sonos vs squeezebox

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

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.

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

thats an interesting read mate, but i see no mention of linn klimax. i did a google and i found it seems to vary in price from £12,000 to £20,000!!!

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 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 ).

@Cranberry – I tried EAC and it’s OK but Vortexbox http://vortexbox.org/%5B/url%5D 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 ).

hmmm….. well, i did use eac to rip to flac, but im pretty sure i didnt d/load flac. just installed it now. so, why would the rip have been successful for me if i hadnt installed it?
and this $8 to identify cds. yes, my cd came out as ‘unknown artist’ etc and songs were no1, no2 etc, so no, it hadnt identified my cd. but….when i rip to mp3 say, WMP will identify and name all the tracks correctly. so why not in flac? surely the info is there and can be identified on each cd?
unless the answer is in what richpenny mentions, its ripped to wav first (no cd info) and then that anonymous wav is converted to flac?
is there no way of ripping to flac and having your cd named correctly without paying??

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 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 😀

anybody got any experience of the squeezebox radio

will it provide a listenable sound? its gotta be better than my netbook

(dont own amp or speakers)

got the squeezebox through the post today and have just set it up. first impressions are good. nice chunky sound (far better than laptop 🙂
theres just one initial question you might be able to help me with. the volume seems set very low compared to my other devices. im connected with the 2 red and white connections into squeezebox and aux on amp. i tried the ‘side by side with cd’ test but i had to really crank the volume up on the amp to match the cd. and yes…..its set to max on the squeeze. ideally id like it set at less, so i can alter with the remote.
its not just the volume of my ripped tracks, as ive just got it playing 6 music radio station, which is set about the same as my music.

cant believe its the aux connection either, as my ipod sounded louder, and so did my laptop on same connection.

any suggestions as to how i can crank it up from the amp side?

cheers

Bump?

anybody got any experience of the squeezebox radio
will it provide a listenable sound?

Katie’s got a Boom (stereo Squeezebox Radio/older display). Sound is really impressive and full for the size. Suspect the radio is similar.

the volume seems set very low compared to my other devices. im connected with the 2 red and white connections into squeezebox and aux on amp. i tried the ‘side by side with cd’ test but i had to really crank the volume up on the amp to match the cd

Odd – not a problem I’ve had anywhere I’ve used them but mine are teh older versions rather than the touch.

the volume seems set very low compared to my other devices. im connected with the 2 red and white connections into squeezebox and aux on amp

I’d second that. I have to turn up the volume dial on my amp to about 3/10 when it’s taking its input from the Squeezebox (duet) set at 50% volume, to give equivalent volume to other sources at 1/10.

An bit of an anachronism though. Squeezebox coupled to a Mission Cyrus 2 amp!!!

Id settle for that mate! My amps up to 7 out of 10 with squeeze on full 🙁

Just spoken to logitech, they say it must be faulty so I got to return it to amazon. Thats a shame :-/

You did turn up the volume on the Squeezebox, didn’t you? 😉

Yep, on max 🙂

I found the same with my Touch last night when I connected it up to my Linn Classik/Linn Kans – I had to increase the volume on the Classik to 70% of max whereas with a CD I wouldn’t have it past around 35-40%. The touch was set to ~50%.

My amp is able to vary the gain for each source – can you do that on yours?

Congrats on getting the Squeezebox, commiserations on having to send it back…

My SB Duet does need a bit more volume from the amp to get it to the same level as CDs, but it’s only a few notches; I just have the SB at full volume. The volume changes between BBC radio and my music though, which isn’t the end of the world.

As for ripping, I’m a cheapskate, and hence a bit surprised at all the paid-for suggestions above. MediaMonkey does everything I need: it’s free, will identify CDs, and will happily rip to most formats you might need. For MP3, there’s a 2 minute trick to ensuring it always rips even on the free version, but it’s great for sorting tags, adding album artwork etc.

sorry to hear about the sound issues on your squeezebox.

Thought i’d just mention that new models of my sony blu ray player have a function i wasnt aware off. Its called party streaming.. and works like this. worth considering for an alternative

I have a squeezebox radio and can very happy with the sound quality, annoyingly it needs the pc on to play radio.

Seen some cheap too recently.

hmm thats slightly annoying, is it really so difficult to pop a DAB, FM, AM tuner in the same box

will it work nicely from my netbook, or am i going to have to leave the PC on upstairs…. full time?

My SB Touch doesn’t need the PC on, just a wi-fi connection. No idea about other SB devices though, you just need the SB server software installed to stream music files.

My SB Touch doesn’t need the PC on, just a wi-fi connection. No idea about other SB devices though, you just need the SB server software installed to stream music files.

This is the same for my SB receiver that I have plugged into my AV Receiver.

My touch doesn’t need pc on for radio…odd…is it a set up option?

It should just pick up the radio signal wirelessly/via ethernet on your router, no ?

Is it connected to your PC in some way ?

Nope, just wifi.

Quick update. Had a play this morning before work, and plugged the rca leads from cd connection on amp to the squeeze. And it was LOUDER!! So, maybe more of an amp issue than squeezebox. Am I ok to use different connections other than aux? Any implications? Or reasons why this should be happening?

Ta

Am I ok to use different connections other than aux?

The only one you don’t want to use is a ‘Phono’ input if you have one. The other line inputs should all be the same. Try plugging your CD player into the Aux. Odd that you laptop sounded Ok on the Aux input but not the Touch though?

Sounds like the auxiliary input is guff.

Oddly my squeezebox radio is working without pc on now!

bingo

if someone could just find me one in white for under a ton, that’d be lovely

Google it…saw them for £90 somewhere.

HOTUKDEALS good, I’ll look