Squeezebox

"I don't think Rob is going on the attack! Hes just adding his 2cents "

...hmmm could have fooled me.....have heared that stuff many a time before.

edit ..as below!

No, Simon I hear what you say.

I must say I am uncomfortable about whats happening to music......I feel that standards of production are dropping ....and this squeeze box idea is just symptomatic of the whole thing. Also really I can't see such an atraction to having everthing on you computer or whatever. Surely picking up a cd is not that big a deal? Perhapts others have got more in their collection than me.

It seems to me that hifi goes through its revolutions........70s with its horrible graphic equalizers.........then nad suddenly recognised people wanted a minimalist/ audio approach with the 3020 amp (altough I had one and promptly returned it)...and the mimimalist thing continued through the 90s.....

NOw people are sold on this harddrive idea......so we've gone the other way now??

It also seems a helf way house to mp3s and the dreaded compression......though as I have said before I don't pretend to understand it all.

Thanks for the invite, though not for now, with mum and dad on the move and stuff.......something perhps for the a bit? Thanks again.



edit

"However, the levels of difference in CD or computer streaming are so small I wouldn't have expected it to be the point of contention for you, with the kit you use."

....as you know I am a keen "tweaker"....so any such loss very much goes against the grain imo!!

 

then my apologies!

 

David... why would there be a loss from cd to computer and computer to squeezebox?

its a CD its just full of digital data.... and unlike a normal CD player, during the ripping process it will read and read and read until it gets every single last it of data off that disc.

In fact you could argue that its actually a great deal more accurate than your average cd player, as it wont just skim over small problems, it will re-read and correct them.

Then its stored bit for bit on a hard disk, and then sent over an ethernet network, which checks every bit of data again at each end to verify integrity, the only place where theres possibility of loss, is between the digital output of the squeezebox and your DAC, but then thats no worse than any transport.

I believe that theres every possibility that a squeezebox (or something similar) could be better than a cd transport, as its not relying on the real-time reading of a disc via optics which as good as they may be, are not infallible.

 

a) from (some) reports of those that use them.

b) I find it diffficult to beleive that you make that transistion


cd to hardrive ....then play off the hard drive to your hifi (thats two moves surely?).... ...without some loss.

I know theoretcally it is suppose to be lossless.....but i remain to be convinced.

 

i think your confusing the method of compressing the music with digital loss by transmission.

remember.. its just digital data, its copied exactly to the hard disk.... this isnt like analogue, theres no noise floor or dynamic range limitations, its just information. A 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0, its copied and moved around as such.

If i send you a photo on an email, and you save it to your hard disk, and then send it on again, and again and again, does the photo lose quality? of course it doesnt, its just data, and its the exact same with music files.

In a system such as that there will be NO loss via transmission. The only loss could be if the apple lossless or WMA lossless formats (or flac if that floats your boat) were in fact lossy in some way. I can detect no such loss.

But if your that paranoid about it.. use WAV files, which although large are exact copies of your CD, bit for bit.

The rest of the chain is all error corrected and verified during and after tranmission. Loss is practically impossible.

I can detect no difference in quality between my dad3 used as a transport and the squeezebox used as a transport. If anything the squeezebox to me has a more substantial bottom end with more weight where perhaps the cyrus transport is a little thinner.

 

Knowing Rob in person, I assure you he is pretty easy going. While he holds his own strong opinions he rarely takes forum talk for more than its worth

Back to topic, if you take it for granted (as I do) that the steps up to the streaming device are bit for bit perfect (as Shrink says they are data verified) then its really not much different from a CD transport connected to a DAC. Feel free to mod a new PSU for your Apple Airport, upgrade the clock, or put your squeeze box on cones, swap capacitors, diodes, add case damping you name it!

If you think there is degradation in the stages before the streaming device feeds the data to the DAC, then I don't think you really have a solid argument there. Digital music is just data, and computers work with this day in and day out, its what they are made of! I suppose the programming of how the data is handled can make a difference but unless EQ or other fancy processing is involved it should be a simple matter to send the data bit for bit and then let the streaming device feed it out at a steady rate dictated by its clock.

I hear what you are saying about it being the road towards all music being poor quality compressed crap... but really that is another topic than the hardware solution itself.

Personally I'm happy with CDs though. I like sliding the acrylic lid on my top loading transport, with gentle blue LEDs inside, waiting for the disc to move back to center potion (disc moves, not laser) then taking the magnetic puck off the top. Its very cool!

 

I bought a SB3.... and an Entech 205.2 DAC.... ripped all my discs with EAC to an ext USB drive... modded the DAC with Rubycon ZA caps, Black Gate BG NX Hi-Q, MUR860 diodes etc... got to put some good regs in soon though.... done a big psu for it...

MUCH BETTER than ANY player I have heard. I wont be going back.

