Is it possible to stream music to a seperate hi-fi?

googler

Fifer wrote: »

There is something wrong with your system. Mine is almost instantaneous. My Music, select album (you can navigate directly to a letter using the keyboard or using lazysearch from the remote), play, music starts. No spinning, no delay. I have around 500 albums ripped to FLAC.

So, a small library, then?

Plus I can lie on the sofa and change CD without getting up, walking to the CD player, pressing eject, waiting for the drawer to open, removing the CD, going to the shelf, picking a new CD, walking back to the CD player, loading the CD, waiting for the drawer to close and the disc to spin up, pressing play then going back to the sofa. And going through that process every time I want to hear a new CD.

I'm not querying the process, merely suggesting that I can accomplish the above quicker than many folk would take to find the same music on a system similar to, but not necessarily the same, as yours. You appear to presume the device which selects the music to be at hand, powered up and not hiding down the back of the sofa, under the coffee table, etc. So can we add in the possibility that you (or others) might have to power up or boot up the access device first? Obviously you don't have 'the' album on the first screen, so you have to type a letter to get the list of albums with that letter or use lazysearch (predictive text?). That's one extra phase. What happens when the list of albums for the chosen letter exceeds your screen capacity? You have to scroll through them for the one you want, surely? However, with 500 albums, you have on average, 19 per alphabet letter, which isn't a lot, in my book.

And of course, that presumes we are all anal retentives who keep all our CDs stacked in perfect alphabetical order. I'm not ...

I can't imagine having shelves with the number of CDs I have in anything other than alphabetical order by Artist, and with the CDs within each artist order chronologically by order of release. Compilations go under V for various. It's more than 500 albums, make no mistake, and that's just the official CDs.....

Neil49

I recommend you take a look at the Sonos system, particularly the Connect (aka ZP90).

This box connects between your router and amp and allows you to access Spotify, Napster (Rhapsody) and other streaming systems + access to worldwide radio stations and any music you have stored digitally on your pc.

You can link the box to your router either directly, or if too far away, by using a Powerline system or an add-on wireless box available from Sonos. Connection to your amp is via coax cable.

You operate the Sonos box via an app available free on Android or Apple smartphones or tablets. You just sit back and just search for whatever you want.

I have my entire cd collection on a NAS drive in lossless format and access them via a tablet app. My hifi setup is a Musical Fidelity amp connected to Spendor A5 speakers. The cd player is now redundant!

http://www.sonos.com/shop/products/connect

I suggest you visit a local hifi shop for a demo. You won't believe how easy the system is to operate.

prowla

Fifer wrote: »

There's not much variable about well ripped lossless files streamed to a proper good quality player.

Ah, so are you saying that a lossless rip from a CD is better than a CD player?

But of course, if the CD they are ripped from isn't that well mastered then the rip isn't going to be either.

Fifer

googler wrote: »

I can't imagine having shelves with the number of CDs I have in anything other than alphabetical order by Artist, and with the CDs within each artist order chronologically by order of release. Compilations go under V for various. It's more than 500 albums, make no mistake, and that's just the official CDs.....

Jees, I hate when people add text to quotes which makes replying a PITA. However ...

googler wrote: »

So, a small library, then?

I didn't realise it was a big willy competition. My 500 was a rough estimate - I probably haven't counted in ages and buy CDs all the time but as they say, size isn't important. If a ripped system slows searches down as size increases, the same is true for most people searching through a growing physical collection. In many domestic situations, a massive individual collection cannot practically be housed close to the listening environment which further impedes convenience.

googler wrote: »

I'm not querying the process, merely suggesting that I can accomplish the above quicker than many folk would take to find the same music on a system similar to, but not necessarily the same, as yours. You appear to presume the device which selects the music to be at hand, powered up and not hiding down the back of the sofa, under the coffee table, etc. So can we add in the possibility that you (or others) might have to power up or boot up the access device first? Obviously you don't have 'the' album on the first screen, so you have to type a letter to get the list of albums with that letter or use lazysearch (predictive text?). That's one extra phase. What happens when the list of albums for the chosen letter exceeds your screen capacity? You have to scroll through them for the one you want, surely? However, with 500 albums, you have on average, 19 per alphabet letter, which isn't a lot, in my book.

