So I wanted to try hi-res audio (24/96) and have a typical situation: my home theater is downstairs and my main PC is upstairs. Normally I stream audio files from my PC running iTunes to an Apple TV connected to my Marantz receiver. Trouble is that iTunes doesn’t support 24/96 playback over LAN or wireless (at least as of Feb 2015). I already had a vintage Musical Fidelity VDAC (version 1) that is fully capable of 24/96 decoding, but since it is USB, connecting it directly to my PC was out of the question.
A Raspberry Pi seemed like the easiest and most cost effective solution. I would connect the VDAC to one of its USB ports and run it over my home LAN and share hi-res music from my Windows 7 PC.
Well… it works! Like a champ in fact. The 24/96 FLAC files downloaded from HDTracks sound amazing. The only trouble was I spent about five days getting it all to work. I found plenty of info on the web but much of it was confusing or misleading or assumed you are a Linux / Raspbian guru, so I spent most of the time in trial and error. Frankly I don’t know how anyone without extensive computer, Linux, and network knowledge could get it working from the examples I found.
So I’m going to save you guys who want to do this a lot of heartburn and provide a step by step real world guide. This guide is all inclusive – unlike others. I strongly advise you to use my exact terminology and names because that’s exactly where most of the confusion comes in. For your convenience I made a PDF so you can print it out and follow it while working on your Raspberry and Windows PC. You can download it here: How To
So order your Raspberry Pi – I prefer the new B+ version because it has 4 USB ports which makes it easy to set up initially. Amazon has them at great prices – and get a compatible power supply while you’re there, along with an 8 gig MicroSD card and a case – heat sinks are not required – (total cost about $50). You will also need a monitor or TV with an HDMI input, a USB mouse, and a USB keyboard.
While you’re waiting for these to arrive I’ll provide a word about the music file format you’ll want. There’s plenty of conflicting information on that as well: AIFF, FLAC, WAV, etc. In the end since we’re not going to use iTunes for this project it doesn’t matter that much – FLAC works fine and it seems to be the most available anyway.
