Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Feeling Ignorant Today…..

OK, so here's the deal: I've got seven computers here in my business/home, but they're not networked. I DO have a wireless router that's providing internet to two laptops, but no network has been setup. My main business computer is left on anytime I'm home and awake.

I have two, 400-disc jukeboxes that sit in my HT rack, empty and unused and I'm considering getting a Squeezebox or a Roku Soundbridge to replace them. My intentions are mostly to listen to my own, ripped discs but might also enjoy internet radio or Pandora. I ditched XM last month because I'm tired of their poor quality, but will miss the variety of music. This move will ease the loss.

Unfortunately, I'm a novice on this particular type of item, so I have some real "dumb guy" questions:

1- Am I correct that the squeezebox, in general, seems to be the favored model? I did research the recent thread on it and that seems to be the case…

2- I have a series 2 TiVo that isn't connected for any networking capabilities. Is it worth trying before purchasing a unit like those above, or do they have advantages over the TiVo system? Any particular advantages/disadvantages to the TiVo system for this?

3- Ditto the above for an Xbox 360. I have the 20 gig hard drive on it, but wish it had a 300 gig HD option so I could just rip all my discs to it directly. It's not networked either. Any particular advantages/disadvantages to the XBOX system for this?

4- Bear with me for the following in terms of how it gets used:
I rip all my discs to a HD on my host computer Do I just use, say, Windows Media Player to rip the music and gather track info, or do each of the options above use proprietary software?. Now that I've got the tracks ripped into my computer, what are my options for choosing music in my HT? I've read that the Soundbridge, for example, has a good display. But I assume that only the TiVo and XBOX can display track info, etc..on my DLP??. I also assume that I can sit on my couch and choose particular artists or "albums"; but can I also, for example, shuffle just Blues music or Christmas music for a Holiday party?? Search out songs with the word Purple in case, for example, Craig ever visits?

I get the feeling that moving to "networked" music will be much like when I got my first TiVo years ago: it will change the way I listen to music, I'll wonder how I ever lived without it, and I won't be able to explain it to someone who hasn't just used it for a week to fully understand how much better it is….!

I spend my day on computers and high-tech stuff, but networking is a weakness for me and I just don't "do" MP3s so am not too experienced with compressing music formats in anything other than Adobe Audition. I'll be researching all of this on my own as well, but thought I'd throw it out here in these early stages, in case someone can save me a lot of time researching, for example, the TiVo method because "it can't do X and X, so it's not worth bothering with"…etc…

Any and all help appreciated!!

I don't have any answers, but thank you for asking the question. I will be watching this thread with bated (not BAITED, dammit !!) breath.

Right, John; although I suppose that you've heard of the clever cat who ate some cheese and then waited at the mousehole with baited breath.

Mark, fill up those two jukeboxes. I'm available for 800 suggestions.

I can't directly answer your questions since I don't use Soundbridge or the others. But what I have done is built a server and ripped cd's via Windows Media Player in lossless format to my server. WMP gets all the track and artist info and saves it along with the tracks. On my HTPC which uses Meedio as my frontend I can import the tracks and then access the tracks and play them via my receiver. This uses the Meedio player to play the tracks. I can also launch WMP from within Meedio and access my tracks that way. I actually really like WMP 11. I think MS did a really good job with it. I would have ripped my tracks using flac but I had already ripped most in WMP lossless so I'm just sticking with the format.

Your easiest solution would probably be to have one computer for just being used as a server for the music. Or perhaps just install a very large hard-drive or two in your best computer and use that. I have found the best program for ripping cd's is called Cdex (just google it), It will rip your entire cd at whatever bitrate you want and will access the CDDB database to get the track info. I dont think you can get covers and stuff from there but it might be possible. You could use the seperate computers running on the network to play music if you wanted to listen from that particular computer by having your music drive shared on the network and then all the other computers can acess the music.

The squeezebox would be a great choice for if you just want to listen through your stereo. A home network is pretty easy to setup once you get the concept down. There are plenty of online tutorials on doing it as well.

John:
That's a fair recommendation, so I should explain:

One of the services I offer is disc duplication, and have recently "upped" my capability to 600 printed and burned discs/hour throughput. So the thought of duping each of my discs and just throwing them in the jukebox was my original plan and easy for me to do.

But once upon a time when I WAS using the jukeboxes, the data on one became corrupted somehow. The display would read Chick Corea when the slot actually contained Rage Against the Machine. Shuffling within genre or artist became impossible and I had to empty the thing and wipe out it's memory.... about two days of entering in all the information.

So, I thought I would rip each disc to the computer, embed CD Text info, and re-burn a copy. But that's such a monumental task to do for my ~900 discs, and I would still lose "genre" , etc...if it became corrupted again.

After waiting two years to "do the project right", I think technology has passed me by, and there's a better alternative to using the jukeboxes now...!

Mark, I have 2 Squeezebox's networked to a 1TB server running raid 5. I also back the whole thing up to a couple of external 500 gig drives just to be safe. I have no worries about ever losing data. The SB's are incredible. I almost never use my CD player any more. It took a while to rip over 1000 CD's but I'll never have to do it again. Now when I get new CD's it takes all of 2 minutes to rip it. The quality is every bit as good as the original. I like it so much that I will be adding Slim's Transporter to my dedicated room. I have M80's and an EP 600 thru Outlaws 990/7700.

Go for the SB, ripped with EAC to FLAC. You won't regret it!