Wouldn't it be odd for someone who keeps their album collection in perfect alphabetical order, to regularly lose their phone/remote/tablet/laptop? And if by access device, you mean my phone, tablet or remote control, they are on all the time. If you mean my music server, that runs 24/7.

I suppose it is horses for courses, but if a person regularly listens to several albums in a session, I cannot believe that for most people, the convenience of changing albums without getting out of their chair doesn't trounce several findings, unboxings, loadings and unloadings of CD and the toing and froing from chair to shelf to CD player and back.

I think however, the biggest thing for me is having my entire collection available to play at a whim. I regularly now listen to music on a random mix and find myself rediscovering stuff I hadn't listened to for ages which I'll then playlist for a later 'serious' listening session. It changed the way I listen to music.

Fifer

prowla wrote: »

Ah, so are you saying that a lossless rip from a CD is better than a CD player?

No - what makes you imagine I said that? Aren't you now confusing the source medium with the playing device as you accused me of doing?

prowla wrote: »

But of course, if the CD they are ripped from isn't that well mastered then the rip isn't going to be either.

Of course. I don't believe I've suggested otherwise.

googler

Fifer wrote: »

I didn't realise it was a big willy competition. My 500 was a rough estimate - I probably haven't counted in ages and buy CDs all the time but as they say, size isn't important. If a ripped system slows searches down as size increases, the same is true for most people searching through a growing physical collection.

Noting of the sort. You make exactly the point I was making, in that the larger the disk-based collection, the longer the indexing takes and the more scrolling you have to do to get to what you want. For a collection of any real size, it's impossible to display any significant portion of the collection on one screen of the control device, leading to a shuffle through menus and extensive scrolling to get to what you want, and this is what slows the process down for me.

The same isn't true for physical indexing. I don't have to 'open' a shelf named 'T' to find those artists, I don't have to go through two stages of just looking for the shelf with T on it - I know where they are on the shelving, and I don't even need to look at the names to pick out certain albums, as I know where some of them are by their Special Edition packaging, recognise others by colour, others by box size, etc. The ones that are in regular jewel cases I can usually extrapolate to - the plain-cased Trapeze will be after the special edition Transatlantic, for instance.

It's not just the SB Touch that this applies to , I have an iPod Classic loaded with over 8500 tunes, and that's still by no means full; under the Music menu, I'm presented with a number of ways of selecting artists or albums -

Cover Flow - alphabetical scroll from A-Z by Artist
Artists - another scroll list, then scroll list of tracks
Albums - ditto
Songs - ditto
Genres - ditto
Composers - ditto
Search

Playing anything toward the end of the alphabet always becomes a long, drawn out process, because when the device shows any of the scroll lists, they're ordered alphabetically (Cover Flow always retains the last selected position, but funnily enough, that, more often than not, always seems to be the 'wrong' place for the next choice) ; I want to play Trapeze, say - open the Artist List and it starts at A. I want to play the Trapeze album beginning with 'We are .....' - the album list always opens at A. etc etc

Don't get me started on the hours that I spent tagging the files before I even put them on iTunes ..... without doing that, it would be even more chaotic.

Fifer

googler wrote: »

Noting of the sort. You make exactly the point I was making, in that the larger the disk-based collection, the longer the indexing takes and the more scrolling you have to do to get to what you want. For a collection of any real size, it's impossible to display any significant portion of the collection on one screen of the control device, leading to a shuffle through menus and extensive scrolling to get to what you want, and this is what slows the process down for me.

