[Closed] sonos vs squeezebox

Like I said in a previous post, I believe THE most important thing is the client you use to browse and play your library. If that's a pain to use and find your music, you'll regret the money you've spent,

The biggest issue is for me the usability of the client.
Agreed, that's why I don't like Windows Media Centre. I'm currently trying out XBMC as I prefer the interface and it's supposed to be much faster.

i started thinking i was forgetting my original focus for a while, which was simply ripping cds to flac, and streaming them to my hifi. now ive got all these possibilities for video too using a 'media centre', im not sure which way to go 🙂

still havent finished reading these links yet, so thanks to everyone for your advice, and im going to catch up on them all now.

i want it to be intuitive, and easy for everyone to browse albums, artists etc

Don't dimiss Apple TV then, if you want the music and movies. PC World often have them on demo. I believe you do need to use iTunes tho', but then I've never had an issue with that.

mate, my wife was p*ssed off enough that i gave my ipod classic away. if i said that i was to consider using apple again....... 😀

nah, just think theyre overpriced for the name, i dont like syncing, just want to stay away from them. thanks tho 🙂

sorry subsonic didnt work for you, a lot of this technology is still being developed and a few years from now will be standard on your phone, tv etc and lot cheaper, easier to use and readily available. but at the moment a lot of this stuff needs some effort.

mjb has some good ideas for the htpc hardware, so thought id post up what i think has the best potential for a large nas setup, tucked away in a cupboard upstairs or something.

note the £100 cash back.

http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-100-cashback-658553-421

fantastic piece of kit for the money to store all your media.

could you explain any +'s and -'s of that product against mjbs suggestion please mate? [url= http://www.ebuyer.com/279899-acer-aspire-revo-r3700-nettop-pt-semec-037 ]this one.[/url]

not techy enough to pick the bones myself 🙂

first test over, and im dissapointed. laptop connected to amp with jack plug in headphone socket, leading to red/white plugs in the aux socket on amp. will i be able to hear difference im thinking? minimal? bloody hell there was a BIG difference.
i had cd in cd player running alongside same cd ripped to flac on laptop using winamp, and was switching from aux to cd on the amp. laptop sounded fine i thought, nice beefy sound. until i switched to cd player, and it just sounded soooooo much clearer and louder.
so.....what will have been the difference here do you think? laptops DAC? the cable from laptop to amp? it certainly surprised me how much worse it was.
and more importantly, would this drop in quality be expected from any of these media centre or squeezebox setups?

Laptop - jack of all trades
CD player - designed to play CDs

A CD player consists of a transport that reads the CD and a DAC that converts the 1s and 0s. Both elements can make a difference and I suspect both elements will be considerably better in your CD player than your laptop.

If the difference in quality is unbearable, you've answered the question of whether quality is important or not. For many the convenience of these systems outweighs the lesser quality.

ok.......quality is important 😀

more so now ive noticed the difference like that. at first maybe not so as i thought differences would be minimal. that difference is too important for me to ignore.

A decent DAC [i]should[/i] make up most of the difference SEP...and FWIW:

[u]that would play flac to the same quality (good DAC?) yet also play vids, youtube, internet radio.....in fact everything im likely to need?[/u]
No the DAC won't be as good. Try connecting your laptop to the stereo and see how it sounds, if it's not good enough for you then you'd need to by a standalone DAC.

You can get audiophile DACS for PCs - M-audio is £30 odd on flebay. I've not compared them though.

And if I can ask another Q of the experts on this....I've recently gone the squeezebox route, and also plugged my old Dell desktop into my telly (for VOD) but it's moisey as ****. It also hosts my external 1TB HDD with my lossless music on. I guess I can put some acoustic deadening around it but is there a better way of getting it quiet for "serious listening sessions" other than replacing with a media centre thingy like that ebuyer one? (presumably these are quieter?)

Right, I've just unpacked and set up a pair of Acoustic Energy speakers and a Squeezebox Touch. It took longer to cable up the speakers and fit a euro plug to it than it did set up the Squeezebox ( which is pulling music from a QNAP NAS ).

I am rather impressed, and wondering if another Squeezebox for my home office might not be a good idea.

At the moment it is playing MP3s but there is now a copy of Exact Audio Copy on my PC and the plan is to re-rip everything to FLAC.

