Wireless Network-based audio sources?

MarkSJohnson

MarkSJohnson

Junior Audioholic
I'll avoid using the word wireless "receiver" because it does, of course connotate something different!

I have close to 800 CDs that had resided in two 400-disc jukeboxes until fairly recently. As some discs were removed to play in the cars or another room, they weren't being put back where they belonged...i.e., the right slot in the player. After a few months of trying to find “missing” discs or choosing one "genre" only to hear other types of music, I decided to take all the discs out and wipe the memory of the jukeboxes clean. That was almost two months ago.

I'm stalling in putting everything back because A: It takes so long to enter in the artist info, etc for each of the slots... and B: I'm not sure it's the best way to handle the music down the road.

I'm in the early, early stages of exploring the "media receiver" idea as a source to mate with my new Denon 3805. I know Sound and Vision had a Buyer's Guide recently, and there are actually quite a few models out there from companies I've never heard of. Although I work with many type of audio on a daily basis, I don't really have any experience in dealing with MP-3s as I've never had any real use for them. I've read that many feel an MP-3 at 192kps sounds "almost" like "CD Quality". Anyone have any experience with that?

Does anyone have any experience with the hardware itself? I'm not sure if the technology is quite there yet....certainly these are not mainstream products. Maybe there's room for improvement in the next year or so?

I'm exploring it now as several events seem to make it worth exploring.... The CDs being out of their jukeboxes anyway; the fact that I have someone coming to network our 6 computers in the next several weeks who therefore could add the hardware to the network, and the availability of a couple of large FireWire drives that I'm retiring from business use that would hold most of my music as uncompressed .WAVs….

I also like the idea of some new portables I'm hearing about that would let you listen to your own music or internet radio stations through your wireless network as well. Radio station choices aren't too hot around here; if I could, in effect, use an office computer to "broadcast" better music around the house, it sure does sound attractive!

Any ideas or tips or thoughts or...or...or ???
 
M

m1abrams

Audioholic Intern
I personnally use a Squeezebox from SlimDevices http://www.slimp3.com/

I love it, it fits my needs very well. It is a bit on the geek level of things, the community and company are a very active and growing. Every week something new seems to be happening with them.

Features I like about the Squeezebox:
It has Coax and Optical digital outs (along with RCA analog and a headphone jack)

You can get the cheaper wired only model or the wired/wireless model.

The server software (which you can download and use for free) works on Linux/Windows/Mac and I think even BSD. It is perl based(may change soon) and open source so people are very active in working on it and making new features.

The squeezebox currently supports natively RAW PCM or MP3, what this means though if you have the codec on the server it can transcode on the fly from pretty much ANY non-DRM format and play it on the Squeezebox. I personnaly have ALL my music in FLAC which is a lossless format. Not though some people have issues streaming PCM to the SB in wireless, I have not though.

It is small, and does NOT require a TV.

I like the interface and find it is very easy to use.

It supposedly works well with iTunes, I do not use iTunes so I do not know. However it will not currently work with ANY DRM files like the ones you can buy from iTunes. Fine with me I think music with DRM is crap.

Squeezebox is quite, no fans, no drives.

About ripping and encoding music. You have a good size collection, you will only want to do it ONCE. I would highly recommend using a lossless encoder such as FLAC. You do not get the small file sizes as mp3s but you get files that are idenitcal to the original and can transcode them to ANY future format without suffering generation loss. Also I recommend using EAC for doing the work, great little tool for ripping and encoding. 800 CDs in FLAC format will require ~270 GB of storage.
 
A

av_phile

Senior Audioholic
I was actually tempted to get one of those Pioneer or JVC multi-disc players that can house 300 or so discs. But I was delighted when I saw a colleague use his home PC as a music server in their house. I did the same, got a P4 512PC with an initial 80Gb hard disk and a DVD-ROM/Writer. Took me about 5 weekends to capture about 300 CDs as uncompressed WAV files. (Not all tracks, just my favourites.) SO now I can just pull out a playlist of all the titles I want to hear and play them anyway I want it - a part of a best-of collecition, a mix of balladeers or jazz singers, 1960s, 70s, etc. anywhere from a few minutes to a 4 hour marathon. All these are fed to my sound system via an S/PDIF link from the PC Soundcard. Very convenient.

I haven't explored the wireless option so I can do a broadcast around the house or elsewhere as I have no need for it. I just use the PC as my jukebox server. And occasionally, to burn some compilations into CDs or DVDs that I can use in my regular players or as gifts to friends.
 
D

djoxygen

Full Audioholic
The Roku stuff has been reviewed favorably http://www.rokulabs.com/ and includes 802.11 at no extra cost. iTunes integration is supposedly complete and delicious if you use that. (Personally I can't imagine trying to manage my paltry 30GB music collection without it.)
 
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dwharton

Audiophyte
Just invested in an Apple Airport Extreme that connects with a digital interconnect to my pre/pro. I stream wirelessly to it through my existing home network set up via iTunes (which is all it will work with).
Just had 250 CD's converted to Mp3 (you can choose from almost any format) from a company called RipDigital. They convert and return on DVD's. This took 5 of them in my case.
I have accessed more music I had forgotten about this week than I can tell you. I put them into iTunes using the Apple Lossless Encoder and I am very pleased with the quality for casual listening. I still have the Cd's if i want to play through my system.
A really terrific solution to an otherwise unwieldy amount of music. Now it's all organized in alphbetical folders (no matter the order the CD's were shipped)
 
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djoxygen

Full Audioholic
dwharton said:
Just invested in an Apple Airport Extreme that connects with a digital interconnect to my pre/pro.
I think you are referring to the Airport Express. More like a deck of cards than a UFO? I'm not aware that there's an Airport Extreme Base that has audio out.
dwharton said:
I have accessed more music I had forgotten about this week than I can tell you.
I love this about iTunes. I have set up some Smart Playlists that randomly select music from my library to put on my iPod and I find myself checking the display to remind myself what this great track is that sounds familiar, but I can't remember the name or the artist.
dwharton said:
I put them into iTunes using the Apple Lossless Encoder
I have heard that sometimes AirTunes skips and stutters when playing back Apple Lossless. Can you confirm or refute this?
 
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dwharton

Audiophyte
First you're right about the mane I do mean Express. sorry for any confusion created from my confusion. (Isn't that alway the way it goes?)

I have noticed some skipping....really what it seems like is a slight speeding up then back to regular tempo. Haven't noticed any actual complete skipping except for one Beatles tune from their second album (CD) I just thought that maybe the CD itself was damaged and the resultwas a bad copy into Mp3.
I have listened to material that is encoded in regular AAC and then have been trying out using Losslesss from the slew of new songs I just had sent back on the DVD's from RipDigital. So far am predominantly happy.
 
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