Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater I think I finally found the right solution

I have been looking for a device which will allow me to stream all my music including internet radio to my HT for a long time. I have looked at Sonos and the squeezebox. What I did not like is that my PC would have to be on and the price was a bit steep. Currently If I'm listening to my MP3 collection I just plug my ipod in, but hate having to get up to change my music.
I then looked at many remote controls for ipods, but all of them seem lacking.

I just found this: http://www.audioengineusa.com/aw2_home.php

I guess the device creates a 2.4GHz network. Does anyone have any experience with this product? It would allow me to simply use my ipod and have no need for a remote.

Looks pretty attractive, assuming it works as advertised.

My current set-up, I have both of my computers hooked up to my Denon and to my 65 inch LCD. I play all of my music through Window Media Player 10 (11 limits the MP3's it will play, most of what I downloaded off of Limewire was unplayable on Windows Media Player 11, but 10 plays EVERYTHING!!!). I've ripped just about me entire CD collection to my computer as well (so they play at 900 bps instead of only 128). When comparing the way the computer plays the music as opposed to the DVD/CD player, the Sony wins by a nose. But honestly, it isn't that big of a difference that I'll give up the luxury of just skimming through all 2500+ songs I have on my computer and instead have to get up and change CD's after a few songs. They sound good enough straight off of the computer for me!

I am looking into getting an new Audio Card though that will send the music digitally to the Denon to be decoded with it's DAC's instead of the computers. Then I would assume the sound difference would be little to none! I just changed the vidio card to send the pictures I edit and present to our customers straight to the TV digitally instead of converting them to analog and OH MY GOD do they ever look AWESOME now!!! Best $75 bucks I think I've ever spent!

Micah, if you ripped your CDs at 900bps you would indeed notice a difference(assume that you meant 900Kbps). You didn't mention what format that was, but if it was one of the lossless compressions there'd be absolutely no difference in the digital data as compared to the original CD.

That's what I love about you guys, can't get nothing past ya! Lol

Yeah ripping it in WMA format, lossless. I've noticed when I transfer it over to my MP3 player it automatically shrinks it to 160 kbps though. Anyhow right now it gets converted over to analog by the computer and then sent to the Denon. I've done direct comparisons playing the CD at the same time I'm playing it on the Windows Media Player and switching back and forth between them, and the nod most definately goes to the Sony DVD/CD player. But, if I can send it digitally over to the Denon I'm quite sure it has much better DAC's than my computer has, so then it would sound exactly the same.

Forget the "better DACs" bit, Micah. As Alan and others have pointed out, they've long ago reached a state of technological maturity where the small measurable differences which still exist aren't of audible significance.

Hmmm... Well I wonder what the difference is then? Could it be the single headphone jack out connection doesn't reproduce the signal quite as well or what? Because it isn't even a case of personal preference or anything remotely like that, there is a clear difference in the two signals, no two ways about it. The bass is tighter, hits harder, the surrounds (I play it in 5.1 channel) have more information sent to them, and its altogether a wider soundfield.

And it's not like I prefer the Sony, when I was ripping my collectiom to the computer I was hoping that playing them at 900 kbps would match the CD player in performance. But upon playback it just seemed to be lacking something? So like I said I played both songs at the same time & simply flipped between the two sources on the Denon (so that there was zero lag time between the audio signal, it was immediate back and forth) and there was no comparison, the computer could not match the quality of the Sony, unfortunately, because I was hoping it would.

Could there be another reason? I tried to find the contol pannel for the audio on the computer but didn't really find anything. I wonder if something is not right with it? That would be great if I could achieve the same sonic signal from the computer without having to buy a upgraded sound card!!!

Unclear, although the headphone output might be among other things lower in level. Now, I certainly use the digital output from the USB port of my computer when listening to music sources, but it has nothing to do with the quality of the computer DAC. A cleaner signal results when the output is digital rather than having been converted to analog and subjected to the noisy environment in a computer. The DAC chip in the Xitel HiFi Link which takes the USB output and converts it is a basic quality chip which I'm certain would cost less than a dollar each in manufacturer quantities.