[img] [/img]

😆 😆 😆

whats that? looks lovely. bet its a pretty penny tho 🙁

Naim HDX, which through a variety of life choices counts as work 🙂 I like to think they're reassuringly expensive, in the same way that a carbon full suss is 😯

could you explain any +'s and -'s of that product against mjbs suggestion please mate? this one.

not techy enough to pick the bones myself

mjbs would probably be more suited to using next to your tv/dvd player etc running a media center like xbmc as it is smaller and possibly quiter (though not heard one) the cons would be its less upgradable, no cd drive/less memory and no space for additional drives etc

the hp microserver has the capacity for a bluray drive 8gb ram and 4 or 5 fast 3.5inch sata drives, i have a couple of terabytes in mine. loads of usb slots, hp decent reputation for servers behind it, decent linux support

pcie expansion card etc, you could out in a gfx card with sound and hdmi connectivity for instance.

a killer setup would be the revo running a ssd drive and a media center conected to the tv, with the hp microserver as a nas serving terabytes of media hiden away in a cupboard.

but thats all rather a lot of effort to get setup 🙂 but would be good

stilltortoise - Member

Laptop - jack of all trades
CD player - designed to play CDs

A CD player consists of a transport that reads the CD and a DAC that converts the 1s and 0s. Both elements can make a difference and I suspect both elements will be considerably better in your CD player than your laptop.

If the difference in quality is unbearable, you've answered the question of whether quality is important or not. For many the convenience of these systems outweighs the lesser quality.

Agreed: laptop DACs are nowt special, because they're not designed to be owt special. The Squeezebox Touch/ Duet is definitely worth the cash/ effort in this case, as they have a digital out to plug into your hifi DAC, plus they can play FLAC for CD-quality sound. And the interface isn't bad either, as these things go; certainly when I look at the Naim or Arcam alternatives I wonder how you're supposed to trawl through 16,000 tracks on them...

My verdict on sonos is a quality piece of kit, running 3 zones connected to a NAS and running napster and spotify, no shortage of music ever. Had sonos for 5 years now and never failed. Made a long hard choice before i purchased then as i had £3k worth of hifi set up. Never regretted it once.

if you use dlna for instance you bypass the laptop dac/soundcard completely. in fact my hp server has no soundcard or dac it serves files through serviio which transcodes flac to lpcm/wav (completely lossless) straight into the the sony dac and then into the tv via hdmi or amp via optical cable.

you cant tell the difference from flac playing on the sony to a cd.

certainly when I look at the Naim or Arcam alternatives I wonder how you're supposed to trawl through 16,000 tracks on them...

It's a flash front end, so it's available as a web page on any device on your home network. There's an iphone/ipad app as well. Can't speak for the Arcam, but I imagine it's much the same.

The Squeezebox Touch/ Duet is definitely worth the cash/ effort in this case, as they have a digital out to plug into your hifi DAC,

a killer setup would be the revo running a ssd drive and a media center conected to the tv, with the hp microserver as a nas serving terabytes of media hiden away in a cupboard.

if you use dlna for instance you bypass the laptop dac/soundcard completely. in fact my hp server has no soundcard or dac it serves files through serviio which transcodes flac to lpcm/wav (completely lossless) straight into the the sony dac and then into the tv via hdmi or amp via optical cable.

thanks

Squeezebox Touch are £134.99 on Amazon at the moment!

[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Logitech-930-000089-Squeezebox-Touch/dp/B002N203SW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325883107&sr=8-1 ]clicky[/url]

be quick though as they seem to be varying the price quite frequently at the moment.

i started thinking i was forgetting my original focus for a while, which was simply ripping cds to flac, and streaming them to my hifi. now ive got all these possibilities for video too using a 'media centre', im not sure which way to go

As mentioned before think of the DAC as as a CD player without the reader. They come in all shapes and sizes, some people are happy with the cheep portable one, others want to spend a couple of pounds on a combined stereo system and some people want to spend hundreds on a separate system. DACs are no different, you've tried the bottom of the range one in your PC, the Touch will have a much better one inside it but only you'll be able to say whether it's good enough for you, above that all the hifi manufacturers now sell standalone DACS some with more functions than others.

For example the [url= http://www.whathifi.com/review/cambridge-audio-dacmagic ]Cambridge Audio DACMagic[/url] gets good reviews, [url= http://nadelectronics.com/products/digital-music/DAC-1-Wireless-USB-Digital-to-Analogue-Converter ]NAD[/url] make a wireless one and if you have a [url= http://www.petertyson.co.uk/ebuttonz/ebz_product_pages/linn_klimax_dsm.shtml ]spare £15,500[/url] ...

