Let's get digital

Unfortunately UPS (after stingng me for import and bank charges, bastards ) decided that I live in a "remote" area so instead of arriving today (and me waiting in especially, bastards) it should get here tomorrow so as yet I'm afraid I don't know.

The good news is that the software is easy to use. Once I've reinput all the disks to retag the lot I'll be able to create some really flexible playlists. So on that score I'm happy. My HDD is now full, so I either have to delete all my photographs or buy a bigger drive. I know I will need a DAC at some stage but as to what I'm not sure. I reckon that if this works I'll sell my CDS2/XPS and use the proceeds for a Rega Jupiter and a DAC.

 

tom,
i bet in 6 months you'll be selling the jupiter, boxing up your cd's and reclaiming some living space.
cheers


julian

 

You're probably right.

I've just discovered that I don't have a 2 RCA -> 5 DIN lead. Rude words. It'll have to wait until after Christmas now. Not a happy bunny.

 

tom,
if you have them you could put some straight through boards into your 52 and use some bnc -> rca adpters . if not then - bummer.
cheers


julian

 

The straight through boards will work? I'll try that. Otherwise I rmembered that my DV P-75 uses Chord Cobra RCA to DIN which I can swap out for the period.

 

OK, it's in. I've had to take the TT down to use the interrconnect, the XPS fused (don't ask but can I get a T fuse in this neck of the woods?) SOund is not great but hwat did I expect.

Only two niggles at the moment. The playing order seems to insist that the last track is played before all others and more importantly there is a n interuption in streaming evry 30 seconds or so. Not good but I'm sure I'll sort it soon

 

'king typical. There was a spare fuse but I only found it after to trips to the local electricians who does sell anti surge fuses after all.

Ok. The sound is crisp but thin at the moment, no doubt a DAC will sort that out but the detail's sort of there. The ease of use thing is quite good although when I get this baby up fully I might invest in a screen/keyboard for the living room as well.

The stream interrupt is annoying. Why does it do that? Probably looking for something, maybe I can get it too stop.

 

Tom,

Sorry to see you are having a few teething problems. I am sure you will resolve them, Julian doesnt have any dropouts. Perhaps just a setting somewhere

 

I changed the performance to favour Background programmes and that seems to have smoothed things. It's probably sharing resources like Outlook.

If the next few weeks go well I'll sell the CDS2/XPS and buy a decent DAC and a new PC & HDD. That will allow my current PC to become a dedicated one job machine.

Apart from that everything looks fine. I'm struggling with Playlists but I'll sort that soon. On the whole I'm happy.

Now I'm going to need to find a decent Hi-fi dealer near Perth. Any suggestions?

 

SWMBA has just come in a said

"That's not a £3000 difference between the Squeezebox and the cd player is it"

So, that's sorted then

 

Hi Tom,
I jumped to use exact-audio-copy (EAC) to rip my CD's to flac lossless format.

It is well written that EAC does good, accurate ripping (re-reading sections until 3 times match identically), but I noticed it also preserves the silent gaps between album tracks, as silence on the end of the preceeding track.

Without this feature, all albums have their silent gaps between tracks lost when played, or even worse the player has to add, say a fixed 2-second gap for everything. That'd drive me nuts for live albums and track cross-fades.

cheers,
Rob.

 

Rob

Thanks for that. I'm using Roxio at the present but I'll check out EAC

 

tom,
i had pretty much the same initial experience when listenign to the squeezebox's own analogue outs. nice and detailed but bass and lower mids are weak. look for a dac with decent output stages - preferably a dual mono design and this will sort that out. honestly take a listen to the audio synthesis offerings and a cec dx 71 for starters.
not sure about the dropouts - how are you connecting the squeezebox - via a router or using a crossover cable? also are you sure the server isn;t trying to cache everything in sight and running out of memory. is there disk activity when a dropout occurrs - i.e. the hard drive thrashes during a dropout. is the album in question continuous or broken into songs (i've had problems with continuous mix albums broken into tracks causing small dropouts with the latest server).
glad your initial impressions are favourable. have an ask on the squeezebox forums - they can often nail the problem straight away.
cheers


julian

 

The dropouts are definitly cache related, so that can be fixed. I'm running cable through a hub which seems fine. As for DACs, I'll have to take my time but it will also depend on what's available near Perth/Montrose/Edinburgh. But judging by how good this sounds bare, just how good a DAC do I need?

SWMBA has ok'd the sale of the CDS2 to finance DAC & server. Want to buy a slightly used CDS2?XPS?

 

EAC can be a little painfull setting-up first because if offers drive-extraction offset tuning too.

I found that downloading the optional AccurateRip add-on software and finding 3 CD's I had in my collection that it already knew checksums for allowed it to automatically calibrate my DVD drive I use for ripping.

The gap feature is well worth it though, plus it's very well respected for accuracy, although I was happy with the quality audiograbber gave me before. I changed because it didn't support automatic flac tagging with long track names from CDDB and didn't retain the inter-track-gaps.

Any problems if you try it, feel free to drop me a line if I don't notice your post.
cheers,
Rob.

 

The full on bandwidth required for uncompressed CDs is 176000 bytes per second. This is trivial in modern terms. 10BaseT Ethernet should easily manage 500000 bytes per second, so in a home environment the network is not the problem. It might be worth defragmenting if you're getting disc related pauses. And I guess that any form of virtual memory paging usage will be bad, so what does Task Manager say about allocation?

CPU won't be the issue, a 386 and 15 year old SCSI technology had no problem with CD type data demands.

Paul

 

I think a near full harddrive, new software and several proagrammes all running at once was the problem. I realoctated various bits and changed some of the settings etc etc and everything settled down happily.

 

Tom, what you need is a DAC64.....like the one I'm selling here . I can be flexible on the price. PM me if you're interested.

Michael.

 

No he needs a $100 Nos special

 

It was $200 (just over £100)