Ah, you send your signal via the USB port eh? So how do you plug it into your receiver then? My Denon doesn't have any USB inputs around back, does your receiver?

No, his Xitel goes from USB to optical.

I use an AppleTV to do what you're doing. My entire music collection resides on the AppleTV, so no PC/Mac has to be running to play it, nor do I have to tie up an iPod Touch on a dock. Plus it does movie + TV rentals & purchases.

It all works perfectly & seamlessly. With HDMI & toslink outputs to my TV/AVR, and lovely on-HDTV screen artist/album/playlist navigation. And the software to control it is free from Apple, which lets me roam around the house and choose music wirelessly on my iPhone, no dongle required.

And it supposedly does support internet radio streaming too, though I have not tried it and it is not really a documented feature. http://www.macworld.com/article/135380/2008/09/addradiotoappletv.html

Everyone's opinion differs, but in my iTunes/iPod-centric household, the AppleTV has been a fantastic piece of technology that was well-worth the cost. IMHO, if you're living with and content with iTunes and iPods, the AppleTV is the best solution for bringing that experience to your home theater.

Is the remote app as fluid as using the regular ipod interface? Does it allow you to rate songs etc..? Thanks.

Almost. It looks and feels about the same as picking songs on the iPhone/iPod itself. The big difference is that there are a few delays in the process as data is fetched across the network. There is a must-wait couple-second delay when you first fire up the app as it links up with the ATV. Then when you pick a browsing mode (Album, Artist, Song, Genre, Playlist, etc), there is another must-wait second or two delay as the data is fetched. After that, smooth sailing. Album artwork takes an additional couple of seconds to load while you're looking at albums or when you select a song, but it is done in the background while you navigate - you don't have to wait for it to load.

I can't remember if the horizontal "Cover Art" display mode works or not. I don't think it does.


I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I'll check it out tonight when I get a chance to confirm/deny. I want to see if that streaming radio trick actually works anyway.

Maybe I'll even bust out the video camera and take a video of how the UI behaves.

No, the Remote App doesn't do Cover Flow, but otherwise it's exactly like selecting music on the iPod.

And internet radio works great! I didn't even know the ATV would do streaming internet radio until your post made me wonder. Just add stations to playlist(s), sync the playlist to the ATV, then just select them like any other song in a playlist. Just works. However, one minor disappointment is that it doesn't give you any Song/Artist info on the stream. You just get the radio station name.

Now you are making me want to get an Apple TV.

Now you are making me want a snack except all I have is grapes...

Doh! I knew there was something that I forgot to check...

If you wait long enough, you can have a glass of wine.

Ah USB to optical... BRILLIANT!!! How do you route it through the USB port though?

What Peter said.

I also have an Apple TV that I use for all my music. I've ripped all my CD's to Apple Lossless and it sounds great. You can pick up an older 40 gig Apple TV pretty cheap. You can then buy a large 320 gig hard drive on ebay for it with the software pre-installed for around $120, then you can load it up. I just added the large hard drive to mine and I'm real happy with it.

Micah, actually that isn't the way that the Xitel works(I believe that another product does involve a conversion to digital optical). As I mentioned, it contains a DAC to convert the digital output to analog(an optical connection is of course inherently digital)and the feeds it with RCA plugs into analog inputs on receivers which don't have a USB input(most of them). Simple, and has worked very well for about 6 years for me. The Xitel site has some info. They've re-named the apparently identical unit the "MP3 Streamer".

Peter,

Thank you for all the info. This is exactly why I post here. So that I can hear about alternatives, and the Apple TV really does sound appealing. I may just go that route instead. Did you ever get a chance to test if the remote app allows you to rate songs?

Thanks again.

Have a look at the thread I just started: http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=274568

The parts cost about $400, and you'll still need an OS. But it's a lot more flexible than an Apple TV, as it's a full PC, but with the connectivity options you'd want for a home theater.

If you have any questions, ask there, I'll answer.

I thought about building a HTPC. But esentially I would still need a good way to control it from the couch and I would prefer not to have to turn on the TV. I really would only use it for music and not for video so I think that for my needs an HTPC is slightly overkill. It sounds like the AppleTV does almost everything I need. The one thing it lacks is the ability to listen to "any" internet radio station. I think I can only choose from the list of predefined stations in Itunes. Hopefully I am wrong about that though.

