I'm finally going to convert all of our CDs to FLAC using dbPowerAmp, with everything tagged correctly. What I'm needing to find out now is the best way for me to access all this lovely lossless musical goodness. Ideally I'd like to be able to play from anywhere but #1 priority is to have it sounding nice on my main system in the living room. I'd prefer not to have to fire up a computer. Will any current receivers play direct from a HDD and be able to recognize tags and such?
Not unless the hard drive is mounted in the streaming device. There are some that have that capacity. I don't have anything to recommend. My computers run 24/7 so there isn't any need for it in my case. Perhaps others will be able to suggest something concrete.
Something has to power the disk drive so it spins. Most modern hard drives have too large a capacity and/or require too much power to work when plugged into the USB port of a reciever or Blu-ray player. Laptop-style disks with a capacity less than 2 TeraBytes formatted with FAT32 usually are OK. Some AVRs and BD players can access disks formatted with NTFS. Check the specs on your player and/or AVR to find out which works.
Many people use a Network Attached Storage device to get around this. A NAS is a specialized computer which provides access to audio and video files over the network. It needs to be powered on and working whenever you want to listen to music or watch a movie stored on its disk. People usually just put them somewhere cool and leave them on all the time.
Note that AVRs can only access audio and still-image files. To watch videos, you have to use a video media player of some kind, like a BD player. This limitation applies when using either direct-connect disk drives or NAS drives.
I have a 1 TB (Fat32) running directly through my OPPO 103 with no issues, I am optimistic I will be able to do the same with my new Marantz AV7702 when it arrives (the reciever should also work).
I like the NAS option, but I have very poor wifi in my home. I assume I can connect a NAS directly via the LAN on both the NAS and the streamer (say, the Node).I have plenty of room in my hifi space for the NAS.
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