Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Squeezebox 3rd Generation (pics)

FWIW at this point, I want to say that I have been EXTREMELY happy with my Squeezebox 2 and FLAC files. I also use EAC to rip my CDs to FLAC.

I really think things like Squeezebox are the future, especially when coupled with external storage devices.

My local A/V has a Sonos system setup and it is slick. It does not require a PC, and it access a NAS device. Just a little pricey though!

Hey Larry, thanks for the kind words and your ongoing interest.

A good part of the requirements for my situation were dictated by money. I didn't want to buy another OS, much less another computer. That machine had previously, buggily, run Win98. There is no way I was going to spend the dough necessary to both bring up the hardware and buy the OS to run XP. However, it runs that Linux distro with ease, and the only money I spent was on the RAM upgrade ($40) and a new hard disk that I would have needed anyway (~$70). That's less than I would have spent on just a new MS OS.

FreeNAS is not worth it. It doesn't "do" anything. Spending an extra couple days on implementing a bare-bones linux install was worth it to me.

As to the Shuttle, it is an interesting form factor. However, if you're just going to put it in a closet anyway, why spend so much on a case that is so small? You certainly can't get multiple hard drives in something like that, and if it is not proximal to your listening space, the extreme quiet is hardly necessary. I tried to spec out a Shuttle HTPC and just ended up being frustrated and going with a Silverstone case instead. The only compelling reasons to use a Shuttle box are size and quiet. If it's in a closet, neither one is really very important, and you lose a lot of flexibility in the process, not the least of which is the proprietary power supply.

I like the looks of the Antec Sonata case for a good combination of cost, quiet and capacity. I might move the guts of my current server to one of those cases some day.

Other than working out the rsync stuff, I'm pretty happy at the moment. The fileserver is fine (accessible from all the other machines) and Slimserver/Sqeezesoft work just fine (either synched or independent). I just have to find time to put more content on the drive.

All in all, a pretty satisfying project. I've seen the future. Dang.

I see your point Tom and the decisions we make are so taylored to our home and listening space designs. It's shame so many of those decisions are made because of the cost of XP.

In my home my computer is in my living room and so is my listening stuff so it really is not a problem as it now is set up. I don't even really need another box, I'm just looking at alternatives. I even have a couple of old cases in the garage, I know I can get my Win98SE versions up and running on almost any chip set, 300 gig hard drives are cheap as is RAM, so there is potential to have a really cheap box that I realize I don't even need.

Who knows what the next free weekend will bring though, perhaps that dreaded trip into Linuxland will hold some inexplicable allure where it only looks like more computer pain today.

Most important, it sounds like you worked out the gremlins.

"I've seen the future. Dang." - That's pretty funny.

Best

Larry

It sounds like a great project, Tom. I'd love to have something like that set up, but I just have a problem with having a full blown machine running all the time. My electric bill's gone up enough as it is. I wonder if there's a low power solution to this...

ooooohhhkaayyy...

This thread having been successfully revived, I posit the following to those of you who have conquered the frontier:

If you were going to start ripping FLAC files to eventually archive/replace CD changers (one of which is no longer "changing" so well...), would you create BOTH an MP3 and FLAC file during the ripping process (presumably with MAREO) or just get the FLAC and find some utility to batch convert the FLACs to MP3s later as necessary for portable devices?

How much disk space do I need for 800 CD's worth of FLAC files?

If you needed a computer front-end and interface to play tunes WITH A REMOTE CONTROL, what would you do? IRMON, USB-UIRT, Girder, etc. Don't tell me M MCE. I've got XP all over the house and I'm not changing OS's for this project. I'd like to use my trusty MX-700 to control playback of music on the computer.

I don't feel like buying squeezeboxes since I already have computers and softsqueeze.

What is your preferred file naming schema from EAC?

Harumph.

The server is still running, btw. And Synchback is a rockin backup program.

Tom, if I remember correctly, your looking at an average of about 20mb per song when using lossless FLAC. So lets just say you have an average of 10 songs per CD, that would be 8,000 songs or about 156GB's.

I'd do the math differently. FLAC avderages a .54 compression ratio. The average CD contains about 600mb of data (less than full). Therefore 800 CDs containing 600mb of data each, compressed to 54% original size gets you 259,200mb, or roughly 250 gigs. Drives are dirt cheap these days.

This drive array may not be cheap, but it's kick-ass cool.

That IS one kick ass cool drive.
I want one.

Drobo is "cool" but it isn't exactly as the guy states in the video. If you run their Drobolator you can play around with drive sizes. If all of your drives are the same size, then it acts like a RAID5 set where you take the capacity of all of the drives, subtract the capacity of one of the drives, and that gives you the storage you can actually use (let's say you have four 500GB drives: 500+500+500+500 = 2TB. 2TB-500 = 1.5TB usable (give or take a little for actual formatted size)... That's fine. Now, if you take 4 (or three or whatever) differently sized drives, lets say 80GB, 160GB, 200GB, and 500GB... Put them in, you do NOT get the use of the largest drive in the array. You get 80+160+200 = 440GB (again, subtracting a little for actual formatted capacity). The usability of that 500GB is "lost" to allow for recovery and data protection... Still really cool, but for $500 I can put an internal RAID 5 set into my PC since my motherboard directly supports it. Yes, I would have to rebuild the array if I wanted it to grow in size, but for the money I could have one heck of an internal RAID5 set that would outlast my PC anyway...

I would say that their strongest benefit is the ease of swapping drives around and so forth.