I just plugged one in to the 990 and configured it to the wireless router. Turn on the computer and the Squeezebox wakes up ready to go.

I set it to randomly play my music and it's like I am listening to a great radio station that only plays music I like, all the time.

This thing is a great addition. I can't wait to figure out how to need another one. Best $300 I've spent in a long time.

Absolutely - these things rock. There's nothing like having your whole CD collection available at once and putting this thing on random.

Haven't seen this before now. Looks very cool, with some good reviews out there. One question I couldn't find an answer to...

Can it connect to my music library over the internet? In other words, can I use one at work and access my library on my home computer?

I think you can do remote access. The best place to get an answer to your question is here:
Slim Devices forum

I have a Squeezebox 3 hooked to my 990 via digital coax and it sounds great.

The Squeezebox is a very popular product these days. There are a number of other products around that are similar (Roku Labs Soundbridge, PRISMIQ MediaPlayer, Apple's Airport Express, and a bunch of devices from folks like Linksys and D-Link), but Slim Devices seems to be the dominant player. I think that PRISMIQ is actually discontinuing their MediaPlayer. I've considered picking up a Soundbridge since it's a bit less expensive than the Squeezebox (the M500 is available for $150 and the M1000 for $200, both with support for wired and wireless), but I haven't decided yet. Slim Devices definitely seems to be the most on the ball about providing good software support (I'm not a huge fan of SlimServer's interface, but it's effective and they've been good about improving it steadily) and they've done some good things with the hardware (adding good quality DAC's to the Squeezebox 2 and moving to a fancier shell with the Squeezebox 3).

I'm not sure that you can get access to a remote music library unless you have VPN access to the remote site or you have the remote site providing a streaming Internet channel that the Squeezebox can tune into, but the forum that mzpro5 mentioned could give a more definitive answer.

The specs on the Squeezebox are very impressive. I’ve wanted to be able to browse and listen to my digital files on my “Hi-fi” system for a while. I even connected my laptop to the 990 via the USB port but the sound quality of that configuration doesn’t quite cut it. If the sound quality of the Squeezebox would approach CD quality, with one of the lossless formats, it would be worth $300. Has anyone done an A B comparison between the Squeezebox and a CD player?

I would think you could achieve this by using a static IP or dynamic DNS. I may have to check one of these babies out. It would take quite a while to convert everything onto the hard drive though, but once that was done it would be awesome.

Can you have different playlists or libraries on the same device (like one for jazz, and another for 80's hair bands)?

The biggest issue (for either a laptop through the 990's USB port or a Squeezebox) is going to be the source data - raw WAV, lossless compression (such as FLAC), or some various levels of lossy compression via MP3, AAC, or WMA. The software handling playback on a laptop and the 990's USB signal path would also factor in, as would the SlimServer software and Squeezebox hardware if that was your delivery method.

I've read a number of discussions regarding comparisons between CD playback and the various lossless and lossy means of moving data to a hard drive. If I do pick up a SoundBridge (or some other similar device), I plan to conduct some tests of my own. I have tried the output of my iPod Nano's headphone jack through my 990, and that was definitely a step down in sound quality from the original CD - but I haven't tried bypassing the iPod's headphone output (need a docking cradle for that) and I've been told that the direct analog output (without the headphone amp in the signal path) is a bit better. Some folks say that anything above about a 200kbps bit rate will yield near-CD quality, but I'm a bit dubious of that personally. To really approach CD quality, I'd lean toward lossless compression (like FLAC) or even simply using the raw data (in WAV format). Storing everything as WAV files would be space-intensive, but it would let you pretty readily generate lossy compression copies for use with portable players.

You can define separate playlists that all draw from the same library and then select a desired playlist depending on what you want to listen to, much like iTunes uses the combination of a central library and multiple playlists. (In fact, recent versions of the SlimServer software can interface with iTunes and use its playlists.)

I have a 30 gig 3rd gen iPod with over 3000 songs ripped at 224kbps and have it hooked up to my 990 via analog connection through the docking cradle. I can definitely hear a difference on a head-to-head comparison litening to the same song on the iPod and thru my CD player and the 224 is not CD quality but pretty good. I especially like it for when people are over or party's where it is more background sound but also like to listen when I am cleaning house. For serious listening though I still choose the CD.

The version of Slimserver I am using (6.2.1) interfaces directly with iTunes so any playlists or genre's you have on iTunes immediatley goes to Slimserver, makes it paretty convenient.

Amen, brother. Space-intensive, but in the long run, entirely worth it. Even the cheapest computers now come with hard drives that can easily store 200+ CDs worth of WAV files, and 1TB of storage (that's 1500 CDs) can be found for under $1K. If you want to rip compressed files for your iPod, you can do it much faster once they're on your HD, and you'll thank yourself the next time you upgrade some audio equipment and start hearing the compression shortcomings more clearly.

If I may add my $0.02 here...

