[minya]

Quote:

Originally posted by Super-Gonzo I've pre-ordered a RokuLabs SoundBridge M1000, (the smaller model.) It should be here by the end of the month. Are there enough interested head-fier's out there to justify a review of the unit once it gets here?

Absolutely. Please do give me your thoughts on it.

- Chris

 

[iamdone]

I knew it was going to be delayed (gives me more time to rip my whole library) but I finally got an email from them. He's what I got.

You are receiving this email because according to our records, you
placed a pre-order for the Roku SoundBridge on Roku's web site. First of
all, thanks for your order. We're working very hard to make the product
as stable and feature-filled in the first release as possible.

As you know, we promised that this product would begin shipping on
March 15. Unfortunately, our shipping date has been moved back to mid to
late April. At that time, the product will begin shipping in the order
that incoming orders were received by Roku. Of course, we won't charge
your credit card until your product actually ships. We sincerely
apologize for the delay but we're confident you'll agree a better product will
have been worth the wait.

 

[Super-Gonzo]

Quote:

Originally posted by iamdone I knew it was going to be delayed (gives me more time to rip my whole library) but I finally got an email from them. He's what I got. ...

Ha, I just got the same e-mail, and had the same thought. I'm only half way through ripping my collection to flac. Its a nightly ritual at this point: eat dinner... rip disc... watch tv... rip disc... take a dump... you get the idea.

 

[iamdone]

Yeah my pc got a virus and I lost everything so I had to start fresh a few weeks ago. I'm moving soon, so I've be trying to copy my roommate's cd collection of about 500 cds before I leave. I'll probably skip some of his stuff but still end up with about 350. I then will need to work on my own collection of 350 cds. I'm using AIFF files, so it only takes about 3 minutes a cd to rip and I have about 400 GB of space to work with. I'd use FLAC if ipod and itunes supported it.

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally posted by Super-Gonzo rip disc... take a dump... you get the idea.

coughtoomuchinformationcough!

I think I will try to mod a Mini-ITX board for a dedicated music PC.

-Ed

 

[erl]

One cool feature of the SlimServer software is the ability to stream the music on your server at home over the internet to a music player anywhere.

I listen to my music collection at home by connecting an MP3 player to my home machine by http://<machine>:9000/stream.mp3 (Password protected). Then I control the song selection etc with the web interface. I believe the SlimServer transcodes whatever format the song is in (such as flac) to MP3.

I have the original SliMP3 player, by the way.

One tip is to really think about how to tag your music files before you rip them if you want to browse by ID3 tags. Especially for Classical music decide how you want to handle composer/orchestra/conductor, what genres to use (only Classical, or Classical/Symphony/Chamber). Test how the SlimServer handles the various extended tags for these purposes.

 

[iamdone]

The nice thing about the software is it also interfaces with iTunes. So if you use this, you should already have the tags setup correctly. It also reads the hidden AIFF tags that iTunes uses.

I believe Roku is will use the slimserver software but custimize it for it's own use. I don't know if the holdup is hardware or software related.

 

[Super-Gonzo]

Quote:

Originally posted by erl I believe the SlimServer transcodes whatever format the song is in (such as flac) to MP3.

FYI, we discussed transcoding ealier in this thread, see the squeezebox FAQ for more info on supported streaming formats:

http://www.slimp3.com/pi_faq.html#formats-compression

it does not necessarily transcode to MP3, although it has that ability.

 

[iamdone]

Yeah, the transcoding is only for playing over the internet.

Over a home server, it plays it in whatever format your have it in, thus letting lossless files remain lossless.

 

[Cacophony]

as a related question, anybody know a good way to edit FLAC tags once EAC has stamped them? a good non-command line way, preferably.

 

[BO(V)BZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by Cacophony as a related question, anybody know a good way to edit FLAC tags once EAC has stamped them? a good non-command line way, preferably.

I use foobar2000. It has a FreeDB plugin, to save any actual work, and if that fails, you can always enter tag info using the masstagger, which lets you guess tags from filenames, fill in artists/genre/album/etc for all files at once.

Admittedly, foobar has a pretty big learning curve, but it's really worth learning how to do. It can do anything audio-related besides rip CD's [I'm waiting for an EAC plugin, then I would never have to use another program for audio files again =]

 

[Super-Gonzo]

Well, after being strung along by Roku over the last several months, and receiving yet ANOTHER postponed release date, I've cancelled my pre-order with them.

I'm ordering a Squeezebox intsead. The Soundbridge was promising, nice looking unit, but given the problems they've had releasing it, I've decided it was more trouble than it was worth.

On the plus side, several people have hacked Squeezeboxes... maybe I'll make a nice 17" case with a PPA, AOS DAC, and a Squeezebox wired into the whole mess. That'd be pretty cool.

 

[iamdone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Super-Gonzo Well, after being strung along by Roku over the last several months, and receiving yet ANOTHER postponed release date, I've cancelled my pre-order with them. I'm ordering a Squeezebox intsead. The Soundbridge was promising, nice looking unit, but given the problems they've had releasing it, I've decided it was more trouble than it was worth. On the plus side, several people have hacked Squeezeboxes... maybe I'll make a nice 17" case with a PPA, AOS DAC, and a Squeezebox wired into the whole mess. That'd be pretty cool.

I was wondering what to do as well. I think I'm going to hang on one more month. I looks like the Roku has much better output specs and I would not need a seperate DAC like you would with the Squeezebox. Plus the Squeezebox cost a little more if you want wireless.

I wonder what the holdup is since. I looks like they had a working proto-type working in Jan. I didn't even get an email notification yet.

 

[Cacophony]

I'm still very happy with my Squeezebox system (mostly unchanged since described above in this thread), but I've been experiencing some issues that I thought people might be interested in hearing about.

My original system had the squeezebox on my primary wireless network, served by an 802.11g router/firewall/ap by Netgear (the WGT624U). I DO NOT recommend purchasing this router. It's been spontaneously rebooting every few hours, which is frustrating when streaming or just when surfing. There are several threads around the web where other people are confirming that this is an endemic problem with this router.

I was noticing that it would happen especially frequently when I was streaming FLACs to the squeezebox (I believe it's actually decompressing into WAV and streaming those). I decided to take a spare old Apple Airport AP and set it up as a dedicated audio wireless network, set to a channel at the other end of the spectrum. Of course, it's still hooked into the Netgear router, so it still takes a hit when that goes down.

Now I'm finding something even more frustrating...when I'm streaming FLAC/WAV to the squeezebox over wireless network A, and I'm trying to stream video from wireless network B, the squeezebox cache empties and it becomes impossible to stream music. I think the netgear router's switch is simply incapable of handling two relatively high bandwidth streams at once without incurring serious packet loss.

Now I'm thinking I need to build an entirely distinct subnet for the music server and squeezebox, with a dedicated switch.

Anybody else having problems with consumer-level switches like this?

 

[Super-Gonzo]

I've already got a outboard DAC I can use when the squeezebox arrives, so no problem there. I was mostly interested in the better display that either of the soundbridges had over the squeezebox. I suppose I could always get a wireless pda if I end up hating the UI.

The biggest motivation to switch though, was a concern for Roku as a company, rather than the late release date. Shifting release dates indicate problems internally (whether from poor planning or technical difficulty) and I can't help but wonder how they will handle bugfixes, and software releases in the future.