[wakeride74]

Quote:

Originally Posted by m1abrams /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well no, the Transporter supports 24/96 material but it is much more expensive. Note that the other devices support 24/48 and using SOX will play back 24/96 material with SOX doing the downsampling on the server.

Thanks, I was looking at the classic for my HT but have been downloading some 24/96 tracks from HDTracks and wanted to make sure I could play them. The Touch looks nice but I'm not sure I need a touch screen for my HT and would use my iPod Touch to control the thing anyways so....

Where can I find more info on SOX?

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wakeride74 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks, I was looking at the classic for my HT but have been downloading some 24/96 tracks from HDTracks and wanted to make sure I could play them. The Touch looks nice but I'm not sure I need a touch screen for my HT and would use my iPod Touch to control the thing anyways so.... Where can I find more info on SOX?

Google SOX maybe

http://sox.sourceforge.net/

 

[realmassy]

I lost interest on Touch as well. The idea of using it without a pc is good but I think you need an extra remote controller to use it properly.
Now I'm using the TEAC WAP 8200, it has USB connection and a nice touch controller and it doesn't need the PC on. There's a version with wireless too.
I'm really happy with it, and I found the digital output to be better than my old Duet.
My next upgrade is some kind of reclocker to use between the player and the DAC. Any ideas or recommendations?

 

[Equus]

I'm still tempted. If I bought it, it would go into my bedroom and the SB Classic would move to the extra bedroom where my workshop is set up. Seeing as I haven't spent any real time in the workshop room for the last 6 months, however, there's no real huge rush unless I think the digital out on the Touch is sufficiently better than my old SB.

 

[sxr71]

Quote:

Originally Posted by realmassy /img/forum/go_quote.gif I lost interest on Touch as well. The idea of using it without a pc is good but I think you need an extra remote controller to use it properly. Now I'm using the TEAC WAP 8200, it has USB connection and a nice touch controller and it doesn't need the PC on. There's a version with wireless too. I'm really happy with it, and I found the digital output to be better than my old Duet. My next upgrade is some kind of reclocker to use between the player and the DAC. Any ideas or recommendations?

I have been using Squeezebox products for almost 2 years and the touch was on my list. The real problem with Squeezebox is that the software is amateurish and terrible. It fails randomly, it changes tagging rules, it does things under the hood that are NOT explained, and the worst thing - it is unreliable.

It saddens me to need to have iTunes airtunes as a backup system because I'd like one system to have my ratings and track statistics. It is a very flexible system with the plug-ins. But there are developers changing the software, some changing the database, some changing the schema, and then you have developers making the plug-ins. There is no communication between these groups and nobody keeping track of all the moving pieces. There is no one entity to ensure that things will work, that functionality will be intact, and someone that answers for the issues that occur.

Pardon my French but it's all a big cluster***** over there at Slim Devices. Over 2 years this is the conclusion I have. It's a great system but it really isn't consumer level. It's very highly techie oriented and you need to know whats going on with schema changes, with database changes, and simultaneously figure out if your favorite plug-in's author is supporting it still and on which version and which database version etc.

Tell me more about the TEAC because I'm looking for a change. In fact it's about time this thread becomes a "Touch Alternative" thread. I think Logitech needs to take this business segment a little more seriously or fail.

 

[realmassy]

The TEAC is really really simpler than Squeezebox products.
But it's a strong point, IMO.
The hardware is similar, you have a receiver and a controller. The receiver has no coax output, but only optical. But the coax output in the duet is simply rubbish. It has two USB inputs and a headphone jack (which is fair, it can drive my DFs, 600ohm, just fine).
There's the analog output, nothing special. There's also a great feature (just kidding): a power-off button, which is missing on the duet receiver.
Initially I was using a 2.5'' external hard disk connected to the USB output, but there's no enough power, so I'm using now a 1TB 3.5'' drive, with its own power adapter, and I have no problems at all. The hard drive shuts down when I switch the receiver off, so it's good for my electricity bill.
The controller is great, very easy to use, with a touch interface.
The battery lasts forever: in normal use it can last for a couple of weeks.
The software is not as fancy as the squeezebox's: it doesn't display all the tags, only artist, album, title, genre. You can browse the collection by genre, artist, or album title.
There's a slight problem with classical music, as it doesn't use the composer tag, so you have to tag your music using the "artist" tag with the value of the composer (ie: Chopin - Nocturnes, and put the performer in the album artists).
The software is stable, no disconnections, no updates if not needed.
You have to manually upgrade the firmware, if you want to. The software is partially open source, and the hardware uses an ARM processor and light Linux distro.
Scanning 400GB of music takes around 1 hour, scanning the added songs (2/3 album) takes a couple of minutes. No huge dbs, just a bunch of binary files for the index.
If you want to rebuild the db, simply delete the MediaDB folder on you drive. Easy!