I'll second useing EAC. Something I'm noticing just now after ripping for 3 years is the info from cddb is not consistent.An artist name might be spelled differently on different cds or from different servers. I have several instances where an artist's name is spelled differently (capitalzation and spaces count to a computer) on each cd by that artist, makes it kinda hard to search or shuffle within that artist.I have several cds by Ronny Jordan, one is listed as jazz,another acid jazz, etc. Kinda fouls up the works when there are genras with one stinking cd. Soundtracks and those compilation cds are the biggest pita. I'm starting to think it would be easier to enter the info myself rather than police the dang cddbs info. At any rate, watch that info when you rip.
I would look into unraid if you go with a server.
There's a section on avs for media streaming with tremendous participation and they don't get bogged down with concerns about legality. I stumbled in there and it really opened my eyes to what's possible.

I'll third using EAC and also recommend a squeezebox. I have one and plan on adding a second once my new Axiom Algonquin outdoor speakers arrive.

I'm using a wireless network, so I can use my laptop outside to connect to my main PC (via a web page) with the slim server software running. I can then choose my playlists and enjoy my new speakers without ever having to get out of my lounge chair. Ain't technology great!

All I can add is that I do not really like MP3 sound unless listening from earbuds then its tolerable. I would rather get up and change discs than listen to MP3's over my stereo. I do still have a 5 disc changer and use shuffle, not as much variety but the sound is better, IMO.

That's why most people would use losless compression as mentioned in several posts above!

I'm not sure what others are doing, but I'm not ripping mine to MP3s. I'm using a lossless format so the quality (to me) sounds exactly the same as if I were playing the actual CD. When I first got my SB, I switched back and forth between the CD and SB and couldn't tell a difference. FWIW

Thanks to all so far regarding the codec thoughts.

Is ANYbody out there using a TiVo or XBox360 for networking music, or is the Squeezebox superior enough to warrant a purchase even though I own the TiVo and XBox already?

There's discussion of servers and RAIDs, is my thinking faulty to assume that I could just add a Maxtor 500gb drive to my business computer since it's on all day anyway?

I do have an older Compaq that's not being used..... hmmm...

TIA!

I can't comment on the Tivo or Xbox since I have neither. You can definitely add another drive to your PC (assuming it has room) to hold your music. I would also recommend getting an external drive to back your music up to. I'm paranoid, so I keep backups in three different locations, main PC, network server and external drives. It's overkill, I know, but I used to manage a lab full of database servers where you live and die on your backups.

Mark, I've never heard of any one using a Tivo or Xbox for music storage, I suppose it can be done but it's not what they are designed for. Maybe I'm missing the boat? Will they decode FLAC, ACC, or WMA or other lossless formats?

If you are into good quality sound, and since you are on an Axiom board I'm assuming so, then the SB with a lossless format, like FLAC, is the best way to go. If you are just ripping to a lossy format like MP3 and aren't too concerned with quality then any player will do.

I mentioned RAID because you had written about having 100's of CD's and the Jukebox style CD player. If you are only ripping a few dozen CD's then don't worry about it. But if you are ripping hundreds, or thousands eventually then using a RAID solution makes sense. Hard drives a dirt cheap now and a couple of 500 gig drives is peanuts when compared to having to re-rip all of your CD's if you were to lose your data for what ever reason. Maybe I'm a little obsessive but I also periodically dump everything to an external drive…. I like the safety factor. Then I have things in 3 places, server, external, and original.

One other thing, tagging and the free data bases have been mentioned. And yes they can be wrong. You can either correct the information before ripping. Or go back and edit it after. This is the tool that I use. MP3 Tag It works great. Change names, generes, titles, etc etc.

The TiVo and Xbox aren't used as storage, they're used as streaming devices. I've never tried it. In my circumstance, I don't want to leave a computer on in the other room in order to listen to music in the living room. That's what I have the SACD/DVD-A changer and the iPod with a dock for.

I'm anal enough that I go through my music collection and fix the artist names, genres, etc.

I'm using my Xbox 360 to play music off of my computer's hard drive (WMA lossless), and I can't really tell a difference between it and the CDs, but then I've never had an "audiophile" player with Burr-Brown or Wolfson DACs (or whatever else is supposed to be comparable). The Squeezeboxes have Burr-Browns, right? I've always been interested in hearing one to see if I could tell a difference at all.

For me, the Xbox 360 works well enough, but sometimes I wish I could choose my music based on the folder it resides in. I hope they keep refining it with each dashboard update.

I'm not paranoid enough yet to have a backup of my music. I keep it all on one external hard drive. I'll probably end up regretting it.

I'm beginning to wonder if I might do better to rebuild that unused Compaq to add a big internal drive and a nice audio card, and just feed the receiver directly without bothering with networking.

My DLP accepts a VGA input from a computer so I'd have a built-in big-azz monitor to select my music, and I could set it up with a wireless keyboard/mouse.

Crap. Maybe I oughta just go for an HT PC....(!)

I've been down this road before, it is lots of fun.
i typically use open source solutions

I ran the Ampache Streaming software and could play the music at any computer.

I also had a couple rio/dell audio receivers to stream the content straight to AVR's. I think the squeezebox would be better, because I think it has a digital output.

the ampache/rio setup utilized linux, so it isnt the best solution for everyone.

I agree with the posts that advise to rip in a high quality. I am now using flac, but not all devices support flac. i can really hear the limitations of my previously ripped 128kb mp3 on my axioms. that wasnt the case when i was just using computer speakers.

I would recommend having a backup strategy in place. I have had several drive failures, probably because i run the drives 24/7 and have 5 drives in a case, which generates excessive heat. I have my collection backed up onto cd-r, which in itself is a pain to restore. i was just over at another forum where a guy is boohooing cause he lost all the tracks he had ripped. dont think if it will happen, think when it will happen.

If i was going to set something up again, I would shoot for audio and video streaming.

I currently have a networked (wired) computer at the location of my tv/receiver/axioms. i use the digital output from the computer to the denon. works well for me, although I am only using it in one place

hth

have fun