 

i think under the right circumstances, a squeezebox is a cheap entry into the sound quality available from a very high end cd transport. The squeezebox manages to keep up well (with a modded PSU) with a Meridian G98 transport, which is no slouch in the disc spinning department.

Squeezebox combo £400

Meridian £3500

so sound for pound, its hard to beat.

 

good point

this is the point

I was always lead to believe there IS some loss....how ever small

We all do it, and I have to say i have never noticed any thing....but the word was there ARE losses (perhpts incorrectly ) in compression.......

perhpts i AM paranoid about it

I grew up in the 80s when the minimalist appproach was used.

ie no tones controls etc

interesting.....good

I guess my surprise is that so many people have chosen to go down the convenince avenue.....(is that not the right way of expressing it?)....again perhapts hang over of 80s ideas.

Thanks very much for taking the time to fill in a bit of the technical info!

 

yes.....def.

absolutely.

ok.....

again , tvm.

 

......problem??

I apologised for my abruptness a couple of posts go.......(or meant to!)

 

ah yes the old chestnuts of lossless compression being lossy in some way and network transmission causing losses. if this was the case then zip files would break and you'd not be able to get any money (or more money than you have) out of an atm. next it'll be that wireless sounds worse than wired. i've been rocking a squeezebox for 3+ years now - the sb1 had problems with flac and jitter thanks to the chip used internally. the sb2 resolved that issue - this was clearly demonstrated by the dual locking mechanism employed by my dac. 1 for jittery signals and one for those with little or no jitter. the sb 1 triggered the first and sounded worse than the dedicated transports used at a bakeoff. the sb 2 uses the latter and sounds sublime. as for all the reactionary stuff about 'effort' and 'tactility of cd's' i remember the same waz being spouted about vinyl vs cd. the potential for hdd / internet connected systems puts even vinyl's gatefolds in the shade. use a pda and some plugins with slimserver and you can browse through lyrics, biographical data, album history, even buy related works on amazon or wherever whilst listening to a bit of music. frankly hdd audio IS the future and kicks physical media's arse in all ways (yes even quality if you get hold of master quality stuff from places like linn).
sorry but its jsut the way it is. stick with cd's or vinyl if you want but i'd rather have a load more room in my shoebox accommodation with no sonic compromise and a ton of extra features then have cd's or vinyl taking over my living space with no conceivable benefits that i can think of.

 

Julian, I know you've been away for a while, so if you need help to find the "new paragraph" key, please shout..

 

I still think vinyl has a lot to offer....

really?

...er, would you want to?

seems to be

What extra features do you want?

Surely, the play button is the important part??

this actually i can get down to...

 

sorry Dev, consider my wrists slapped for bad paragraph construction.

david,
one of the laments by vinylistas is the lack of readable information on a cd sleve. usually this information is lyrics, concept behind the album, history of the band, some waffle by a rolling stone writer about the artist, and an order form for some of their other works. all of this is available on the internet and can provide links to other information about the band, album, etc.
imagine being able to recreate the programme 'rock family trees' for every album you own - or the information anyway - it's a great way of discovering music.
A realworld example of this would be simon posford and shpongle - a few years back this was the 'in' group at bakeoffs and demos for the forum cogniscenti. i liked them when i heard them and bought are you shpongled, a bit of interwebbery and i discovered that the guy behind shpongle was also behind 3 or 4 other groups, collectives and was a prolific producer and so found new music i'd otherwise have been unaware of. now imagine rather than googling for it you just tap a bit on some links on your 'remote control', find out about it, maybe even download a track or 2 and have a listen then order the album if you like it.
how can that NOT be a good thing?

extra features?
how about being able to recreate a year from your younger days, say reliving that bad decision in 1984 when you thought being a goth was cool and havingg a night of only music from that period just at the pres of 2 or 3 buttons. perhaps you have a tune running through your head, you know you've got it somewhere and know it's a particular genre, so again with only a few taps you play all the tunes in that genre you own.
maybe access to master quality recordings is important to you.

overall for me (lossles) hdd audio treated with respect (i.e. through a decent system) has helped me expand my music collection into areas i'd not have even thought of, allowed me to experience it in new and interesting ways and most of all let me listen to more music.
hope that clarifies my points, i understand that everyones priorities are different and that some dislike the non physical aspect of this but once you start to understand the incredible benifits of this it makes listening to music a far more enjoyable and involving experience than putting on a cd or vinyl and just listening - although of course you can do that too

 

Hardly an important aspect (ime).

I would be more intertsed in the soundstaging benfits and abiliities of vinyl.

if thats what floats your boat, fine.

again, if thats your thing!

I haven't heared of them! (so can't really comment)

well ok , thats sounds neat enough.

Hey, musics a spontaneous thing surely??

YOu don't pre plan (into a list) what you are going to listen to in an evening ??

often, yes.

