNAP software and Apps, it may be that I have everything I need already. I have a sneaky suspicion from what I seen that I may be able to use a laptop or Android phone app to use the QNAP media server to 'send' to the PS3 as a DNLA device.
But I'm not sure whether I've got the wrong end of the stick possibly about this.
The Onkyos I've just looked at only seem to have wireless optional available which maybe explains the issues noted above about the problems of streaming, I don't think any wireless would be enough to stream movies as I currently do to the PS3 via wire.
Might be worth a play.
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