Home Network Streaming for Dummies?

[nickc]

Thanks Mike and Simon for these very helpful responses.

Mike, the links you posted are exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. Very useful.

Quote:HDMI supports both video and audio so I think that it's possible to send audio in this way, although there would have to be a video signal as well. I can't see any point in doing that if you can use the receiver as a renderer in the conventional way.

This goes to the heart of my issue. The point in doing it is that I have no control over, or insight into, either the rendering software or the networking configuration inside the Arcam (and it's now a discontinued product so unlikely to receive further updates etc). It produces excellent sound but I've learned from experience that it can be quite picky and fiddly to operate in its network/software functions. To a lesser extent so too is the QNAP NAS where I have my music library and MinimServer/Streamer. What I'm hoping to do is leave the music library on the QNAP but transfer MinimServer/Streamer to a new RPi4 (Simon has already confirmed it should be possible for MS to access the library on the QNAP) where I will have full access and control. I want to leave Volumio (on an old RPiB+) as it is, and see little point in buying a DAC board for the new RPi if it can render the files/streams directly to the Arcam via HDMI to be converted to analogue just like all its other inputs. The configuration, software and networking all stays outside the Arcam. Does this make sense? (I shall know in a few days as I went ahead and ordered the new RPi anyway!)

Quote:MinimServer could run on another machine (or even on the Pi itself) and stream to a UPnP software renderer on the Pi that sends audio to the DAC using HDMI, if there is such a UPnP software renderer. Perhaps upmpdcli can do this.

As you'll see from the above, that's exactly what I'm hoping to do. I see there's now an OpenHome player for the RPI (http://openhome.org/pages/use/index.html) so I was hoping to use that.