Its usually driving me nuts.

intersting idea i grant you, but again pre planning ....

could be if it ups the sonics

well if it works for you

I guess.....

some.....

Thanks, Julian , for taking the time to write this.

I think we have differnet priorities here ...thats the simplified way of putting it.

I don't think I'd be intereted in doing what you describe above(your an electronics man?).......but as you know I get a lot of fun out of tweaking (which gets me ino enormous trouble with certain members ). What everdoes it for you I guess.....thanks again for taking this trouble. I do still have concerns as Simon hinted at above, that this is symptomatic of a dumbing down of audio quality ......but as Simon says maybe I've two scenarios confused.

If it was me with £xx amount of money to spend on hifi....it still wouldbn't be a squeeze box. I would be looking at a way of extracting more musiical clarity and information out of my existing system (better valves, better speakers, even better cd player perhpts). It might sound trite but when i succeed (to me) its bl**dy marvelous............thats hifi to me!



Cheers,


David.

 

own quote.....

"I would be looking at a way of extracting more musiical clarity and information out of my existing system "

Have i missed a point here?

Are squeeze boxes predicted to eclipse cd players for sonics in the future?

 

at the end of the day all i'm interested in is enjoying the music however this comes in many flavours, just as some enjoy tweaking the hardware (as i have done in the past) others enjoy the history of the bands they listen to and / or the relationships between them. whatever floats your boat.

as for dumbing down music i really think this is at best a misunderstanding and at worst misguided rhetoric. hdd audio done properly has zero disadvantage over physical media (except perhaps simons point about being able to just bung in a cd and listen if you've just bought it - although waiting 10 minutes to rip it is not really that much of a hardship - especially as i've spent that long searching my cd collection looking for a single disk that i was after).
one american mag recently ran a feature on audio servers and came to the conclusion that they were BETTER than most high end cd players (absolute sound). mainly due to bit perfect ripping and the necessity for ram buffers due to networking protocols. i'd also add that a network transport has zero moving parts so isn;t introducing the vibration inherent in spinning a disk at high velocity into your hi-fi rack and thence your microphonic valves, etc...
before moving to hdd audio i auditioned a number of cd players , naim cdx2, cec 51 dx combo, moon audio and others, they all sounded great and would have been good for the circa 3k i was willing to spend. then on a whim i bought a squeezebox and dax-2 this was just as good for under 1k. then when the sb2 was realeased i had one of the first ones in the country - and a free pony too - in the near 3 years i've had it i've not once thought of changing it.

as for listening to music being spontaneous i don;t understand your problem, you can be just as spontaneous with hdd audio - more so even as the ability to browse and change your mind is far easier than with physical audio, but sometimes it's nice to run with a theme - say the works of a particular composer or producer or year. you may even discoverthat a piece of music you liked on an otherwise lacklustre album was due to the input of a particular industry luminary, or that certain songs you like have common writers etc. giving you more ability to try new music in conidence. with hdd audio you have the choice and THATS what it's about.
it may be a little daunting to set up if you are not confident with computers or whatnot (no shame in that) but there are a number of turnkey solutions out there and any competant 'pc doctor' from the local paper could set one up in about 1/2 an hour and would charge maybe £30 or so.
the thing i object to really is the idea that hdd audio is somehow inferior to physical audio either because it's easier to use (and therefore has less worth) or worse that it somehow pollutes the music - this last one really gets my back up - it shouldn;t though as those who use this argument are usually woefully misinformed about network transport, lossless compression and should perhaps do a little investigation before speaking.

sorry if i'm on a rant but i'm feeling a bit evangelical this evening.

 

Shuggie
Hi, interesting, I also have the Lyngdorf cdp.... I think its impossible even to compare a network gadget to such a perfect cd player
I just sold an excellent Lavry da 10 dac. I sold it exactly as after I upgraded the cdp to Lyngdorf, I no longer needed the Lavry. I only used it as a sort of headphone amp to listen to high res files from my hdd.
So I am now looking for a cheaper way to get music from my pc in the bedroom to the hifi rig in the living room...
the squeezebox is one possibility.
but I am in two minds, as I view this product more as an ICT gadget rather than hifi, not even cheap hifi.
I expect its going to play like some sort of an mp3 player with wifi and remote control capability...
With due respect to the upgrade power supply...
to me it seems like a pricey upgrade to a gadget
I would then rather have got the Lavry modded with a decent power supply.
But then it would be harder to sell...apology for the confused posting, just thinking aloud.
I got used to having a DAC in the house..it just is cool to have the capability of converting 0s and 1s to music.
but I dont trust the analog side of squeezebox, its too cheap for that..
I trust the IT side, the ethernet and the wifi and the digital outputs of it.
That leaves me with linking it to a dac...
shame the Lyngdorf does not have a digital input...

 

there is a Harman kardon cd player, i am told it can be used as a quality dac...