I started copying my entire CD collection a long time ago as wav format. The way I saw it, having spent considerable coin on my audio gear it just did not make sense to compress when it wasn't necessary. I kind of thought that as space ran out on my hard drive(s), I'd buy more as they were bound to get cheaper. This has indeed been the case. I have a separate library of MP3's (now and then I convert chunks of wav files to mp3 at 192 kbps) that I use to load up on my iRiver, my daughter's memory stick, or my wife's iPod. I found that (for me anyway), 192 was pretty close to the original sound quality (especially given being played back through typical mp3 player headphones). Still, in my mind Gonk makes agood point about FLAC (I have a friend / colleague who recently converted her library (wav) to FLAC and she is using a squeezebox 3 at home.

While I do not own a Squeezebox, I do own three networked Turtle Beach Audiotrons (one of which feeds the 990 optically and the others feed their respective systems in the house via the analog output of the Audiotron) and can tell you that it fundamentally changed the way I viewed my music collection (speaking philospohically). It is incredibly nice to have 12,000 + wav files all just 'there'...all networked...and all available to any and all computers / computer appliances that can see my network.

I too have thought about converting to FLAC, but frankly...I still have plenty of room left on the hard drives that I am using, and when the time comes to add another, they will be cheaper still. Again, as I see it...if I don't need to (lossily) compress, then I won't. The only reason that I have the MP3's in the first place is to maximize both the number of files on the portable devices as well as optimize their battery life (i.e. in hard drive based players wav files require more I/O from the hard drive due to the (limited) buffer size. So while at the track or on an airplane I can happily live with 192 kbps through headphones (and I have some pretty decent after market (Shure) ones now), but for my 'real' listening at home over the 990, the dB Systems amplifiers and my B&W 801's...I'll stick with uncompressed.

Mark

Sorry...I meant 805's. My bad.

Hi there,

I recently ripped all my CDs to a server in my basement (a simple RAID, so hopefully I won't have to do it again), in FLAC format. Yeah drives are cheap (I work for a large hard drive company even, so I can get discounts), but my purpose was that I really wanted the ability to use the mp3-style tags (I think it's called ID3 tagging).

This has been invaluable for me to make the most of the organizational skills of the various products that can play back the various formats of audio data, including the Squeezebox (which I do not own).

As I understand it, .wav, in its native incarnation, does not support any of that type of tagging. I don't have a Squeezebox myself, but I was led to FLAC by a very finicky (and audio only) Squeezebox owner who indicated that FLAC was the way to go for flexibility and organizabilty. I kind of thought as the lossless compression as a nice side benefit.

For playback, I'm using a Winamp with the FLAC plugin and a dedicated HTPC. I usually log into the HTPC with XP's Remote Desktop from a laptop. I go optical into the 990 from the Dell, and I can't tell a difference between the CD and the FLAC -- as it should be (CD is coax digital into the 990 from a Denon DVD-1910).

I found that Winamp, et al, will try to make guesses at the artist, album, song name, etc., but it's just that -- a guess -- and it usually turns out to be a mess. I used to rip a lot of .wavs, especially at work, and I did all the directory maintenance myself. What a pain.

Now -- if anyone has a recommendation for a good, quick and free FLAC to mp3 converter, let me know. I want to convert those FLACs, en masse, to mp3s for easy transport to work.

Have a great day!

Yep..

My colleague with the Squeezebox that I mentioned in my prior post......she and I had this very discussion (both being engineers and huge music fans is was pretty much unavoidable).

You make a tremendously salient point about the tags. Turtle Beach has an app that writes mete data to the wav file header, but because it is a proprietary header, other apps (like the squeezebox etc) can't read the header data that comprises the tags that are used by the Audiotron. So as long as the Audiotrons keep working, I am OK with the proprietary wav tag in them. When the Audiotrons die then I'll almost certainly go FLAC and find a player that supports FLAC.

Indeed, this is why she settled on FLAC as there are lots of utilities out there that can either use directory structure and such to pupulate the requisite tags (when writing FLAC files), ping a database, or even ping Amazon to help populate tags.

Mark

Sorry Otto... I didn't read through your post fully. I asked my colleague about the program that she sued to do the wav to FLAC and she said she uses DB Poweramp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/). She said that it will allow you to convert from FLAC to MP3 (as she has done this for her ipod) and says it is pretty easy to do within db poweramp. She also said that you can convert large blocks of files to MP3 from FLAC.

I hope this helps.

Mark

I have approx 700 CDs ripped at 320kbs on my computer. I play them thru my 990 using a wireless system called Omnifi(D-Link) using Simple Center software. I purchased this system at a discount store for $70.00 and it included the Wireless Adapter. I am very pleased with the sound, the outputs are analog, but still sound great. I would however perfer a box with digital output as I am sure the 990 DAC is better. If I want critical listening (whatever that is) I can always play the CD, but my ears don't hear a great deal of difference, and the difference, if any, could be in the 990's DAC.

If you are looking for software or instructions on converting audio file formats you should take a look at the forums on the website for the Squeezebox (slimdevices.com). It's the only other forum I read on a regular basis. I'm using a script called flac2mp3 and the programmer posts to those forums. This script will take a folder of flac files and create a copy including all folders underneath with a folder of mp3's in the same structure.