You can get wireless KBs and mouses, but blindly clicking with the TV off can be a little difficult.

Yes I have a Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo and they are the shiznit! Only thing that sucks is that I always forget to plug my mouse in. But it usually stays charged for a good two months, so it's really not that big of a deal. I've never had to change the batteries out in my keyboard yet, and I bought it a good 8 months ago, so that's pretty decent!

I had a wireless keyboard and mouse, now I just have a mouse. I must do a lot more keying and mousing than you. I'd kill the keyboard batteries in about 2 months, and the mouse every 2 weeks. I went back to the wired keyboard because it makes little sense to have it wireless at my desk. But the wireless mouse is nice no matter where you use it.

My goodness, I can't imagine anyone using a mouse/keyboard THAT much more than I do. After all I spend all day everyday editing pictures (uh... when I'm not on here that is...) and all that stuff. Were you using a Logitech combo? Just curious, because I truely am amazed at how long these batteries have been working in the keyboard without needing replaced. The mouse does get a lot more use than the keyboard though, that explains why it's needed 3 or 4 charges already. But I'm still mighty impressed with both I must say.

I have the Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro combo, both the keyboard and mouse have very cool features on them. I think I paid $125 for the kit at OfficeMax late last winter, I just found it on Amazon for $75 bucks though! Pretty good price for what you get in my opinion. The mouse alone was $75 bucks... back then anyway.

The combo I had was indeed Logitech, their Bluetooth Cordless Desktop. I've heard that the Bluetooth radio based devices suck more power, so that could have been the cause.

I now have a Logitech Wave corded keyboard (love it), and an MX Revolution cordless mouse. It consistently lasts 2 weeks, as I'm charging it every other weekend. The MX Revo was released before the Cordless Wave Desktop, so it may still be slightly more power hungry technology, but is already twice as good as my previous.

I have the Sonos system and absolutely love it. I purchases 2 Dlink DNS-323 NAS enclosures and put 2 X 1TB Seagate drives in them. With all of my music residing on the NAS(s) I don't have to have my computer turned on for me to listen to my music in my HT room or my kitchen, or den, or bedroom etc..

Works like a charm... yes it's a tad pricy .. but worth it in my opinion.

I"ve been contemplating the Sonos system to get music out onto the deck more easily than running wires, but i have yet to put our music into digital format so the present files consist of many mp3s, many older 128kbps versions and i loathe the idea of putting them onto a decent system such as we have across the house.

In essence, i may not buy a system to wirelessly stream audio until i have ripped alot of our favorite discs for playback.
Must start with selecting a format preference i guess.

I ran across a very interesting dilema a few weeks back. I have a ton of downloaded music on my hard drive, and I've been in the process of ripping CD's to the hard drive over the past few weeks. When ever I rip a CD I check to see if I had the song downloaded, and if I did, I erase the 128 kbps version with the 900+ kbps version. Anywho I was ripping my Van Halen CD's and started to erase the duplicate songs that I'd downloaded. Just before I got rid of them I played a few of them head-to-head against the 'superior' 900 kbps replacement songs just so that I could see how much better my new library was going to sound... to my amazement not only could I not hear much of a difference at all between the two versions, but when I could hear a difference, I was actually liking the sound of the 128 kbps versions BETTER!?!?!? WTF????

These weren't different versions of the song, the 128 kbps downloaded song 'Panama' for instance was the version straight off of the '1984' album. However, when I ripped my '1984' CD to the computer and then played the same exact song against the supposedly inferior 128 kbps song, the downloaded song actually sounded more spacious, more detailed, and somehow just sounded all around better to my ear. The 900 kbps version actually had a more 'compressed' feel to it, if there is such a thing. I was baffled. Because it wasn't only on 'Panama', but also the downloaded 'Hot For Teacher', 'Jump', 'Ice Cream Man' and a few others sounded better as well. And the others, I simply couldn't tell a difference between the two versions rather than the ripped version sounding superior.

