LizardKing
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Just finished the long and arduous task of digitizing the bulk of my MC collection (no SACD unfortunately) into multichannel Flac files. I can now, with my relatively recent acquisition of the Oppo BDP 103, wirlessly stream uncompressed multichannel audio from my upstairs office computer to my home theater set-up in the downstairs family room. Today, is the first day, that I have been able to enjoy, unencumbered by requests to "please turn it down," the fruits of my labor or as my wife insists, my OCD.
I was able to accomplish this using a combination of DVD Audio Extractor, Audiomuxer, and Foobar. All of the content is stored on a WD Elements 3TB external hard drive (with duplicate drive for back-up). Each flac file is embedded with hirez artwork and the ID tag edited to allow me to assign my own genres (MC progressive, rock, etc) and maintain consistency in Artist assignments. Today, I have Multichannel Progressive in shuffle mode - allowing me to rediscover some of the gems I have either neglected or have perhaps passed off as inferior/not worthy of my time. The only real drawback to this is the lack gapless flac playback in the Oppo - not a dealbreaker however. I did contact Oppo and they claim to be working on a possible solution. All things being equal, I have extracted all the various codecs - DTS, Dolby, DTS HD MA, Dolby Tru HD, DVD Audio both in 4.0 and 5.1 - and with exception of some variations in volume levels they alll play, suprisingly enough, well together.
I still have all my hard copies, and barring some unforeseen circumstance, will hold on to them. This process however, is quite the elegant solution to accessing my evergrowing MC collection without having to get up off of my sorry ass. Now playing, Dream Theaters "In The Presence of Enemies - Part II" from "Systematic Chaos." - haven't listened to this for years - sounds pretty damn good for Dolby!
As the Oppo 103/105 can now play DSD files from a hard drive, if you had a PS3 capable of ripping SACDs you'd have your bases covered...