Hey guys, I have had my 990 for almost two months now and I absolutely love it. I was wondering if anyone is using the USB port connected to a PC?
My wife wants an IPOD but I want a laptop and wonder if there is an advantage with the USB port and using a laptop for all my music?

What do you guys think?
Thanks.
Dan

The USB port works adequately for playing back stereo music from a PC in a relatively high quality fashion.

Advantage of the laptop? More general-purpose, you can get a larger capacity (should you want more than 60GB), you aren't restricted to particular formats (i.e. use any lossless format you want, ogg, mp3, etc.), you can listen to streaming radio over the internet, etc. The audio quality will also be higher, as you can get a digital output to your preamp relatively cheaply (either USB, or a $25 soundcard). User interfaces vary, but it's probably easier to navigate/catalog/search huge collections on a PC (heck, you need a PC to use the ipod to begin with). You can also use an infrared remote control to run your PC (e.g. http://www.streamzap.com/ - requisite disclaimer: I am involved with that company. There are many choices in that area nowadays, so you have a lot of devices to choose from).

Downsides? It's big, it's bulky, it might be in use for other purposes when you want to listen to music.

Advantage of the ipod? It's portable, so you can use it in places you definitely can't use a laptop - in the car, biking, walking, running, mowing the lawn, etc. It's also sexy, has a very well done user interface, etc.

Downsides? It's expensive, single-purpose, and easy to drop/break/lose if you're prone to such things. Audio quality is also sub-par under critical listening circumstances, but adequate for most situations.


Personally, I do both (and more, really). I have my HTPC connected to the 990 via optical as well as USB. I have other computers that connect to my whole house audio system. And I have an ipod that I use mostly in my car, but occasionally mowing my lawn and stuff like that.

If I wanted to consolidate, but still do most of the same things, the ipod could be pressed into service for most of them, whereas it wouldn't be practical to take a PC with me for anything portable.

Sweet. Thanks!! I spent some time thinking about it last night and the PC seems to fit my needs more than an IPOD and I would prefer having higher quality music anyway. The streamzap really helped to make up my mind also. I should be able to use it to setup my HTM Orion 850 and control the laptop from anywhere in the room.

One more question. What would be better? The USB connection or an Optical cable? I am not that knowledgeable on computers and I am looking at getting a mid level Dell notebook so what kind of sound card would I need to be able to use the optical cable?
Thanks

I have a related question that I hope someone can help me with. I can't directly connect my PC to my 990 (I have a tower PC located in another part of my of my family room that has my HT). Is there a way that I can transmit a signal from my PC to some sort of receiver that would be connect to the 990 via its USB port? In theory this is smilar to the wireless internet for my kids computers but I only want to transmit a music signal that the 990 will understand.

Thanks for the advice.

It doesn't use the USB port but the Apple Airport Express may be a solution to your computer location problem. In theory it requires the use of iTunes but I believe there are some hacks around to make it work with other music players. It has Toslink out as well as an analog minijack so you can use one of your optical in ports. The Airport also avoids the problem of USB audio resampling everything to 48Khz. I've been using one for over a year and it has worked flawlessly, sounds good too.

mike

I have not tried this, but you should be able to get a USB to LAN (CAT5)adaptor for computer side. Connect a long CAT5 cable to it. On the 990 side, get a LAN (CAT5) to USB and connect the CAT5 to it and plug the USB to 990. CAT5 can be used for long runs. I think it can go as long as 1000 ft (someone familiar with this can correct me if I am wrong). If you are going to try this buy CAT5e or CAT 6 cable, they can handle more bandwidth.

