Getting my music through the living-room hifi

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Vicshere

New member
For years (since Portastudio cassette days), I’ve written and recorded my stuff and been able to play it back through my living-room hifi.
Back in the day, I would bounce the finished product to cassette. Later, I’d bounce from ProTools to a CD-R and hear it that way.
Today, with real Taiyo Yuden CDs hard to find and with every other one a crackly dud, I’m throwing money away - I might go through a dozen discs before I have knocked a song into shape.
So I am looking for some way of hearing a half-finished track through my living-room hifi that doesn’t involve burning to disc. Streaming wirelessly with something like a Cyrus Stream XA? Connecting a USB stock to my hifi amp? Something else?
Music is on a MacBook Pro in one room, hifi is in living-room next door.
This is driving me nuts and surely there’s a reasonably simple solution. What do you guys do?
 
My TV is hooked up to the hifi and has a USB input so I can just plug in a USB stick and have it play through the hifi.

Or I could plug in my phone to the hifi and stream the audio from somewhere like Google Drive.
 
Someone told me that, as my own music won't have lots of metadata, streamers won't recognise and play it. I'm also wondering if playing my stuff through a TV or phone would let me hear it at its best?
Am I looking at buying a hifi amp with usb, and possibly a DAC thing as well?
 
I render the finished song to a .mp3 and put it on my cell phone. From there I can bluetooth it through the living room stereo, my shop music blaster, car, etc.
 
Vicshere said:
Today, with real Taiyo Yuden CDs hard to find and with every other one a crackly dud, I’m throwing money away - I might go through a dozen discs before I have knocked a song into shape.
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Interesting comment. Are you sure it's the CDRs that are the problem? I have hundreds of CDRs and CDRWs and never seem to have issues, as long as the player can play them. I have two very old CD players which simply refuse to play any CDR or RW. On the other hand, every DVD player I've had will easily play any CDR or RW. For test runs, I have a stack of 50 CDRWs that I use. A few are marked "Test mixes" and I will use and reuse them to listen on the stereo or in the car.

The lone exception is if I burn with my old Dell's CD burner. Anything I burn on that is useless on just about any other unit. I'm not sure why, so I just avoid using that burner. I had a cheap USB burner that cost me $20 and runs fine.
 
I always used Taiyo Yuden for their high quality and longevity. Unfortunately, the company stopped making them and, while you can still buy them if you look around, supplies are dwindling, people are selling fake ones or unreliable copies and every other one I burn is corrupt, noisy, doesn’t play at all or isn’t reliable. If I’m working on a large, busy song, I might burn a dozen of these, to get a clearer idea of what the mix still needs, so it is costing me a fortune. I have a great set-up and every other part of the chain is great, but I now need to find a new system for listening to mixes many times, through a good living-room hifi, before deciding a song is finished and CD-ready. I’m using a Neumann U87 for vocals, Neumann KM184s for percussion and acoustic guitar, Custom Shop 56 Strat, Custom Shop 59 Les Paul and Custom Shop 64 Jazz bass, Martin D28, ProTools and a vast array of great synth plugins, Vienna Symphonic Library, etc,etc - and I am never sure if the next CD will be full of crackles and noise or perfect! So I need to find a streamer, USB hifi amp or something else.
 
Vicshere said:
Someone told me that, as my own music won't have lots of metadata, streamers won't recognise and play it. I'm also wondering if playing my stuff through a TV or phone would let me hear it at its best?
Am I looking at buying a hifi amp with usb, and possibly a DAC thing as well?
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There's nothing to stop you adding metadata - Reaper certainly has extensive metadata capabilities. Since your average listener is going to be listening through a phone or something similar, I don't think you should worry too much about DAC quality. A reasonably good phone has a perfectly good enough DAC for mix evaluation. A hifi DAC might give you a slightly better sounding result but I'm not sure that it would change your mix decisions.
 
Vicshere, I'm curious about what your "living room hifi" setup is. Is it high enough quality that you can hear the difference between a CD and MP3 of the same file. What type of CD player are you using? Are you burning at hi speed? I rarely burn anything over about 8x.

I've used Verbatim, Sony, Memorex, and TDK CDRs over the years and never had an issue with quality. I have a few Sony's left to use, and a 100 spindle of Memorex still on the shelf. Heck, I've got CD-RWs (2x) that I bought 20 years ago and they still work! I used 2 of them last year to transfer data from my Yamaha AW16G.
 
You shouldn't need to be checking your mixes on other systems a dozen times! I used to have to do that - until I got some sound treatment and really learned my monitoring system.
 
This guy found a way to do something similar. About 3/4 of the way in he demos a second device paired to the first one.

 
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When I say “Checking my mixes,” I mean deciding if a thing is truly finished or if I need more overdubs (or to take things out). I have amazing little Genelec monitors in my recording room, but I am just accustomed to only trusting a track in a large living-room through the hifi. Being a dinosaur, I like to imagine all music lovers still sit on a couch, a few yards from two big speakers, when they enjoy whole albums. So . . . I contacted Cambridge Audio, who made the amp I use, and got a very helpful response from their guy, who just happens to be a home recordist himself. Since then, I got myself their CXN V2 streamer and can now bounce to a little USB flash drive as often as needed, without having an expensive pile of used CD-Rs. And the sound is incredible. I’ll keep the CDs to burn whole albums and if a few are corrupt, just bin them. The irony is, I now have the chance to enter the world of streaming, where young people listen to a song a few times, pay for it, but never own a real CD or vinyl! Next, I’ll figure out how to listen to my bounces over Bluetooth or wireless. Another learning curve. If you’d told me in my Portastudio cassette days I’d have a virtual orchestra on a laptop and could play back mixes from a tiny plastic stick, I’d have told you it was sci-fi nonsense. We’re very lucky to be home recordists in such times!
 
Vicshere said:
If you’d told me in my Portastudio cassette days I’d have a virtual orchestra on a laptop and could play back mixes from a tiny plastic stick, I’d have told you it was sci-fi nonsense. We’re very lucky to be home recordists in such times!
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You've got that right. The cost to do incredibly great recordings in your home is simple amazing. I can only imagine what one of these cost my dad in 1956. It's like comparing the old 8mm home movies to the 4K video that you can shoot on just about any camera or phone today.

1948677_fullsize.jpg
 
TalismanRich said:
You've got that right. The cost to do incredibly great recordings in your home is simple amazing. I can only imagine what one of these cost my dad in 1956. It's like comparing the old 8mm home movies to the 4K video that you can shoot on just about any camera or phone today.

1948677_fullsize.jpg
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That’s a thing of beauty!
 
I have mini TRS to split L/R RCA jack cables. The average "Aux" input will handle the "headphone" output of a computer, phone or MP3 player just fine. I can load a WAV or MP3 320 onto a thumb drive and transfer to a laptop or phone, tablet, what have you and connect it directly to one of the aux inputs on the hifi. I have one of these cables already connected and hanging out in the front of the hifi. Easy peasy.
 
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