Wireless music (eg. Roku, Slim) through hi-fi

[Duddy]

Having now found out that connecting an Mp3 player to a hi fi amp absolutely requires a line-out connection to get decent sound, and even then mp3 may be too compressed (at any bitrate) to be worthy of hi-fi, I am now considering another option.

That is useing lossless files on an external hard drive and fed to a wireless device like the the Roku Soundbridge or the Slim Server. It has to be wireless, because my computer is nowhere near my hifi.

This is a costly outlay however and I wondered if anyone can report on the sound quality. Does lossless really sound as good as cd, and here's the major question - how good should one's computer sound card be? It's no good having perfect lossless rips if the card can't put any effort into the sound quality on playback.

Anyone had any experience with these things.

By the way, I don't have an ipod and I've heard that the Apple Airport Express isn't up to much.

[siwatkins]

Hi have a Roku Soundbridge feeding in via optical to my Rotel 1066 processor. Sound quality is superb, and that's via either WMA lossless, or 320kbps MP3. Lossless is marginally (and I mean marginally) audibly better than 320kbps files, but noone else notices any difference. Quality is as good as CD in my opinion with lossless. I used to have an all Roksan setup, and now all Rotel, and I don't find any shortfalls. The only thing I don't like about the Roku, is that navigating a large digitized music collection can be a bit of a chore. Better to create playlists on the PC first. Great device though. Simon

[paulmcg]

I have a roku sounbridge and use realplayer lossless. The quality misses something, but not much - a little dynamism lacking vs the wav file original. I have encoded all of these at the highest bitrate I could in realplayer.

I ripped these on my laptop with a standard AC97 soundcard that was built in.

for comparison on the Roku - I back to backed it with an original reference CD (Michael Jackson Bad Mixes) on my old cambridge C500SE and Roksan Kandy amp and there was nothing to choose between them. Even stands up to scrutiny through my Caspian amp.

Soundcard has no relation to sound quality on the Roku - it is a discrete unit - it streams the file and decodes it itself.

It is worth playing around with the lossless format you choose before you decide which one.

[shahedz]

i have a roku soundbridge connected to my Linn set up, i was very pleasently surprised by the sound quality, it is very ,very good. i found it ever so slight bass light as such, but thats because i dont use the highest quality compression.

i would really recommend one,
As paul said the sound card on the pc has no effect on the sound qulaity simply becuase it is not used.

i havnt used the optical out on the Roku i used the analogue output, Navigaion is simple enough,

[Happytab]

Quick question - when you play a track using the Roku - does it update the playcount in Itunes - would be nice if it did ?

[sjdigital]

I'm not going to defend the audio quality of the system I have as I'm sure purists would think it pretty poor (although I'm perfectly happy with it!), but the technology is neat! I store my mp3 files on a network storage device - specifically an ASUS wireless unit with a 60 GB 2.5" hard drive inside - and use an Acoustic Research Wi-Fi Radio which is a wireless device that, as well as being an internet radio, can play any mp3 files it can find on any shared folder on a network. The AE unit connects to my stereo via a 3.5mm jack socket (horror of horrors, not line out!), but it works very well and suits my needs. I travel a lot and have my entire music collection on a very portable wireless NAS box, and a neat unit that not only plays the mp3 files, but gives me BBC radio (and lots else besides) as well.

[Duddy]

Ok,

Sounds a good set up with either the Roku or the Slim Squeezebox.

But does the Roku do Flak? Or any other lossless? I know the Squeezebox does and that's a big plus.

[Uridium]

I have 50Gb of 320K MP3's stored on a PC/Server and stream this wirelessly to a Netgear MP101 wireless Music player that I picked up from Staples for £50! (plenty around on Ebay for this sort of price)

MP101 is connected via RCA audio cables into a Panasonic SC-HT530 surround system and to my untrained ears sounds every bit as good as CD playback through the same unit.

Although the Netgear software doesn't hook directly into the iTunes DB as the Roku and SlimServer software do, most Netgear MP101 users use Twonkyvision software that does and will update iTunes playlist counts and use this playlists etc..

[andrew1810]

The Roku can do AIFF which is Apple's version of WAV only with tags.

I previously owned the Roku and now have a Squeezebox and have to say I prefer the Squeezebox for ease of use more than anything (sound quality is also slightly better IMO)

Edit: I should add, I also own a Netgear MP101, Streamium SL50i and Terratec Noxon, the Squeezebox is the best for sound quality, then the Roku (not much in it, but I like the Squeezebox's web interface), then the rest are pretty much the same, although the Terratec is more reliable than the other two.

Andrew