Just thought the Squeezebox discussion quickly had become something that didn't belong in the 990 forum, so I thought I'd continue it over here.

Anyway, I was admiring one of these things, too. I'm wondering about a PC for ripping all (well, a lot) of my CD's. I realize that storage is like memory, you can never have too much. That being said, trying to decide how big of a hard drive to stuff in the PC got me to wondering about how much space a typical CD takes up when you rip it with one of the lossless formats. I'll single out FLAC for now, just based on the discussion so far . Just trying to estimate how much space I'd need.

Edit:
Also, how much PC would be enough? I seriously doubt I'd need a P4 with 1GB of memory, never mind that I'd want it. But how stripped down is too far? If all I want is to use it strictly as a music server, I don't even really need an audio card, do I? Could I really get by with just the motherboard (using onboard Audio/Video/Network), processor, and some memory? Of course, in addition to the hard drive and CD drive.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I've been contemplating either a Squeezebox or a (less expensive but functionally similar) SoundBridge. While considering that, I took an old box that I had lying around (and I do mean old) and set it up. It's purely a "scrap parts" sort of rig - Celeron 466, around 128MB of RAM, some old hard drives (one 40GB and a pair of 30GB), a CD-ROM drive, an old video card (Millennium II, if I remember correctly), and a 3Com NIC. I've got XP Home installed along with iTunes, Windows Media Connect, and SlimServer. It's slow - I wouldn't recommend such meager specs - but I've used iTunes and SlimServer to serve up music to a second PC without any trouble.

Hi Owl,

Well, I can tell you a little about my server. This is an old PC I had in a closet for some time. I finally realized a need for a RAID server, and I threw it back together. It's an ABIT KT-7 Raid motherboard running an AMD Duron processor at 900 MHz (maybe 1GHz) -- nothing fast... I thought it had more RAM, but it says 256 MB. There are currently 4 drives in there -- ~80 G to run the OS and apps, 500 G for movies and 2x200 G that form a 200 G RAID for stuff I never want to lose.

As for cards and stuff -- this machine only has a network card and a video card because they were not integrated onto the motherboard. No sound card down there yet -- definitely not necessary, but I could use one every now and then in the basement. I don't even have a CD ROM, as I rip from other PCs and send the data to the server over the network. Pretty stripped down.

As to file sizes and such.

First, and quickly, movies: 52 movies in 424 GB. I'm not saving them for posterity or anything, I just haven't got around to watching them yet. Could probably handle another 750 GB for movie storage.

Second, music:

Example of a couple songs:
WAV: FLAC: Time: Ratio:
65,981 40,625 6:21 61.6%
44,790 32,165 4:18 71.8%

That's in line with what I usually think I'm getting from FLAC -- compression to about 65% of the original. FLAC rates its compression levels from 0 to 8, and I was using 6. I read, and my quick tests confirmed, that using more compression than FLAC's level 6 wasn't getting much more compression (but taking more processor power and time).

So, I'm using a total of 131 GB (141,133,414,400 Bytes) to hold all my music. According to Winamp, there are:

248 artists
464 albums
4860 tracks

I imagine that there are a handful of mp3s out there, but 99%+ of that data is FLAC. The track count is probably the most important number.

Some examples of CDs ripped and sizes:

404 MB Overseer/Wreckage
275 MB Peter Gabriel/So
243 MB Paul Simon/Graceland
276 MB The Sundays/Static & Silence
446 MB Zero 7/Simple Things

Fun discussion...

-- Otto

Otto-Hi,
I'm in Fort Collins.

Have discovered some wireless transmission troubles and have had to throttle down the bitrate as well as the LAME MP3 encoding for streaming. One of these days I'll try it hardwired to see if there is a difference.

Del

Hi Del,

Nice to see someone local. I've never tried to stream music or movies on wireless that I recall. I intentionally ran Cat5 to three machines: "Server", "Office" and "MediaCenter". I have two laptops that are on wireless, but I don't stream to them. My wired network is only at 100 MBPS. I considered going to 1 GPBS, but it hasn't seemed necessary yet.

Of course, I have seen flaky-ness when using wireless in general -- most of the time it works, but sometimes it drops its connection or the connection is rated below "good". Kinda like using a cell phone...

Try the hardwired route, and I think you'll be pleased!

-- Otto

AvFan and old_school,

Thanks for the suggestion to use dbpoweramp for FLAC to mp3 conversion. Pretty much just what I needed -- convert everything and all subdirectories, and recreate the same structure, but "over there". After many hours of crunching, all FLACs are now mp3s on a 100G portable drive!

Thanks,

-- Otto

Glad it worked out Otto. I'm on a kick to get all my CDs converted to FLAC and stored on a new 250gb internal hard drive. I've ripped 840 songs on 74 CDs so far and I've only used about 25gb. Since I have so much space available I've been searching used music stores for CD versions of my old vinyl and mp3s I enjoy as new CD are too expensive.

dbPowerAmp has a link to a forum where after joining you can download some pretty cool skins and improved equalizers. I particularly like the equalizer when I have an older CD that was recorded as if it was to go on vinyl. A few adjustments to the equalizer and I can smooth out some of the harshness and reinforce the bass. Individual equalizer settings can be saved for future use.

Add the convenience of a digital input to my 990 via a Linksys Music Bridge and I have a ton of convenience and great sound.

I've been running my Squeezebox since about the first of the year. I have about 10k songs on a external hard drive hooked up to my Mac. They use roughly 200Gb of space. I use iTunes on the computer but Slimserver for playing them through the Squeezebox.

The SB is connected to the Mac wirelessly and whether I am streaming internet stations or my own music, I have yet to notice a hiccup in performance.

And "oh by the way....." my output to my 990 is via the optical connection.

(now to finish ripping the remaining 700 or so cd's I have!)

FWIW, Slim Devices now offers a bundle of 2 wireless Squeezeboxes plus a 1 TB ReadyNAS NV with Slimserver pre-installed. Trying to decide between this or a Sonos bundle (about 2/3 the price of the Squeezebox bundle, but without the NAS), plus a separate NAS. What I really like about the Sonos is the controller. If anyone has compared the Sonos vs the Squeezebox, I'd much appreciate any thoughts.