Your system will have 5 basic parts.
[b]Storage[/b] - NAS, server or maybe integrated as part of a player. One advantage of having this remote is that it usually requires fans etc. to keep cool so wont be silent.
[b]Front End[/b] - Something to give you access to your music files and enable you to decide which ones to send to the DAC. This maybe be a separate PC or integrated with the storage or DAC (or both). Either way you'll need some form of interface like a screen, TV, remote.
[b]DAC[/b] - Just the one! The bit that converts the digital files into analogue for your speakers.
[b]Amplifier
Speakers[/b]

The last three bits all affect the quality of what you hear.

Ho hum - Member
Squeezebox Touch are £134.99 on Amazon at the moment!

clicky

be quick though as they seem to be varying the price quite frequently at the moment.

Ooooh, that might just sway things!

The touch also has a digital output i believe, although you should check this (i.e. it doesn't process the FLAC file, just passes it straight through bypassing the DAC) so if you found the quality wasn't good enough you could add a standalone hifi DAC and just use the Touch as the Front End part of the system to choose what to play.

The Amazon reduced price is still there at the moment, but from the threads I have read about it they only seem to put it down at this much reduced price for a few hours and then put it back up again.

However, they have done this 3 or 4 times in the last fortnight, so hold on if you are not lucky now.

Squeezebox Touch are £134.99 on Amazon at the moment!

clicky

be quick though as they seem to be varying the price quite frequently at the moment.

im still gonna watch this thread and keep asking stuff tho, cos its not over yet! 😀 i want to understand more about how it all works.

ho hum, thanks a lot for that amazon find!

You're welcome mate 🙂

I would use a decent piece of S/W like Exact Audio Copy as mentioned above to do all your ripping.

Just found [url= http://www.stereophile.com/content/squeezebox-touch-dac-vs-dacmagic ]this thread[/url] and the post lower down does seem to confirm that if you do end up wanting to improve the sound quality you can add the Linn Klimax after all 🙂

cynic-al - Member
And if I can ask another Q of the experts on this....I've recently gone the squeezebox route, and also plugged my old Dell desktop into my telly (for VOD) but it's moisey as ****. It also hosts my external 1TB HDD with my lossless music on. I guess I can put some acoustic deadening around it but is there a better way of getting it quiet for "serious listening sessions" other than replacing with a media centre thingy like that ebuyer one? (presumably these are quieter?)

You need to be careful with sound deadening that you don't interrupt the air flow and cause things to overheat. There's quite a few upgrades around these days such as quiet fans, fanless cases, sound absorbing material for inside the panels. Never tried any of it though so can't recommend anything. It might be worth checking out one of the quiet PC forums.

I don't how quiet that Revo is but it won't be silent with a fan and HDD. There are quite a few silent PCs around these days. For not much more than the Revo you could get one of [url= http://www.shuttle.eu/products/slim/xs35gtv2/overview/ ]these[/url] and fit a small SSD.

mjb that shuttle looks like exactly what i need, i could probably hide it behind the tv stand and missus wont even see/hear it and can can access all media on the nas via a remote sweet.
factor in ssd and ram though and it starts to get a bit more expensive though.

forgive my ignorance on this, but am i right then in thinking your set up is a server with a big hard drive holding your files, going to a dac, then onto tv OR amp, not tv THEN on to amp? all through dlna?

roughly yes.

router-->EOP adapter-->access point-->NAS
NAS-->sony bdps370-->AMP-->TV & speakers
the sony plugs into the tv and speakers so i can play any media through just the TV or if i want better sound through the amp and main speakers for superior sound.

and if im right in thinking you maybe bypass the tv, wheres your interface?

also you say you chnge flac to wav? lossless to lossless? why not just have one type of lossless file in the first place?

flac is lossless and non propriety and widely supported though my sony doesnt actually support flac! funny that sony is shit like that is sonys way or the highway.
anyway it supports LPCM just fine which is lossless, so serviio just converts it to that losslessly with no loss in quality to play on the tv or amp

you cant tell the difference between the flac-->lpcm or a cd even mid bitrate mp3 sound very good.

flac is smaller and supports tags so thats why i use that than just wav/lpcm
i have loads of movies/mtb and music favorites as well as music and also access all my holiday photos through the nas too.
media my thing not just music

...or spend your money on some new CDs 😀

I would use a decent piece of S/W like Exact Audio Copy as mentioned above to do all your ripping.

