From artists I've never heard of, but a lot of it is great.

http://www.reverbnation.com/windows

Those really are a lot of artists I've never heard of. Do you have any recommendations?

No recommendations yet. I'm being very liberal in what I download, but I'm sure I'll be deleting some. I'll let you know what stands out.

Cool. Always open to new music. And free is good.

There's some known people there. I saw Warren G, Lemonheads, Pras Michel.

I wish they had more genre filters. Seems some are given multiple genres, but not all are listed on the radio buttons.

After a quick glance, the only band I recognized came from the Latin category, Los Lonely Boys. Not the category I expected to find a familiar name.

That was the only name I recognized in my browsing, too.

Holy crap, the Lemonheads are still around?!

Yup but in their old age they have become seedless.

Hey guys, the other day I came across a great Canadian artist "Knaan". It's hip-hop, but his songs are beautiful, and the lyrics have a great message; some songs are about struggles growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Anyway, even if you don't like hip-hop, I think everyone can appreciate this song for its meaning.

I can't get enough of the album. Let me know what you guys think.

Actually, I don't know if Evan Dando is the lead any more.

Thanks for Knaan. I'll give that a listen. Always open to world music, especially hip hop/reggae. You might give playingforchange.com a shot too. Not free though.

Your avatar reminds me of a book (and audio book) that we read/play to our kids. It's called Zoom by fellow Canadian Robert Munsch.

http://robertmunsch.com/playstory.cfm?bookid=75

GREAT (free) audiobooks for kids.

Gave it a chance, I liked it, the song has a good beat. Thanks for sharing the song. If you liked that you should try, Michael Franti & Spearhead. It is more rock then rap but both of those labels don't really define who they are.

Back in the day, Spearhead was 'sold' as reggae.

He gets a lot of play on the CBC. I'm not a big fan of hip-hop, but some of his stuff is pretty good.

I really like Michael Franti & Spearhead, great stuff!!

Only thing I recognized was warren G and kottonmouth kings

lol, I recognized 5 bands just on the first page, Underoath, Poison The Well, Warren G, Lemonheads and Chimaira .

I will have to go through the entire list, it looks very promising with a variety of different genres.

Any place where i can download any FLAC files? Want to listen and see if i need to move that route..

--Avi

you could always use autoflac with Exact Audi copy and copy a few cd's over to flac.... then copy them to mp3 and see if you notice a difference.

I did just what u suggested..

when you copy them to MP3, what setting do you recommend? what compression level?..any specific tool?

I know several people have created mp3's at 320 kbps and compared them to flac files and have not been able to notice a difference. I never really did a side by side comparison, but since I have plenty of hard drive space and my denon plays flac over my network, i decided to store all of my music as flac anyway.

as far as specifics on mp3 ripping maybe someone else can chime in since I ripped all of my music to flac.

did you have any problems using autoflac with EAC or have you got that far yet? If you follow the instructions that come with autoflac on how to set up EAC it should go pretty smooth.

Good websight about the flac format here:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

you can go to the downloads section and find links to autoflac, EAC, and many others.

Hi:

I could get the flac files with EAC and autoflac and works like a charm. Just that the players i download to play the flac files sucks. My Denon is not network ready..so either i have to find something that would play those off my NAS or need to convert to mp3.

Will try to find some player that would work, before i go MP3.

Thanks for your help.

Btw, what Denon do you have?

Take a look at the Logitech Squeezebox. I have the Classic and use it to stream FLAC and MP3 files to my Denon/789. This works like a charm. The Classic has very good DACs and I connect it via analog to the Denon and use "pure direct". The sound with the M80's is fantastic.

Thnx..i just borrowed the Squeezebox classic from work. Will give it a try.

Any software based players that can handle flac? I can maybe integrate it in the media center

Avi,
I recently had a similar question in this thread.
Short version:
For software players MediaMonkey, Winamp and Firefly were suggested. I have used Winamp with great success so far.

Hardware devices - Squeezebox as already mentioned, but you might also want to check out Sonos.

Cheers.

Along with what you have already done, Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) is a big believer in releasing portions of his music online in a variety of lossless formats and he often has free music available from the web sight. Sometimes it's experimental, like his "send me a video of what this music inspires in you" project and other times he just gives away free music. In any case, it's all extremely well mixed and produced and available in FLAC format among others.

EDIT:
I just went to get The Link for you as I realized I forgot it and noticed that the latest NIN album is still available as a free download in MP3 or FLAC and other lossless formats.

Thnx Murph. I will give it a try. I have that album in MP3, will get to know the difference.

I found this interesting..lots of format choices

http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html

Maybe we should do a Axiom CD sampler with some of these high quality samples.

Excellent set of samples to test equipment compatibility.
As soon as I'm home(or tomorrow), I'll download a lot of them and check how my various streamers react to them.

I got the squeezebox connected to my denon. It sounds nice.
One issue i have is it cannot play FLAC files from my NAS. Does it need to have the files on the same machine where i run the server?

It can play the music on the HTPC but gives an error for FLAC on NAS. any ideas?

Do you have an exact error message or is a just a vague "error"?
How did you get it to scan from different locations?

The squeezebox supports flac files natively, no trans-coding required. The setup for squeezecenter requires a single music location/folder. This can be circumvented by using shortcuts/links to other folders or files.

The error was

PROBLEM: Cannot open file for:

I copied 'Norah Jones - come away with me' flac files to the HTPC running the squeeze center and now it is playing..so look like some issue with getting it from NAS..weird

Other MP3 files work fine from NAS.

Any ideas?

Could be a bandwidth issue. The data rate for your flac file might be too high for your device/network for steady streaming.
Otherwise, no idea.

Does your NAS use any form of RAID?
There are a lot of threads on the Squeezebox forums about raid causing things to be horribly slow and often timeout.

Actually, the general consensus there seems to be that using a NAS with a server on another PC is extremely quirky and difficult to get right even when it is the sole folder location. Seems most people just give up and revert back to local storage.

I myself, have never tried it.

I gave up on the NAS and copied the files to my HTPC and everything looks good.

Funny thing, i connected the squeezebox analog out to PHONO on my Denon and the sound was too booming..some indian classical music..the M80 struggled..since i changed the connection to CD and it is playing good...is PHONO different? maybe my receiver setting.

I need to get the SPL meter and set up the system

--Avi

Yes, the "phono in" jacks are a whole different ball of wax. They should not be used for anything else but a turntable.

Of course before I hung out here, i would have found this out the hard way as well.

Phono requires an additionnal preamp stage so the signal from your SB was overly amplified.

Thnx a lot..You guys are the best.

--Avi