In the end I ended up erasing the downloaded versions simply because in my head the 900 kbps version 'should' sound better. I know that probably sounds dumb, but it's just the way I am. Had in not done it that way everytime I would have heard 'Jump' or one of the other one's I would have been thinking, "this is the compressed version, so I'm not getting everything I should out of it". But it sure made me realize that had I been in a blind comparison test trying to detect the differences between the compressed and uncompressed versions of the two songs, I would have failed miserably! And it would have baffled me because I surely would have thought that it was obvious which was the compressed song since it sounded so much better, with so much more dimension to it... exactly what I would have EXPECTED the uncompressed version to sound like.

But for what ever reason, it was the exact opposite. I'm still scratching my head over that one!

What rips at 900kbps? I've only heard of 320, tops. Are you talking about a lossless codec of some kind?

Yes in Windows Media Player you can rip in WMA which is lossless. It takes a lot of room, but it's just like playing the CD... supposedly anyway.

Actually, it seems not all songs are recorded at the same bit rate. Checking through my library 2Pac's 'Me Against the World' plays at 834 kbps while 'California Love', which is off of the same CD, plays at 1.04 Mbps.

But 900 kbps is a rough average.

Also I might add, the Van Halen cuts were rare. Most of the time the WMA tracks are noticably cleaner/better. I was just very confused why there were so many Van Halen songs that sounded better at 128 kbps than at 900? And just in case you were wondering, it wasn't just the '1984' album that this occured, so I can rule out it being a bum CD. I noticed this on various Van Halen songs, and on some Smashing Pumpkins and Pink Floyd tracks. When I compared some Tom Cochrane tracks though, the WMA songs were the cleaner/better versions. Same was the case with the ZZ Top tracks, Great White tracks, and the Journey tracks I sampled. So it's not a case where WMA sucks or anything like that. It's just... well, I don't know what it is?

Many "remastered" releases should be labeled "compressed to sound louder" instead. Perhaps the MP3s you have are from older versions of the same album, where as you have newer remasters. Only in a few cases have later releases actually been superior.

It is important not to confuse the bitrate for lossy encodings such as MP3 with the file size differences of lossless compression. The lossless bitrate for 16/44.1 stereo is constant at 1.411Mb/s; it is the file size that varies due to "zipping". It is just more convenient for the onscreen presentation to use the "bitrate" field inplace of "compression ratio" to avoid use two columns.

Though i know this has been discussed before, the search tool is not much help in finding the topic so i'll ask this here.

What would be a good, non-lossy format for ripping that 'hopefully' will stay around into the future?
Wav- way too large a file size
WMA- i just hate any MS format given they change things around so often, today WMA is popular, in 5 years it could become .WMX or something entirely new say .STC ('screw the consumer').

I have heard 128 vs 256 vs 320 mp3s and although i agree the quality improves with bitrate, the 320 mp3s don't sound as dynamic as a cd song. The 128 rate encoded songs pale in comparison to anything else. The quality difference is incredibly obvious however i do know that depending on how the songs were ripped, some sound louder or more bassy than the cd versions which makes me wonder about the person and method used to rip the song possibly to make it sound 'better' by using some band tweaking.
I have tried the mp3 vs cd a/b on my home computer though some argue i would need to move the mp3 off the computer b/c of electronic interference within the machine affecting sound quality, etc. etc.

I'm just not sold on ripping to a lossy format so i would rather rip to a non-lossy format thinking that into the future, i could turn those original rips into anything else if required. What lossless formats can be stored and played on iPods or other units though?
From what i've seen so far, everything plays mp3s, with addon apps or otherwise, most play WMA, some play AAC, do any play WAV? Whatever happened to FLAC?
Another passing through codec?

These files would be the digital masters, originals and remain archived as such. Storage is cheap these days anyway so who knows? Maybe i'll stick with the archaic wav files.

Any thoughts?

(Alternatively if someone has a link to the thread(s) where this topic was discussed recently, they could just pass that along; i just can't seem to locate it).

flac. a good encoder gives you the ability to select your level of compression, so if you need to shrink files down a little you can always increase the compression level.

