In article , housetrained
wrote:
Hi Is this the newsgroup to advise on living room [quiet] media players
- basically a HDD containing my music files connected to my DAC by
digital coax [or optical] with a window where I can see what's playing
and a remote? Don't need visual [i.e. TV out or HDMI] at all. Any
recommendations? TIA

I can't comment on dedicated 'media player' devices. I just use two
computers for this sort of task.

One is a Shuttle with a large diameter fan and a large heatsink. I
disconnected the fan and replaced the standard HD with a solid state one.
Then feed the output to a DACMagic. Runs Ubuntu 9.04 and lets me play
almost any type of file, fetch net radio, BBC iPlayer etc.

The other is an Acer laptop (Xubuntu 9.04) again with a solid state disc
and with an optical spdif output. This I feed to various DACs depending on
which room it is in at the time and what else I am doing. If you 90% close
the lid the screen goes off and the batteries then last a long time before
a recharge if you are just playing audio.

Slainte,

Jim

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