Linksys Music Bridge

Yesterday I linked my library of music on my PC to my home theater anchored by my 990. I installed a Linksys Music Bridge that allows you to hear music played on any PC music player on your HT. I know some of the Outlaw gang have used similar products with great success. I can report great success with the Music Bridge. It requires that you have a wireless router and since I had already had a Linksys router for internet access on my kid's computers I went with the same brand. One of the cool things about the Music Bridge is that it has analog, plus optical and coaxial digital inputs. With the abundance of optical inputs on the 990 I chose to use an optical input.

It is extremely convenient to sit at the computer and quickly put together a play list that sounds so fine on the my system. I doubt I'll be burning many CDs in the future. So far I like the sound from the iTunes player the best. I have tried Sony's SonicStage and MusicMatch and they didn't have the quality of iTunes.

FYI, I tried an Apple Airport Express first. I should have known that mixing Apple and PC equipment (oranges?) was asking for trouble. The Apple's WEP security settings were not compatible with my Linksys router even after three sessions with the Apple techs. I'm sure the Apple has worked well for some folks. As it turns out I like the flexibility to use any player verus being required to use iTunes with the Airport Express. Another bonus: the Music Bridge was $100 and so $30 less than the Apple.

Gotta love all those inputs on the 990! It is fun to find new ways to use them.

Thanks for the info, AvFan - I've considered something along these lines several times, and am still mulling over options. I'll probably do something in the next year or so (possibly using my Linksys wireless router to connect the device). I'm also planning to run some Cat5e or Cat6 from my desk to behind the equipment rack some time this spring because I suspect that having a 100baseT or 1000baseT connection may be useful in the next few years.

That's pretty cool AVFan.

I'll have to look into that.

I was interested in the Net Tunes functionality offered on some of the Onkyo pieces, but used the USB connection on the 990 to do much the same thing.

Not exactly 100% elegant though as I have to manually change the audio source in the Control Panel every time I want to play music from the PC to the 990.

Haven't seen a way to choose this in a multimedia app such as iTunes or Yahoo's Music Engine (which I like to use with Launchcast).

gonk,

I wish I could run some Cat5 between my equipment and computer. I had the chance three years ago when I remodeled the family room/kitchen and I had a lot of drywall removed to run new electrical. At that time I ran all my speaker wires and plasma interconnects. If you can run the wire I'd suggest it. In the interim the Music Bridge will handle many of your music needs.

I think we have all noticed the merging of computers and home theater/entertainment: the USB port on the 990, upgradable pre/pro software, burning CDs and DVDs on the computer, etc. Dedicated CAT wire would make that process smoother. My little foray linking my PC and HT is probably the first step of many in years to come.

I intend to do some A-B testing between CDs on my universal player and the same music via the Music Bridge. The MB using iTunes was pretty impressive after a couple of minor tweaks to the iTunes equalizer; Dave Matthews, Live at Luther College, sounded fantastic. If its really good it could delay my purchase of a dedicated CD player...or maybe not. Ahh, the addiction continues!

BloggingITGuy,

Yeah, the Music Bridge has been one of those "Wow" things for me (right behind the 990/ATI 2005 sound). Flexibility, convenience, saving the planet by using fewer CDs....its all good. I connected the MB to the fourth optical input using the AUX audio spot and then programmed my Harmony 880 for an activity just to receive the digital signal from the MB. After the MB install its a pretty straight forward approach. Marc Broussard's album (I'm showing my age!) Carencro is getting a test run as I type. Very nice.

I'm going to have to investigate one of these. I've just finished up my 2TB media server. I'm planning on ripping about 2000 of my CDs into 320kb MP3 files and all the kids' videos into mp4 format. Hopefully, that will clear up the clutter in the living room.

I had been thinking of using a run of coax (for SPDIF output) and a long DVI video cable from the server. Too bad the Linksys doesn't also handle video. Now THAT would be cool!

It wasn't that long ago that I was scraping together $1200 for a 4gig SCSI drive so I could retain a week of usenet articles on my unix box. Now that's enough to buy 2TB of (much faster) storage. Tempus fugit...

Cheers,

uShare is a free Universal Plug and Play media sharing gizmo for Linux, or the players come bundled with Win32 solutions.

Just thought I'd take a few minutes to provide my impressions on how the Music Bridge sounds. For my test the 990 was set to Bypass for both CDs and PC music, I used my Pioneer universal player for CDs and iTunes for PC music. I was able to sync the songs fairly well and used the 990 remote to switch between inputs. Let me first say that previously I found out I prefered Bypass mode when listening to CDs. The sound was a little "smoother".

For causal listening I'll be using the Music Bridge. The slightly lower quality of the sound is offset by the convenience of the iTunes player. One thing to note; iTunes boosts the lower frequencies even with their equalizer set flat. If you use iTunes you will probably want to adjust the equalizer to your taste. The CDs from my Pioneer had more detail, particularly in the mid-range, so when I devote time to sit and just listen to music I'll keep using CDs on the Pioneer.

One of the very pleasant surprises of the 990 has been its ability to tackle 2 channel music. Many others have posted similar experiences. The Music Bridge (or any other similar product) is a nice way to improve the convenience of listening to music.

P.S. The percentage of time I now listen to music exceeds movies by a long shot and I now find myself considering a 2 channel system. But that's for another post (Suggested Outlaw Products?).