I currently have a Squeezebox in my living room, bedroom and car. These will be my favorite gadgets for a long time I think.

Does anyone use Pandora with the Squeezebox?
How much is it (after the 90 day trial)?

Otto,

I am also using dbPoweramp to rip my CD's to the FLAC format with fine success (and all the tag info). As part of dbPoweramp music converter (between various formats) there is a cd burner. If you want to use mp3 you need to purchase a license otherwise all the software is free including a player with some neat features. I use a Linksys Music Bridge (with an optical digital cable) to my 990 since I already had a wireless router in the house. I would prefer a hard connection between my PC and 990 but I didn't think about running cat5 between my PC and home theater during an earlier remodel. Regardless, the wireless Music Bridge provides excellent sound with FLAC files. And it is so convenient!

I just installed a 250gb internal drive on my PC with the idea I would use WAV files for my ripped CDs. However, I couldn't get the right tags on them so I've gone with FLAC. Less space and better info is important.

I continued this discussion over here in the Outlaw to Outlaw forum. I had questions about this but it doesn't really seem like this thread belongs here any longer.

A similar product is the Philips Streamium - SL400I/37. Has anyone tried it? Comments?

The built-in display simplifies playing audio, in comparison to devices that do not have a display.

I noticed on their web site that Philips is selling it for $199.99, quite a price drop.

http://www.store.philips.com/b2c_redesig...log&shop=DIRECT

Hey anybody - why is there no word wrap on the displays in this thread? Dragging the horizontal slider to read a paragraph gets old fast.
I've noticed the same thing on a few other windows here, but most of them do have word wrap. Why not all?

The link above your post is throwing things off - it runs so long without a break that it defines the width of the page. Pictures can also do this.

OK, now I know for next time.

But back to topic --- Does anyone have experience with the Philips Streamium SL400I/37 network audio / video player? Any comments on it?

I haven't seen much on the Streamium. The unit linked above appears to be intended for the European market (the SCART connector is a standard video connection there, but you'd be hard pressed to find a SCART input on a US television - in fact, it would have to be an imported set). Aside from that, it seems to have an interesting feature set.

(To meander back off topic, you can avoid the problem of long links by using the "url" tags - for example, if you the spaces inside the brackets of the following line:
[ url = http://www.google.com ]google[ / url ]
You would get google )

I picked up a Philips MC-i200 Micro Hi-Fi system for my daughter because it has Streamium. It's a wonderful little system.

With Streamium you can get BlueBeat and that's an amazing free internet radio service. They stream 320-kb/s audio.

BTW, ebay currently has an SL400I/37 being offered by Philips.

Yes, I signed up for Pandora. It's great! I actually started playing with it before I bought my Squeezebox. I dont have too many stations in it yet though, the ones I have keep coming up with new stuff I like. It's another thing that adds to the whole idea of the SB being your own private radio station.

I've also added a couple of local radio stations into the SB "favorites" menu. It's cool to have them there, but they must use a low bit rate, since they sometimes have that tinny "bad VOIP call" sound. Pandora sounds fine though.

They havent started charging me yet, but I think the fee was something like $30 or $40 a year. If that's it I'm sure I'll keep it.

You can, and you really wouldn't need to have a Squeezebox at work. Squeezebox is powered by software called SlimServer, that runs on your home PC. In order to access from another PC, you need to:

1) Open up the appropriate ports on your home router and forward them to the PC that SlimServer is installed on (as well as opening them up in any firewall software you are running);

2) Get a static IP or easier, get a free account at DynDNS.org or no-ip.com or similar (my router and I think a lot of Linksys routers in general have built in support for DynDNS).

Then at work, open WinAmp or another software player, and open the URL:

http://:9000/stream.mp3

Then open a web browser and open the URL:

http://:9000

which gives you the SlimServer GUI.

There's a couple other niceties, like for instance you'll want to specify that for that player (meaning your work PC) you want everything converted to MP3 (streaming FLAC or WAV would probably be too bandwidth-intensive, resulting in dropouts and a pissed-off sysadmin), but that's the gist of it. Instructions used to be posted at SlimDevices somewhere, but I can't find them at the moment.

Again, you don't have to have a Squeezebox at home to try this, just SlimServer running on your PC.

Ed

Foobar2000 is a good one, and an all around good player as well (supports ASIO, which if you know about Windows kmangler, is a good thing).

I have a similar setup to you, FLAC+cuesheets on a RAID (ReadyNAS nv), but I'm using Squeezebox as my player. (Going to build an HTPC with a touch-screen, jukebox-like interface for easier browsing).

I'm in the process of duplicating all the single-album FLACs as single-song MP3's, for my iPod and for streaming as "background music" to my TiVo and other non-FLAC-aware devices. Been using Foobar and it's been great. www.hydrogenaudio.org is a good place for info/setup help, IIRC, and for anything to do with using a PC as a music transport/ripper/etc.