Squeezebox - some questions

Or just forget about the whole Audiophile thing, just enjoy having your whole CD collection plus internet radio at your "fingertips" and start listening to loads of music......

That's what I have found the difference to be since the Squeezebox.

 

Im sold on the convenience of my entire collection ripped and automatically ABC ordered including my singles and 1 decent track albums!
I just need to know the sound will be good, but do i have to have my mac on all the time when listening?

 

Only if it is raining inside.

 

He, he.

Yes you do. Although the SB is capable of sending a signal to remotely start-up (and shut-down) a computer over the network when the SB is switched on/off. I think there's currently a slight problem with it but they are working on a fix. Try the Slim Devices Forum for an update on that.

Probably best to allow funds to get a dedicated server just for the SB though - don't cost that much really.

Maybe you should just get one SB3 to play with for a year or two until the whole Audiophile sound, SB modding situation beds in more. It won't cost that much and that original SB3 could be moved to bedroom, study, etc. if you by a new "wiz-bang" SB in the future - Slim Devices support all their devices going way back so a SB3 isn't likely to turn into an expensive paperweight in the near future.

It's been the best fun item I have bought for a long time.

 

I am getting one, so storagewise 250, 320 or 500GB? How many albums fit on say a 250? I suspect I would want to save files as uncompressed so I could burn cd's/compilations for the car from my ripped files or could the lossless compression formats be uncompressed to burn audio cd's?

 

i have about 400gb and just over 1,000 albums (stored mostly as flacs)so i'd say go for the 500gb if you can - that way you'll get about 1500 albums on there before you even have to think about expanding. the other thing is that the server you use to run slimserver can be incredibly low spec. i use an old pentium 2 500mhz with 300mb of ram under xp pro and it just sits in the corner day after day only needing a reboot if i get a power out.
if you use a router to share the internet across multiple pcs then you can use squeezenetwork which allows you to stream internet radio without the need for a pc to be running slimserver - of course you won;t be able to access your own music but it does mean you don;t have to have a pc on in order to have music.
cheers


julian.

 

would probably run it from my laptop via an external HD with monitor set to off after 5 mins then.

Assuming I use FLAC compression, is it uncompressable/convertable back to AIFF files to burn normal cds for the car?

Gotta say theres some great advice on here - THANX

 

yeah flac is lossless compression (it about halves the amount of space used by the tracks without loss of quality) that means it can recreate the wav it was created from exactly. one thing i like about flac over lossless wma and alc is that there is no drm bullsh1t to say what you can and can;t do to a track on your pc. if you have it as flac you can do what you want with it.
i use a program called foobar to do any transcoding (changing from one codec to another) for exampe i use 128bit wma for my portable audio. with foobar you just set up the conversion options , create a playlist select all the tracks, right click and select convert. it then beetles away converting from one format to another. there's a bunch of preset conversion types that you can either use straight off or customise.

 

Don't forget about back-up!

Getting the flac files takes a long time and you don't want to loss it all....

I guess a real, real cheap second external drive would do - dump you files onto that once you have done your intial marathon Flac session(s)?

 

I will probably use my AIT tape drive for backup