Streaming music from NAS device to HiFi - 3 questions

[gordonavon]

Hi
I have a Squeezebox 1 at the moment and wirelessly stream MP3's from a permanently on NAS drive to my HiFi in the living room. The hard disk has just failed with some hard disk corruption - luckily I have a backup of the data. I have therefore just purchased a ReadyNAS NV with 2TB of storage (it has not yet been delivered though). I will copy over all my current MP3's and then start to burn my complete CD collection lossless. I have 3 questions:

1. I was going to use WAV but I have just realised that you cannot store ID3 tags in these files. What is the best lossless alternative that supports ID3 tags. I want the best possible audio quality in the living room.

2. Is is possible to get a media streaming device (like the squeezebox) that allows me to select the music I want to listen to from the TV screen (and show the album art) or maybe a different remote. I know the squeezebox does not do this.

3. I have had some problems with loss of wireless connection to the NAS drive. It is better to have the squeezebox or alternative streaming device working from a static IP address

Regards
Gordon

[Monty Burns]

Originally Posted by gordonavon

....
2. Is is possible to get a media streaming device (like the squeezebox) that allows me to select the music I want to listen to from the TV screen (and show the album art) or maybe a different remote. I know the squeezebox does not do this.
...

I can answer this point although, I have no experience and almost no knowledge of Squeeze box's so don't know how they would compare.

An Xbox (orginal not 360) will happily stream from any SMB networked system. This will also allow you to display cd info on the screen - typicaly the jpg of the cover.

However, to do this can be a bit "techie". You will need get an Xbox (the big black ones), purchase a suitable mod chip/softmod it and then setup Xbox Media Center (XBMC). You can of course, buy this already done, probably in the classified sections of these forums but, you will almost certainly still need to edit the XML file on the Xbox to tell it where to get your songs from.

usefull link: www.xboxmediacenter.com (can't check this as my companies webwall filters it)

Hope this helps.


P.s. Oh and then you could always play a game as well!

[andrew1810]

Originally Posted by gordonavon

Hi
I have a Squeezebox 1 at the moment and wirelessly stream MP3's from a permanently on NAS drive to my HiFi in the living room. The hard disk has just failed with some hard disk corruption - luckily I have a backup of the data. I have therefore just purchased a ReadyNAS NV with 2TB of storage (it has not yet been delivered though). I will copy over all my current MP3's and then start to burn my complete CD collection lossless. I have 3 questions:

1. I was going to use WAV but I have just realised that you cannot store ID3 tags in these files. What is the best lossless alternative that supports ID3 tags. I want the best possible audio quality in the living room.

2. Is is possible to get a media streaming device (like the squeezebox) that allows me to select the music I want to listen to from the TV screen (and show the album art) or maybe a different remote. I know the squeezebox does not do this.

3. I have had some problems with loss of wireless connection to the NAS drive. It is better to have the squeezebox or alternative streaming device working from a static IP address

Regards
Gordon

To answer number 1, FLAC or AIFF would be your best choices for audio quality. AIFF is Apple's version of WAV but with tag support etc. FLAC is an open source lossless codec, either would be good to use. The only thing to check is if the Squeezebox 1 can stream other formats, I know the SB2 and 3 do natively, but I think the SB1 converts everything to MP3 before streaming.

2) Not sure on the TV aspect, but someone on the squeezebox forum has developed a skin for the Nokia 770 web tablet which apparently makes a great remote. Otherwise any wireless PDA will do the job

3) If you can change to static, it does often help.

Andrew

[gordonavon]

Andrew
Thanks for the response
Can you recommend a wireless pda that would work with the squeezebox/ slimserver
What additional software would I need to make this work.

Thx
Gordon

[andrew1810]

I personally have an old HP Jornada with a wireless compact flash card in the top.

Any wireless PDA with a web browser will work though as you simply point the web browser to http://slimserver/handheld which is a skin specially for PDA's.

It depends how much you want to spend on it, a cheap PDA and wireless card can be picked up for next to nothing on ebay.

Andrew

[pinecooler]

There is also a piece of software for $46 that works on pocketpcs as a remote for multiple squeezeboxes. Apparantly it works really well and is better than teh web interface.

Its called Telcanto.

[catdna]

If you run an HTPC in the living room (specifically running Meedio) - you could use my Meedio / SlimServer plugin via your TV to control your squeezebox / slimp3 players

(It's basically a replacement for the web-interface of SlimServer)

Meedio + SlimServer Plugin.... Anyone Interested ?

Cheers
Chris

[stevos]

Out of interest how do you get a squeezebox to work with a NAS drive. Don't you need to get slimserver running somehow?

[g0pkh]

Out of further interest .

What software would be best to use to rip cd's to FLAC format ?

Pete

[catdna]

Originally Posted by stevos

Out of interest how do you get a squeezebox to work with a NAS drive. Don't you need to get slimserver running somehow?

I used to run it on my linkstation - but was never happy with the performance (although I've heard slimserver 6.5 is a bit better / less memory intensive).

Install guide is here :

http://www.fieldnetworks.com/slim/linkstation.html

Originally Posted by g0pkh

Out of further interest .

What software would be best to use to rip cd's to FLAC format ?

Pete

I use CDEX - do a google (it's somewhere on sourceforge) - completely free, and will convert cd's to whatever format you like (as long as you have the correct codecs installed).