I bought the Bridge II to complete my PS Directstream & because I want to get rid of my noisy computer & the various wires as a source that pollutes & alters the sound.
When people talk of setting up a NAS, or a server or a roon endpoint, I look at them like they’re crazy.
I don’t know any of that, all I know is that a Room account is over $100 per year & that I don’t use stuff like Tidal.
What is the absolute simplest way to get my lossless music collection on my PC/hard drive to the Bridge II?
Can it be as easy as connecting the ethernet cable to my PC to the Bridge II & then just play the music on my PC?
I’m a Roon user and have a Direct Stream Jr. In Roon, you dont have to use an NAS. I have an i5 imac computer as my Roon Core, and hard wire to my media room via ethernet. My music is stored on an external SSD and it feeds the Bridge 2 (and my other endpoints from the Roon Core). I also use Tidal through Roon. I have 8 port gigabit switch feeding my media center since I have several components on the network. You can stream via wifi too, but you need to make sure you have a strong network, otherwise dropouts will be a problem. My ipad works as a Roon Remote so I can select my music on the ipad from the recliner. The below link is for the Roon Knowledge base. What size collection of music do have digitally stored? Tidal is currently the only fully compatible music streaming program Roon uses. Hoping Quboz will be adopted at some point. Hope that helps…This Is an album being streamed from my own collection, but it as easily could be from Tidal. I liked Roon so well within a month of my trial, I bought the lifetime license…been there for about 2.5 years.
My music collection is pretty big, but I usually only listen to a few albums, so I would not be keeping a large collection to stream.
Is Roon the only option?
It seems pretty expensive to just try out to see if it’s for me or not. Nothing simpler or quicker to use? Any ready to use box for us computer illiterate slobs where we can just put our music in & connect ethernet cable to the Bridge & that would be it?
JRiver Media Center might be a good place to look. I’ve been locked down in Roon for a couple of years, so I’m not really up to speed with the other options.
PS Audio is planning to have a Bridge 3 at some point (likely sometime in 2019) to be compatible with its Octave server setup. Search Octave within the PS Audio forum, and that should give you some info on that. There are lots of options like music servers where you rip CDs directly and attach the music server to your DAC. Wyred4Sound makes an I2s compatible device.
You do not need Roon or any separate NAS device for what you want to do; just plug a USB drive into an appropriate router, that’s all it takes if the router supports server software like Samba and UPnP Server. Most -recent- routers have this functionality build in. With your DS hooked up straight to the router and a control point (like mconnectControl(HD) for IOS or BubbleUPnP for Android) on your tablet/phone you’re ready to rock!
I would suggest you simply install MinimServer on your PC. The PC is already connected to your router for internet access. Connect the Bridge II to another port on the same router. You can then play your music via an app on a phone or tablet. You could use mconnect control (IOS) or BubbleUPnP (Android) as already mentioned.
I don’t think it has the Samba and UPnP Server functionality, but I’m willing to buy a new router with those features if it’s that easy.
So just download & install MinimServer on my PC & then connect the PS Audio to the router via ethernet cable & it will connect automatically?
Nothing to add, change or tinker in my router settings? Going into my router page, there are dozens of tabs & options that I know nothing about.
No, you shouldn’t have to do anything on the router. The PC should be able to “see” the Bridge. You have nothing to lose by giving it a try. It won’t cost anything. The organization of your music library is another matter. How you set it up depends on what sort of music you mainly listen to. While you can find and play your tracks by navigating the folders in which you have stored the music files, you should really have the files tagged with labels that identify the genre, artist, album, track, conductor, orchestra etc, which enable tracks to be found via those names. You can tag the files with Mp3tag if they are not already tagged. Feel free to invent your own genre names.
It really ís that easy. I’m a BridgeII user for years, owning a Netgear Nighthawk router used it that way for long time. Plugged in a 4TB usb hard drive and played with no issues whatsoever
newDACguy208 - So, I decided to keep my streaming in another room and went the Ethernet CAT7 route because of good EMI rejection properties of the CAT7 physical layer (cabling); using Talagertner connections. My NAS has 8GB RAM and 8GB Seagate Ironwolf drive. When I designed this music room I thought I would be getting a lot of DSD CDs and CDs in general because the DS DMP was so amazing. After (5) months, I have bought (3) SACDs and have very little motivation to buy anything physical. This brings me to the reason I posted this response. I once had an audiophile system that was great 30 years ago; however, I spent huge amount of time understanding the best vinyl to buy. Increasing my depth of produced music took a huge amount of time with many social contacts… This system I just assembled streaming music does not have that weakness. I listen to TIDAL using IPAD III (Mconnect). Setting up Roon would have cost me another $500 to get an updated IPAD VI; not a fan of IPAD, finally getting my full use of that peice of hardware. Now I sit with a laptop in my music room and research music as I’m streaming the music I want to study. This time around I’m free of the social interaction required to increase my depth of musical content. There are over 50 million songs located in a place I have access to; all I need to do is ask a TIDAL search and seconds later I am listening, absorbing, postulating all the possibilities of different music I had no idea existed. In addition, the stream sounds amazing. Here is my system in a Block Diagram and music room picture. One final note (pun intended). I was going to get a turn table for this system; however, after (5) months of streaming… no way I will go backwards. This system sounds amazing. There is not one sentimental bone in my body for having to spend huge money and time dedicated to that physical medium. The streaming is accomplished using UPnP (Universal Plug & Play) approach.
PS - The USB input to the Netgear works great; can use it with my Passport 1T drive as wijber indicated. The NAS took 10 min to set up from opening the package to seeing it in Mconnect with all my wav files streaming away. This go around is about listening to music non stop…
PSS - The PSA gear made all this possible and this community has allowed a deeper understanding of music, components, issues… Paul deserves a round of applause for engaging the community. In doing that he has exposed himself for what he truly is: an audiophile who just loves music and how to get it… In addition, Ted and the PSA team has freely engaged the community, on their time to make sure PSA products are amazing. I have to be honest, I have been designing electronic products for 40 years and rarely engage my customers freely as PSA is doing. This culture is a direct reflection of their leader.
I’m with panostar if you want a simple, low-cost set-up. Minimserver is donation-ware so free to try, runs on all kinds of platforms, and has a lot of set-up info on their site. People here can help as well. The mconnect controller apps leave a lot to be desired but do work (usually). Bubbleupnp on Android is better. You can also install bubbleupnp sever software on your PC to make minimserver an Open Home renderer and that will let you run additional control apps, like Lumin.
