Technology advances

I really like the look of this product.

http://www.rokulabs.com/

I don't see it being much use to me in our current location, but in the future for a bed room system I can see this as being a sound purchse. All my music in the mac, fed via cable (or if it sounds good wifi) into the bedroom. From this device I can choose what tracks I want, its fully compatible with itunes.

A little update on my musings.

Storage: Harddrive from Dabs. Its the wrong one. This is may fault I ordered the wrong one. However this company so far has been a load of crap. I have requested a return and sent numerous emails. In a week I have had nothing back from them at all. Whats worse they don't appear to have a phone number. One of my criteria for online purchases is a phone number, however I was suckered in with the price (£5 cheaper than elsewhere god help me)
So basically I am left with a ATA 133 200gig harddrive if anyone is interested!

I have now ordered the correct 200gig harddrive. This will be the basis for the itunes library as all the music will be uncompressed, or at the most minimum compression.

Access This will be via an application called itunes catlog. What this does is search my itunes library, it then goes on line and finds all the covers. It then creates a HTML file of my music, which I can access from my browser:



This is what I currently have under A in my itunes library. Where I have more than one album by the same artist it will pick a cover. I then click a cover and it goes to the playlist. Click the track I want and it will begin playing.

Of course if I know what I want I can access direct from itunes

Output Is via Optical out directly from the G5. This will be going down 10 metres of toslink cable which is winging its way from Germany into an Arcam Black Box 3. from there its a short interconnect into the CD in on the 52.

other perks Because of the G5/OSX true multi tasking even with heavy stuff going on in photo shop etc, music does not skip, jump or in any way misbehave. Because the system allows various sound sources I can have itunes playing out of the hifi but all system sounds/any other noise plays out of the mac sound sticks

If I discount the cost of the mac (I would have it any way) This is a resonably cheap solution

Itunes will be able to have all that scolastic graphics going on in time with the music (I want to be able to output this to the TV, is this possible?)

Downsides I havn't been able to play with the arcam yet as I don't have it or the toslink, but I am fairly sure it isn't a DAC64 killer, and Merlin has got that little beauty tatoeed in my mind.

The ipod will soon be stuffed with uncompressed CDs, so I am going to have to either create a new account and import CDs twice, once for the mac once for ipod, or I am going to have convert all the imported CDS into AAC and have two of each file in itunes, this could get messy I haven't even started importing the CDs and I am at 4000 songs.

So is anyone else considering or trying this solution? I can't wait, if there is a god by Saturday all the pices will be in place (And a long time importing all my CDs!)

 

LOL they use the software from the Squeezebox for the server, check out :-

http://lists.slimdevices.com/archives/discuss/2004-January/008323.html

 

Sgt, your link doesn't go anywhere.

I liked the idea of the squeese box, but I like the looks of the roku!

 

http://lists.slimdevices.com/archives/discuss/2004-January/008323.html

Sorry I've been dazzled by blu LED's

 

Yup, I'd agree the Roku looks nice, the only drawback is that the wi-fi is extra.

 

the squeezebox is only wireless 'b' standard which can drop the overall network speed on some networks. i'm on the verge of going in a similar direction to gary however if i go for a squeezebox i'd probably go with a wired version and plug it into a wireless 'g' bridge. that way i wouldn;t shaft the rest of my 'g' networks speed.
cheers


julian

 

I've just bought an old G3 that's going to be used as a media/playaround box. I'm more than happy with my PC for music, but i want to have a play with OSX

for now it'll be grabbing the music stored on the PC, but plans to upgrade the paltry 4Gb drive will be in order.





P.S. Gary, what are the details of that hard drive? (PM/mail me if you like)

 

Julian,

You don't loose much bandwidth when you use your access-point in 802.11b/g mixed mode.

I wouldn't worry too much about it and I don't think there are many of the older ethernet only ones left.

 

Garyi

Interesting that one can do all these clever jukebox things with the (now!!) G5 - goodness you must change your computers faster than I change my underwear!

What intrigues me, is the why?

Does all this work provide a solution otherwise unobtainable, or is it cheaper and more convenient to go about it the way you're doing.