 

[roland]

I just got my touch, and i have to say the quality is excellent. others have compared it to fairly good dacs, and found no reason keep their dac.. (one had a Lavy)
i dont have a dac to compare it to, other than the duet receiver- both of which i used to feed an optical signal to my marantz receiver -7001.
the Touch sounds much better then the duet rec.

 

[Bazile]

Pardon my French but it's all a big cluster***** over there at Slim Devices. Over 2 years this is the conclusion I have. It's a great system but it really isn't consumer level. It's very highly techie oriented and you need to know whats going on with schema changes, with database changes, and simultaneously figure out if your favorite plug-in's author is supporting it still and on which version and which database version etc.

In defense of Slim Devices, for much of the 2 yrs you mention, the villain is Logitech, and not Slim Devices. As an early adapter, I agree with with your comments on recent software, but encourage you to name the right villain.

Baz

I guess I don't know how to quote. Apologies.

 

[gooky]

Quick question; I keep all my music in one folder, and when I try to play a track through the folder, I get a message that says that playlist full, and it'll only play the first hundred songs in the folder. Everything else seems fine, it'll play any track if I search by artist. Is that how it's supposed to be? I like to be able to browse everything by the title; I think most mp3 players can do that, it would be embarrassing if the touch can't. In any case, I'd appreciate any advice or comments on this problem.

Hanson

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gooky /img/forum/go_quote.gif Quick question; I keep all my music in one folder, and when I try to play a track through the folder, I get a message that says that playlist full, and it'll only play the first hundred songs in the folder. Everything else seems fine, it'll play any track if I search by artist. Is that how it's supposed to be? I like to be able to browse everything by the title; I think most mp3 players can do that, it would be embarrassing if the touch can't. In any case, I'd appreciate any advice or comments on this problem. Hanson

Well I am guessing you are using the TinySC server (one builtin to the touch). If so it has a playlist limit of 100 because it is running on limited hardware. If you run the full SBS on a computer the default limit is 500 but many have increased that. Now the issue you are running into is that because all the music is in a single folder and you are browsing by folder when you select a track to play the default action of the SB is to load everything in that tracks folder into a playlist.

 

[roland]

I dont know anything about "schema changes, with database changes, and simultaneously figure out if your favorite plug-in's author " which you mention, but i do enjoy the duet and now touch without significant issues. the only real complaint i have is the sometimes weekly updates are annoying to install, and sometimes requires a reset, but i think its a great system.
I agree it probably should have a tom-tom type level "easy" setting for the masses, for sure.

 

[gooky]

Ouch. I hoped to use it like a giant mp3 player, and I thought I did enough research on their site, but I guess not. They make everything sound sooo smooth and easy on their site; I should have known it's too good to be true.

It sounds pretty good, but it's definitely not the snappiest. In the scheme of things, it isn't so expensive, but I was hoping for more of a quality feel from the interface. Thanks for verifying my fears though.

 

[XXII]

I just got my squeezebox touch yesterday and despite some initial annoying problems overall I'm very happy with it. I'm using it with an external hard drive and controlling the squeezebox with a Ipod touch with squeemote (I used ipeng with my squeezebox classic but for some reason my music library is not sorted properly in ipeng). The main reason I bought the squeezebox touch is for 24/96 support. The touch screen is nice but not really essential. The fact that it can double as a (small) digital photo frame is also quite nice.

I agree with the statements above that squeezebox is quite techie and user unfriendly. For example, given that I bought the touch here in Hong Kong, I expected to have support for Chinese characters out of the box. This was not the case, I had to search for the solution on the slim devices forum.

 

[realmassy]

Thanks XXII for your impressions.
Can you compare the digital output of the Classic with the one in the Touch?
Also, Are you using the built-in squeezebox server (so the hard drive attached to the USB input) or are you running the server on a PC/NAS?
Thanks

 

[jimmychan]

XXII,

How does it support the Chinese characters?

Any web links to show how to patch the Touch?