pc based juke box

Taken the plunge

OK Its my birthday and since no one else was going to buy me anything decent I decided yesterday to order a Squuezebox (In fact I got a rather nice watch from Mrs Perceptive which was a real surprise!)

Anyway downloaded the Slim Server Software but which version of EAC is recommended, there seems to be loads on the EAC web site and before I downloaded I wondered if there was a ZG recommended version.

Mr Perceptive

 

I use the most recent, eac095pb5. It seems to work without anything untoward happening. I configured it to automatically convert to FLAC which saves a lot of hassle.

Good luck and enjoy.

 

While you are waiting for delivery, note you can download Softsqueeze, the Squeezebox emulator, which gives you an emulation of the Squeezebox front-panel display and its remote control on your PC screen. For example, you can use the remote control and see what it does to the display and hear the result on the PC. It even emulates the workings of plug-ins like the iTunes on-the-fly ratings plug-in. Other people not sure whether to get a Sequeezebox could have a play this way too.

When the real box arrives, Softsqueeze can sync with what is playing on the actual Squeezebox, so that you can hear in the computer room what is playing in the remote hi-fi room.

http://www.slimdevices.com/dev_plugins.html#emulators

 

Thanks Tom

Hopefully I'll get it operational today (I'm off to Chesterfield on business tomorrow at the crack of dawn), if not today I'll have to wait to the weekend

Mr Perceptive

 

Got it up and running, done a little experimenting but agree with Tom from the off the sound is pretty good (rest of system 62/SNAPS/140/Shahinian Arcs). I also have a Meridian DAC but have run out bandwidth to try this today (and the kids are watching Harry Potter on the projector). Suffered a few dropouts, but currently I'm running wireless and my main PC was doing a lot of things as well as running the SlimServer.

What is the positioning on tagging, I can get ID tags recognised on MP3 files but are struggling with them on WAV and FLAC files, are they even supported on these files. What have you done Tom and Julian

Thanks in advance

Mr Perceptive

 

I ran into trouble with this. slimserver doesn't understand FLAC (actually Vorbis tags), and my encoder was putting the ID3v1 tag at the end of the file. You need to set your encoder software so that it is adding ID3v2 tags for FLAC - the FLAC tag handling in slimserver is rather weak. [I ended up fixing the source for my encoder (jack on linux)]

 

i found that most of my dropouts were caused by my microwave oven! which is a bit scary.

i don;t actually use id tags - what are the advantages of them? i just organise the file/ directory names and use the browse music directory option to select what i want to play.
cheers


julian

 

Gentlemen

Thanks for that info, I'll try playing around with the tags with FLAC.

Julian, does your Search facility work from the Squeezebox? I assume that this uses tags to determine results. Supposing you wnat to find a track that could be on any of a dozen compilation albums, what do you do to locate it?

Regards

Mr Perceptive

PS don't possess a microwave so not the reason for dropouts, I expect it was mainly down to fact that I bunged the Slimserver software onto my main machine which does several dozen things (including running my business!). Also living in an old house I have some very thick walls!

 

I use EAC to rip the files and compress into FLAC. It removes (most) ID3 tags and replaces them with it's own which are either manually added or cribbed from CDPlayer.ini or from a "house" freedb. Seems to work well except when a) you forget to check spelling or b) it fails to remove the existing tag cleanly.

I'm still startled by the performance of my SB, still in its unDAC'd state. Some of it is nothing special and then you notice odd bits of detail or soundstage or timing which come close or surpass my old CDS2. Very happy with the move

Thanks for all the advice and help. An especially big thanks to all those who offered free dems and loan of kit. Your generosity has really touched me.

 

mr p,
the search facility works with some tunes and not with others. i seem to be ripping id3 tags (v2) but as you say it's flaky. not that i've noticed - i tent to browse through my collection and pick stuff.
have you tried the moodlogic stuff?

tom,
the biggest dissapointment i had with a naked squeezebox was the lack of bass impact compared to my cd5 / hicap. depth was ok it just seemed to wilt if it was asked to supply lots of sustained bass and as a lot of the music i listen to had very fast, very deep bass this just played to the sbox's weakness.
cheers


julian

 

Automation (I have a 200 disc firewire autochanger for ripping ). So, I just script

$ jack -q

and it rips the CD, FLACates it, does a freedb lookup and then labels the .flac files, renames all the flac files into "Artist - Album - trac # - track title", and then places that directory into
Artist/Album/Track directory structure.

The slimserver then traverses this and reads the Tags into it's database - and I beleive the searching is based on tags..

I'm also considering using the CD (unique) ID to snarf the cover artwork from amazon as I'd much rather browse the album covers to find what I'm looking for (and sometime I hope to be able to just type in some lyrics that are floating in my head and have the right thing happen).

 

Tom,

How have you configured the External Compression tab of the Compression options dialog? I can't seem to get the FLAC codec to be recognized. EAC just always defaults to the WAV file defaults.

I've installed FLAC in the default location and pointed EAC at the flac.exe file in that location. I'm not sure what to select for the parameter passing scheme. What have you got on your External Compression tab?

Thanks for any help.

-Peter

 

plz,
for parameters i use

-8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s

with bit rate set to 320 - just in case but this shouldn't matter
and all the other boxes ticked and the high quality radio button selected.

if that's any help
cheers


julian

 

Some excellent instructions can be found Here

Julian - what does the -8 do?

 

iirc flac has a compression setting so that you can balance file size vs compression time. the -8 means that it will try to compress the file by the most it possibly can but it could take a while. in reality on my 1.5ghz pentium m it's pretty swift. the default is -5 although i doubt the difference is massive.
cheers


julian

 

just saw this on the flac site which made me laugh...

one way of looking at i i guess....

cheers


julian

 

If one of you tight gits just bought a ruku, all this issue of tags and shit would surely be sorted out, or am I missing something (the ruku works seamlessly with itunes)

In context its only 50 quid more, with all the money you people are apparently saving, 50 quid should be a breeze.

Over a short period of time, its gone from expensive hifi > knee jerk reaction > cheapest shit money can buy.

 

gary,
if you want to be locked into apples idea of copy protection and therefore open to steve job's whim to charge you to play music you've already bought on your ipod then fine use itunes and apple lossless - read the fine print they can change their licensing agreement whenever they want thus restricting the hardware you can play your tunes on. if you don;t mind a bit of extra fiddling in order to use a format that's open source and devoid of copy protection noise (as in spurious information contained in the file not audio) then use flac and put up with the occasional tag issue. can;t say it's really bothered me other than academically and then only for aobut 5 minutes.
iirc the roku is just the squeezebox hardware in drag anyway - hence the ability to use slimserver, also the squeezebox can use itunes too if you want to but i didn;t for the reasons outlined above.

as for it being cheap shit? well it's cheap and some think the cdx2 / cds are shit so you're probably right

cheers


julian

 

Ha ha fair enough.

I thought however part of this whole PC based philosophy is the convenience of it, it hardly seems that way if you have to adjust every track that you import, it infact sounds like a right PITA.

 

You don't have to adjust anything. The basics are all there. If you want to add info you can. But once the framework is sorted then even that is pretty straight forward.

As for cost, the money I make from my CDS2 will be plowed back into a larger HDD & DAC. The aim is to improve on what I already had and that seems a dead cert