Is the desired result one of merely convenience, as in the computer equivalent of a carousel CD player, or are you planning on selling your LP12 and Naim CD player sometime soon?

How do HD based music 'servers' fare on the sound quality side of things for 'serious' listening?

Best

John...

 

John.

Merlin kindly came round with a DAC 64 we played some uncompressed imported music from the MAC and the same track through the CDi.

The CDplayer did not favour well in comparison, as such I sold it the next day in order to finance my move to the mac.

The Mac has built in digital optical out, for me its a no brainer.

However I won't be getting rid of the LP12 any time soon

 

I thought the Mac/Dac64 combo was excellent.

I have now got my setup running (after installation issues) I'm using a Powerbook's firewire out into an M Audio Firewire Audiophile. This little box accepts digital audio via firewire and either converts to analogue (the inexpensive option) onboard, or offers SPDIF out to an off board Dac.

Well comparing Santana's "Shamen" ripped to the Mac as a WAV file to the same CD playing through the Denon 2900 was realitevly easy. So how does it compare through a very revealing system?

Well, once adjusted for a level discrepancy (about 4db), it was next to impossible to tell them apart, certainly nothing I could be sure wasn't due to the different cables employed. If anything the M Audio offers greater bass weight at the cost of a slight loss of openess. It is very musical.

Put into perspective, I'd say it would easily hold it's own against a £500 CD player, which is a great result given the added convenience of direct access to my whole collection and the shuffle modes.

Recommended then, at only £199 it's a steal.

 

Got to be honest - whether I used a Mac (I don't) or a PC, the amount of agro archiving all my CDs just isn't worth it. Plus it keeps me fit getting off my arse to change CDs...

That said, does ANYONE know if the Japs ever made a vinyl jukebox that can handle LPs???? Since Technics linear trackers can do clever things like track skip, I wander if there's a jukey out there that can take albums. After all, there are DVD and Laserdisc jukeboxes in the wild, so I guess anything's possible...

Gary - here's the sound of a can of worms being opened...

How much noise (both electrical and mechanical) does the Mac dump out into the room/mains? With the Naim amps, surely having the PC connected to the mains at all screws the sound considerably??

 

Like some sort of massive irony back lash my mac is playing up! The main fan has begun droning, so I have to take it to shop to be fixed.

When this wasn't a problem phyiscal noise from the mac was not an issue for me (Merlin?)


As for electrical bound noise, well in my current local this is not an issue. I live right outside a main road, the fridge, cooker and TV are all on the same ring as the hifi and computer. If there is noise getting in I don't hear it.

Lets put it this way there is no obvious noise, such as at work where if I have a white screen open on this computer the radio begins to distort, if I close it the radio comes back.

In terms of archieving the CDs, yes I anticiapte this is going to take a long time. However itunes has a preference, you insert a CD, it automatically imports in the back ground then spits the CD out ready for the next one, with a little ting to say its done. As such I can have a stack of CDs next to me when I am surfing etc so in the short term this is not a problem. Of course once they are on all I have to do is every time I buy a CD stick it straight in the mac.

Its important to point out that I won't be using a DAC64 with this set up so i'll get back to you all once we are up and runnning with the relative quality, it will be then up to someone to bring round their Uber CDP to see if they can hear the differences!

 

Garyi said.

Goodness - impressive indeed.

I have a CDI, and I've yet to hear anything better it musically, except another, better Naim CD player, so that sounds a very impressive result indeed.

It's very interesting also, in that what with record company politics, that music downloaded and delivered by a HD server, could well be the distribution method of music in the not to distant future.

Certainly things are changing very rapidly.

I daresay I couldn't achieve a similar result via my iMac, unless via firewire or suchlike, as i would think using the headphone analogue output would sound pretty naff, not that I've bothered to try.

Will be most interested to hear how all this turns out.

Good luck with it all

Best

John....

 

hi John. The analoge output on the mac is nothing to write home about either. Its the optical output that brings it alive. The reason being is that it by passes the interl digital amplification, i.e. once plugged in the volume control on the mac is disabled. This made all the difference