Just found this thread and the post lower down does seem to confirm that if you do end up wanting to improve the sound quality you can add the Linn Klimax after all

still not sure ive made the right choice, maybe i should have gone dacmagic or media centre, who knows? im well pleased with the price i got that squeezebox for tho, and i hope that when i connect it all up it sounds better than my bluddy laptop 😀

EDIT: ohh just had a thought. my home pc will be defunct pretty soon as we all seem to have a laptop each these days, so.... would it make a half decent nas? any advantages to that, or should i just take it out the loop now?

I just googled NAS and it says it is the National Autistic Society, which sounds about right.

Carry on.

Listening to Spotify all around my house as I type with a multi room squeezebox setup. It works great and I can bimble around the house tidying up listening to music. Its great 🙂

Listening to Spotify all around my house as I type with a multi room squeezebox setup. It works great and I can bimble around the house tidying up listening to music. Its great 🙂

just a quickie. clicked that link to the squeezebox on amazon just now. back up to £230 🙂 ho hum, youre a star!

pretty sure thats what i d/loaded and used. wasnt very intuitive, to me anyway, but i read reviews which seemed to recommend it. think it ripped to wav, then i had to convert wav to flac which threw me. wasnt sure if i could keep the files as wav or not. still dont know which is the better format to rip my cds to.

As someone who currently has a large pile of CDs in front of him....

Download EAC
You also need to download FLAC and do a *little* bit of fiddling - I used [url= http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC_and_FLAC ]this guide[/url]
Press ALT + G and Sign up to the CD identifying service for $8 - put the userid and password in when prompted for them
Finally rip the CD using the compressed option - 2nd one down on the left ( EAC rips the file as a WAV and then automatically converts it to a FLAC ).

@Cranberry - I tried EAC and it's OK but Vortexbox [url= http://vortexbox.org/ ]http://vortexbox.org/[/url] is much easier to use as long as you have an old laptop knocking around with a CD device. I did about 200 CDs last weekend.

still dont know which is the better format to rip my cds to.

Hoping this is correct, as with my solution I don't have to worry about any of this. Wavs don't have any metadata (track name, artist, album etc.) as part of the file so won't integrate well, if at all, into a sonos or SB environment as they can't be indexed like flac or mp3. And files are much bigger, so not great if you want to put music on a phone or other portable device. 320KBps FLAC is said to be indistinguishable by most (if not all) to WAV so in your case is probably the best solution. My machine generates WAVs with a custom database but I will eventually be running a parallel FLAC library for portable use.

Download EAC
You also need to download FLAC and do a *little* bit of fiddling - I used this guide
Press ALT + G and Sign up to the CD identifying service for $8 - put the userid and password in when prompted for them
Finally rip the CD using the compressed option - 2nd one down on the left ( EAC rips the file as a WAV and then automatically converts it to a FLAC ).

still not sure ive made the right choice, maybe i should have gone dacmagic or media centre, who knows? im well pleased with the price i got that squeezebox for tho, and i hope that when i connect it all up it sounds better than my bluddy laptop

Considering second-hand ones on eBay are going for over £150 i think it was the right choice, essentially you get to try it for free! It will sound better than your laptop but it would be interesting to find out how it compares to your CD player.

For ripping i use [url= http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ ]dbpoweramp[/url]. It's free, adds tags and will convert to MP3 at the same time as FLAC if you want a smaller copy for your phone etc. Personally i use FLAC as once decoded it is exactly the same as a WAV, its smaller and supports tagging (which WAV doesn't).

As for WMP it doesn't support FLAC so you can't use it for ripping. You however get a plugin so that it will be able to see FLAC files and add them to your library. No idea if you an then use it to add tags though, i might give that a go later.

By the way the tag info doesn't tend to come from the CD, the programme will get it from one of the online databases so it wont work without an internet connection.

Hmmm just noticed, it doesn't seem to be free any more.

Slight hijack. Has anyone experience of the Cambridge NP30? and how does that compare to the likes of squeezebox? I'm keen for smething that plugs into an amp/ receiver and speakers rather than something standalone.

Don't have a telly so cannot use that as an interface, although do have a simple projector with built in dvd player and optical out, and a separtes style cd player which is the reason for wanting to keep an amp/ receiver based system. i.e audio system with a wee bit of audio.

and my spelling is shocking! Sorry.

OP I reckon you'll be happy with your squeezebox, you can just plug them in and they work - you could spend the rest of your life worrying whether you have made the right choice - I doubt you will though.

As for ripping, itunes rips to lossless and wil batch convert to mp3 for phone etc....am I missing something as it seems good enough for me?

yes, youre missing the fact i dont like apple and their overpriced monopoly of the world 😀