I noticed it’s been almost 2 months since my last post. Though I doubt any of my fellow Outlaws have been looking for me on the back of a milk carton, I thought I would share a couple of things going on in my own personal corner of the HT / stereo world that may be of interest to you. Before I begin, let it be known I have no affiliation with any of the products or retailers described below.

Building a Music Server: I’m not sure how many of you have heard about or use a product called a “Squeezebox,” but I’ve got to tell you, this is one of the slickest devices I’ve ever owned and I think is going to really revolutionize my system. Basically, this little device (about the size of a table top digital alarm clock) wirelessly streams Internet radio and/or music you’ve ripped to your PC right to your sound system. What’s great about the SB for us audio nuts, is that you can use a lossless compression format (I’m using FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)) and stream pure CD quality music over your WiFi. You can go with MP3 too, if you like; but the FLAC format sounds amazing and the software is open source, so it won’t cost you a penny. Right now, I’m beginning the long, arduous process of ripping my CDs to the PC. At this point, I’m already seeing the need for some sort of outboard, high speed CD/DVD drive and an external USB hard drive for storage. When it’s all said and done, I’ll have a music server that I can stream to my main system, or if I add other SB’s, to other systems in the house. I’m obviously a neophyte at this, so if there’s anyone out there who has built a music sever that can share their own personal experiences that may spare me some pain and suffering (and $), please chime in.

Outboard DAC: I think I mentioned in a previous post that there is a burgeoning market of bang-for-the-buck Chinese audiophile DACs. Wel,l after some lengthy research on the web, I finally decided upon the Musiland MD-10 and subsequently ordered one from Pacific Valve & Electric. It’s only been in my system less than a week, so I’m still evaluating it, but so far I am pretty darned impressed. It’s definitely an improvement over my Cambridge Audio Azur 640C. And with 4 digital inputs (Toslink, USB, RCA and BNC), I can run both the digital out of the Squeezebox and the Cambridge to it, so I can stack two digital sources on the CD input of my 970. One further thing that’s really slick about this DAC is that it has selectable bit depth: 16, 20 and 24 bit. Sixteen bit is great for strident recordings or when you want a more vinyl-like sound; 24 bit really ekes out every bit (pun intended) of detail and renders tremendous pinpoint imaging from good recordings.

I’m not sure the Musiland DAC would be of much interest to many Outlaws, especially those who own the 990 or have a really great CD player. But seeing as how the unit is tied to the Squeezebox in my system, I threw it out there for public consumption. That aside, I definitely think most of you would really, really dig the Squeezebox.

(cross posted in System Saloon)

Instead of an external USB hard drive you might want to look at setting up an inexpensive linux server. You can put 2 500GB SATA drives in this low power server. Terminator C3

Videodrome, I am very interested in using the squeezebox and flac. What tool do you use to copy your CDs to flac files?

From my research this program is the standard Exact Audio Copy

I am also using Exact Audio Copy in conjunction with AccurateRip. AccurateRip compares your rip with others in their database for possible errors.

dvenardos, I will look at that server, thanks!

videodrome,

Digital music distribution is awesome, you're going to have a lot of fun with it.

For a file server, I found this company: www.open-e.com They provide hardened, linux-based file server software on either a USB or IDE flash module. Very easy to install and use.

I'm using Sonos to distribute digital music throughout my home; seven zones, two controllers, works with internet radio, Rhapsody and Pandora, incredibly easy to set up and use.

I also use Exact Audio Copy and AccurateRip. I'm about 75% done ripping my CD's(150GB so far). All I have to do after that's done is edit the tags and download album art, which will probably take longer than the ripping.

Good luck and have fun,
Tony.

Thanks for the info' palmer. Yeah, I'm having fun with this too!

If you haven't already encountered these products, MP3Tag is a good tag editor (and it's open source). And I just downloaded Album Art Aggreagtor yesterday, which will search your music folders and find any corresponding album art.

Best,

- Jim

The best "out of the box" solution I've seen so far is the Squeezebox or their new (and more expensive) Transporter plus any big chunk of storage (Windows/OSX/Linux) you can throw at the problem. The storage doesn't have to be near the stereo as the squeezebox or transporter has ethernet and WIFI connectivity.

http://www.slimdevices.com/

So I'm on board with you. I don't have one yet, but it's a planned upgrade.

Best,

I have a couple of newbie type question with respect to devices like the squeezebox.

Does it need to have a PC up and actively streaming music to it or can it pull music from a network attached storage device? Based on what I saw on the slimdevices, website it would appear to be latter.

What advantage does a squeezebox have outside of size over a media-center type PC? Clearly the media center PC could also stream video (although I have no clue as to what type of transmission rate you would need to do this).

The Squeezebox is like a number of other similar devices in that it requires a PC to serve it files. A HTPC can offer more flexibility (both audio and video, DVD playback, and so forth), but it involves putting a potentially noisy unit in the equipment rack and can be a bit more difficult to set up. Devices like the SqueezeBox (or AppleTV and XBoxes, which are among some of the media client devices that support video as well as audio) allow you to shift everything except a (typically) quiet device. They can also be easier to set up.

Just to add my two cents...and answer a different aspect of 73Bruin's question:

There are some devices (like Sonos) that can stream music from any PC or NAS device over standard file sharing protocols. Looking at the slimdevices website it looks like the squeezebox requires that their software be installed on the system(s) with the music, which would preclude putting your music on a dedicated NAS device.

An alternative would be to have the NAS device present the music folder as a share to the system running the Slimserver software, but this would require running two systems.

Some more cents to add...

You can stream Internet radio to the Squeezebox (SB) without the PC being on. To stream your CD collection, the PC must be on with Slimserver (the software that supports SB) running. If your sound system and computer on are different floors, and you don't like the idea of running around the house to power up your system, no worries... you can configure the SB to "wake" your computer and turn on Slimserver when you power on the SB.

Regarding gonk's points, the SB is very easy to set up and is basically a plug and play unit. I know very little about computers, and it took me no time to get things up and running. Another bonus of the SB is that it handles lossless formats like FLAC and has a pretty respectable onboard DAC.

Hey Videodrome, I'm glad you're liking the SB. I've been eyeing this product for a while now. I want it more for my bedroom than anything else. My PC is fairly close (~25ft) to my stereo & is connected via a digital coax cable I bought from Bluejeans cables. This makes it easy for me to play my tunes or Internet radio in Winamp & listen on my stereo.

I've been contemplating the SB for the bedroom for some time now. I am about 20% complete in ripping ~1200 compact discs to my computer. I'm not into compression & am leaving them as .wav files. I'm using EAC to rip & have 2 Plextor PX40TSi SCSI cdroms doing the work, with a Pioneer DVD for backup (it's much slower but better with protected media).

I hope to pick up a SB very soon