I suggest also looking into a squeezebox2 at www.slimdevices.com... Everyone I know that has one raves about it. I use an Airport Express personally, but that is only because I am using only mp3 and AAC. Should I want to burn everything to FLAC (open lossless protocol), then I would pick up the squeezebox2 (ooh, it's on sale, too)

--paul

Thanks for the input everyone. I have a feeling I'm making this more complicated than necessary, but I'm still a little fuzzy on how the signal is transmitted to a receiver (e.g. airport express) that is connected to the 990. I have a linksys wireless g broadband router that provides broadband service to two additional computers in my house. Does the airport express software use the wireless router to transmit the mp3 signal to the airport express?

Logitech also makes a wireless system, however it only has analog connections at the pre/pro and I'd like to use a digital connection. I'll check out the squeezebox2 as well.

Thanks again.

The Airport Express uses a wireless network (802.11b or 802.11g) to connect to a computer (PC or Mac) running iTunes - whatever is playing in iTunes goes to the Airport Express and out through a stereo analog output.

The SlimDevices Squeezebox2 uses some software installed on a PC to provide a database of files, and the SB2 communicates with that software to find out what files are available and to retrieve the files. Unlike the Airport Express, the SB2 offers an interface so you can control what is playing and see what the current song is. The SB2 has optical and digital coaxial outputs as well as stereo analog output (analog's the only way out for the Airport Express).

gonk, Actually the Airport Express output is a dual-purpose analog or Toslink digital jack. You need a Toslink cable with a minijack style plug or an adapter at the AE end but it's definitely digital. From Apple's specs page for the AE:

"* 3.5mm mini-Audio jack for analog or optical digital sound"

Thanks, Michael - I hadn't seen that before. I'd be curious to see how they are putting both analog and optical digital in the same port. I guess the optical emitter is tucked in at the base of the 3.5mm port.

That's exactly how they do it. The plug portion of the cable is about an 1/8" longer than a regular analog plug and the tip of the plug exposes the optical fiber to the device. I first saw one of these jacks in a portable minidisc recorder and have seen them on a few other devices as well.

Yeah, my 10 year old minidisc recorder has one. I used to have a portable CD player that you could connect to the MD with a little fiber cable, just hit play on the CD, record on the MD, and the MD would convert the PCM stream to ATRACS, put in chapter marks at all the song breaks automaticallly and everything. It was pretty cool.

BB

I'm using the Roku Soundbridge. http://www.rokulabs.com/products/soundbridge/index.php
I send the audio information by wireless, (using Belkin Pre-N Router) to the Roku. It recieves the signal on a Flash B wireless PC card. Sounds great!!! Works well with Comcast Rhapsody Radio Plus which transfers the songs at cd quality. Jim

I'm another huge fan of the Airport Express, I love iTunes on OSX & Windows, and have a ALAC (apple lossless) archive on a linux box. Run a toslink into the 990, and, like Michael Moore says above, you get a 44.1kHz (native CD) signal, with no goofy re-sampling to 48kHz like nearly all other computer digital audio-outs give you (I'm guessing the 990s USB port resamples to 48kHz, anyone know for sure?).

If you have a WRT54G, you can run the AE in WDS (wireless bridging) with a 3rd party firmware upgrade for the Linksys. WDS is another reason why the Airport Express is such a killer piece of equipment for $129. It lets you use the AE as a completely transparent standalone (no ethernet needed!) wifi range extender. It also functions like as a network print server for a USB printer - or you can run a infrared remote into that USB port to control iTunes from your stereo remote.

Rob

I'm thinking about getting an Ipod.

Will the same USB cable that I use to connect my laptop to the 990 work with an Ipod?

An iPod's cable uses a proprietary connector at the iPod end, so you can't use a standard USB cable. A standard cable may work between a computer and an iPod docking cradle, but I haven't used one to be certain of that.

Oh, and just to be sure we're all on the same page, you can't connect an iPod to the 990's USB input. You can connect an ipod with an analog cable. I've connected the headphone output of my iPod to the 990's tape input, although I'm told you can get better sound quality by bypassing the iPod's headphone amp (which requires a cradle to get direct access to the analog signal produced by the iPod's DAC).

Thanks Gonk.