Honestly, with 2 terabyte drives at close to $100 a pop, to me, file size is becoming irrelevant

I really don't want compression at all.
With increasing storage space even on small devices like iPods, non-lossy files can be stored in reasonably large numbers.
I don't think i need to have my entire music collection on a 1GB iPod at the sacrifice of compression.


True, but if i were to rip my files to WAV lets say, 60-100 MB per file is a bit too large.

Flac is still kicking around?
I just haven't heard much about it lately.
Can flac files be played back on common players like iPods? I'm assuming they can with codec installation or even replacing the base player software to something else.

I agree with Fred. 95% of my music is in Flac. The Sonos supports Flac (and other formats to, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA etc..)

I use to favour APE but Flac is more supported and sounds excellent. I have very few MP3s and I look to replace them as soon as I can find a lossless version of it.

And like Fred says..disk space is cheap.

Chess,

FLAC does compress the file size but not the bitrate, you still get maximum sound quality, just like the original WAV file, but in a smaller file. There is no downside to Flac compression.

Flac is very well supported, not sure about ipod cause I don't own one but most players I've seen do support Flac. Either natively with via a plug in.

Well this really is the key.
If flac is widely enough supported for media players (iPod or other, Windows Media Player or Winamp or other common player), etc. then that's the way i will go.

I've been eyeballing Sonos so it is nice to hear it supports the format.

ALAC is also likely to stick around. Like it or not, Apple rules the market right now.

Damn Apples.

I prefer free, and open codecs so they'll never go away, because no company can take the secrets with them. That said, ALAC has been reverse engineered well enough to encode and decode them with non-Apple software.

Still I keep all my file in .wav format on my hard drive (again, disk space is cheap), and then transcode to what ever I need for the player I'm using.

ALAC, FLAC, Monkey, WMA Pro, they all only get about 50% compression at best. Sure that means you can store twice as many songs, but it isn't like the 90% compression of MP3s where you'd get an order of magnitude more songs in the same amount of space. You can fit over 2000 CDs in .wav files on a terabyte drive. That should be enough for anyone.

I believe I have 3500 on my 20 GB iPod. Not ALAC or WAV, of course.

EDIT: oh wait, you said 2000 albums. Nemmind...

Assuming the average song is about 20 MB in an uncompressed wave, that would be 50,000 songs in 1 TB.

Yes and i agree.
Space isn't so much an issue with large HD and smaller devices such as iPods will increase with storage capacity over time. That being said, to recode a 150 mb wav file vs its 50 mb flac equivalent is more time consuming (with an automated process one can run such batch files overnight i suppose but still, if both are equally lossless then why not just go with flac?).
Is wav considered a more simple, standard?
It has been around for a LONG time.

So why use wav files then instead of flac which is an equally lossless format, but still producing smaller file sizes?
I'm curious.
Is it easier to recode wav than flac to other formats? (and by easier, more user friendly apps, no codec package installs, etc.)

IIRC, Cd's are wav files you are simply copying them.

Exactly, everything (except the Oppo BD player?) can read wave files. No matter what convertion software one settles upon, it'll be able to convert a wave. FLAC support is pretty good, but sometimes I come across something where I have to convert into a wave first.

CDs are 16-bit/44.1kHz PCM. Wave files can contain 16-bit/44.1kHz PCM data. But CDs have Reed-Solomon error correction, and wave files have a RIFF header. There is a process of extracting the data from a CD and packing it into a wave file, but it is pretty straight forward. Where as other formats require extensive processing.

Do .wav files support adequate tagging?
As far as I am concerned, the need to properly tag/sort/group/display-images is more important to me than the name of the company that created the format.

That is one problem. There is no standard way to tag a .wav. You can find software to do it, but not everything can read the tags after it's done.

I've gotten around that by using the following directory and name structure:

...\Artist\Album\##. Artist -- Track Name.wav

That way even without the tags being read all the really important information is still available. The album art goes in the Album folder too.

That was one reason i was shying away from the older wav format but really, i have to ask if i care that much about tags.
In the digital realm most players do read the tags to present the name and track info to the user so it is kind of an important thing.

How often do you find you have to convert a flac file to wav, and for what kind of reasons?