The same isn't true for physical indexing. I don't have to 'open' a shelf named 'T' to find those artists, I don't have to go through two stages of just looking for the shelf with T on it - I know where they are on the shelving, and I don't even need to look at the names to pick out certain albums, as I know where some of them are by their Special Edition packaging, recognise others by colour, others by box size, etc. The ones that are in regular jewel cases I can usually extrapolate to - the plain-cased Trapeze will be after the special edition Transatlantic, for instance.

It's not just the SB Touch that this applies to , I have an iPod Classic loaded with over 8500 tunes, and that's still by no means full; under the Music menu, I'm presented with a number of ways of selecting artists or albums -

Cover Flow - alphabetical scroll from A-Z by Artist
Artists - another scroll list, then scroll list of tracks
Albums - ditto
Songs - ditto
Genres - ditto
Composers - ditto
Search

Playing anything toward the end of the alphabet always becomes a long, drawn out process, because when the device shows any of the scroll lists, they're ordered alphabetically (Cover Flow always retains the last selected position, but funnily enough, that, more often than not, always seems to be the 'wrong' place for the next choice) ; I want to play Trapeze, say - open the Artist List and it starts at A. I want to play the Trapeze album beginning with 'We are .....' - the album list always opens at A. etc etc

Don't get me started on the hours that I spent tagging the files before I even put them on iTunes ..... without doing that, it would be even more chaotic.

Sorry, but I don't accept any of your points. All you appear to be saying is that you are more adept at browsing a physical collection (and you appear to ignore all the semi-conscious acts you have to perform in doing so) - if that's your preference, then it's great for you. But others find browsing a virtual collection preferable - I know I do. I suspect your personality type may have a great bearing on your preference. I am not an organised person. Keeping things in alphabetical order is not something I find interesting, easy or rewarding and I much prefer a system which does that mind-numbingly tedious (to me) task for me automatically. Otherwise, it isn't going to happen and I'd spend ages looking for a particluar CD.

I'm not sure why indexing time is an issue? Squeezeserver indexes only when you tell it to after adding new music.

An 8500 song library isn't very much larger than mine by the way. My Sandisk player zips through finding albums and tracks. Maybe coverflow slows things down? As for spending hours tagging files, I'd suggest getting a decent ripper. I've only ever had to tag a handful of CDs in seven years (and my tastes are far from mainstream). 99% of the time, automatic tagging works just fine.

I notice you didn't address my point about the ease (or otherwise) of changing albums several times during a listening session?

prowla

Fifer wrote: »

No - what makes you imagine I said that? Aren't you now confusing the source medium with the playing device as you accused me of doing?

OK, so what did you mean by "well ripped lossless files" - where were they ripped from?

Ripping is the act of converting them from a physical media (ie. CD, DVD-A, SACD) into a file (WAV, MP3, AAC, etc.).

Fifer wrote: »

Of course. I don't believe I've suggested otherwise.

You said: "There's not much variable about well ripped lossless files streamed to a proper good quality player.".

So, as I said, how well you rip them isn't going to matter if the original wasn't well mastered or recorded.

prowla

googler wrote: »

Playing anything toward the end of the alphabet always becomes a long, drawn out process, because when the device shows any of the scroll lists, they're ordered alphabetically (Cover Flow always retains the last selected position, but funnily enough, that, more often than not, always seems to be the 'wrong' place for the next choice) ; I want to play Trapeze, say - open the Artist List and it starts at A. I want to play the Trapeze album beginning with 'We are .....' - the album list always opens at A. etc etc.

Actually if you use iTunes (I have a Mac and a DAC) then you can press the 1st letter of the band to jump to that letter of the alphabet, so press "t" and then scroll down.

Fifer

prowla wrote: »

Actually if you use iTunes (I have a Mac and a DAC) then you can press the 1st letter of the band to jump to that letter of the alphabet, so press "t" and then scroll down.

That works on most digital music player and streamer systems I've encountered.