I had downloaded some tracks in FLAC for a friend who wanted them on his PSP. The media manager software didn't support FLACs, so I had to convert them to wave first.

I don't know how often such a thing would come up, as I keep all my music in wave format, and thus never have any trouble like that.

Untagged (or unsupportedly tagged) music just shows the file name. "01. Rise Robots Rise -- All Sewn Up" is good enough for me.

Speaking of file type conversion, my daughter recently upgraded to a Nintendo DSi from her old DS that died. The DSi will let you load and play music, but only supports AAC format. Since my entire library is either mp3 or flac, my obvious next question is:

Can someone recommend a free converter to go from MP3 or FLAC to AAC?

My plan is to make a small duplicate sub-library (i.e. keep the original MP3's and flac's) of just my daughter's music for the DSi specifically.

Thanks!

I'd have to check but "Media Monkey" pretty much converts anything to anything and it's free.

iTunes will go from MP3 to AAC.

Hmmm... well now I'm all confused. Looking through my library on Windows Media Player, when I click properties on 'Dancing Nancies' by Dave Matthews, it comes up,

Length : 06:05
Bit Rate : 969 kbps
Size : 42.33 mb
Type : WMA
Audio Codec : Windows Media Audio 9.1 Lossless
VBR Quality 100, 44 kHz, 2 channel 16 bit 1-pas

So 969 kbps is the zip file size then?

But then he'd have to use iTunes.

Doh, wait, I can't make fun of iTunes anymore.
Well, I can continue to not like it, even if I have to use it, right?

Ouch, who just nailed me win the head with a Cortland.

I am avoiding iTunes because it does not play nicely with multiple libraries . I live mostly on my work laptop and therefore tap into different music sources - my NAS at home, an external drive at my office and a small local library when traveling. I use the sharing feature in iTunes to get around this. Of course iTunes won't let me convert 'shared' files.

Media Monkey - I will check it out. Thanks!

Thanks for the info.
For all i know about computers, I've never really delved much into the software and file variances, typically stuck with playing with hardware.

I have MediaMonkey already installed, usually use Winamp as a player, but had yet to decide on what to convert cds into for around the house and iPod (or other) playback.

I am not yet convinced to go FLAC vs. WAV. The big drawback in the past really was hd space more than anything. WAV is a bit more universal and as Club says, with a file name and no tag, most players will display that name.
What more do i need?

I'd argue that FLAC is the better choice over WAV. Especially since storage space is a concern for you. In short, you get the same audio quality as a ripped wav file (the data is identical once it's converted by your player), It may not compress as deep as an MP3 but there is no data loss and the amount it does compress adds up to a huge difference over WAV in bigger song libraries.

FLAC can be converted to any other current format and in a worst case scenario, you can convert it back to a WAV file. Lets face it, a new audio format that is so much better that it gains universal domination is likely to either a.) quickly have flac to "newtech" converters developed by hobbyists or b.) it will come with a tool that requires or is quicker to reconvert all your CDs again making WAV just barely better or not at all.

On the basis of tags. I used to think like you. A well thought out naming structure is all I needed. However, if you are like me and enjoy an oddly large spectrum of music styles, then you will find yourself wanting to someday filter by genre.

Case in point, I love almost all music from heavy metal to classical and I almost always have my player on random so I get an mixture of rock, blues, jazz, indie, whatever really. However, despite an enjoyment of classical, it is just so radically different from the above that it just didn't seem to fit in together and vice versa. I normally have "classical, and more the more classical or varied styles (flamenco, world, etc.) " filtered out when I listen to 'rock and more modern styles' and I have "rock and modern styles' filtered out when I listen to the classical set.

This is done easiest if you have tags. Also, sometimes you do get in a mood. You feel like playing a bunch of random punk or a bunch of jazz, maybe even a certain kind of jazz. Also easier done, if you have tags. Album info is also surprisingly interesting when people ask "what is that from?"

Just my thoughts, certainly not a rule.

Ok so i'm going back the other way now, pulling a Harper and doing the opposite of what i said i would do.

FLAC it is!!

See, now you're going to be more popular than ever!

I like having all my music as FLAc files, sounds like the cds to me, just hate having to keep a 2nd library for i-Tunes.