Setting up a new wifi system, advice gratefully received...

Ant8519

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Hi all

I am out of storage space for my CD's. Luckily this appears to have coincided with computing technology finally allowing me to put them into storage if I can set up a wireless system. Question is what should I buy?

I currently have an arcam alpha 8 pre/power and cd. Nothing ridiculously high end but good enough for me. The amp has no digital inputs so RCA only to connect new sources.

I would like to transfer approx. 1000 cd's to file and store them, using my cd player for latest purchases, however I also have a lot of digital files (some mp3 and some ogg vorbis)

I have a laptop but it is getting on and so I am in a position to build the system from scratch.

I am strongly tempted to go for an imac or macbook and couple it with the new Time Capsule wifi router/hard drive combo (500gb or 1 tb) and use airport express to link them wirelessly with the stereo.

Advantages are that the macbook and time capsule use the latest n series wifi protocol (although airport express is g at present) They look great, build quality is good (according to mac using friends) and the os is stable. I also like the itunes interface, and the apple remote control through itunes is also good.

Disadvantages are the fact that I will need to power a laptop/imac, the router/hard drive and the airport connection. Anyone know how power hungry this is likely to prove?

Am I likely to get a good sound from this setup? (I'll probably encode in apple lossless) The weakpoint to me seems to be the connection between the airport and amp which will use a 3.5mm jack to RCA cable. What are the best cables to buy?

I like the apple setup due to it's aesthetics, ease of setup and functionality. Are there any good alternatives? Especially any that do not require a pc or laptop to be switched on in order to access your tunes through an interface and that can cope with tens of thousands of files?

Thanks in advance,

Ant
 
A

Anonymous

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The simplest way is buy a dedicated music streamer, the ones form slim devices look pretty good http://www.slimdevices.com/ they play most compressed formats (including ogg) and they also play FLAC, Apple Lossless and WMA lossless (try FLAC since it is an open standard and should remain stable for years to come, it also has more error resilience than most other lossless formats). You could buy one of these devices, plug it into your hi-fi with decent RCA cables. As for the actual music storage, you could buy an off the shelf network attatched storage (NAS) device, so long as it operates using standard SMB network protocols or UPnP, and doesn't require a special program on a computer to access. The NAS device will need to be turned on all the time that you want to access the files stored on it, but it shouldn't use very much power compared to a computer. The files on the NAS device should be accessible from your computer as well as the dedicated music streamer, and will mean it you don't have to turn your computer on every time you want to listen to some music.

A more flexible alternative to a one box NAS is something like this http://www.ebuyer.com/product/65399 which is basically a very small file server, but with no storage of its own, instead you can plug in a couple of USB hard drives into it which will mean you can upgrade the storage capacity easilly later and even get it to back up your files to the other disk.

As for a wireless router, anything netgear, linksys or belkin should work well. Wireless n is a waste of time for the moment unless you buy ALL of the wireless equipment on your network from the same brand. This is because n is not yet a finalised wi-fi standard and won't be for a while yet so each manufacturer is implementing their own version of the pre n standard. wireless g (54Mb/s) should be more than adequate for what you require (even the ancient wireless b is 11Mb/s, for comparison an audio CD player transfers at around 1Mb/s and most home broadband solutions are around 8Mb/s).

If you don't want to fork out for the dedicated music streamer, then you could also consider buying a new laptop for your main use, and then customising your old laptop into a music streamer by adding a decent external sound card.
 

Juzzie Wuzzie

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Maplin also do a great GBP30 network single HDD box (slip in a 3.5" hard disk) which I would couple with a computer and an Airport Express. Also, why not consider the Apple TV - then you don't need the computer on?
 
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Anonymous

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As mentioned above, the slimdevices squeezebox conected to your hifi via rca is very popular. And for a NAS storage device you could get the QNAP TS-109 with the slimserver software pre installed onto it, which means you dont even need your computer on to play your music.
 
A

Anonymous

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Draft n is overkill for music. Might be OK for video though. If you just want music then have a look at Sonos. You can rip CDs onto a NAS in apple lossless and access them via the wireless remote without a PC being turned on. You can also access via the desktop controller on a PC/Laptop if you require. Supports ITunes and sound excellent. I'm led to believe it uses the 802.11a spec so shouldn't interfere with other wireless networks.
 

Ant8519

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Thanks for all your replies.

Just so I understand. The Squeezebox duet works with NAS but only if the NAS server has slimserver installed. Correct?

The QNAP 500gb drive at £270 looks v. dear compared with other 500 gb NAS drives available in the £100 to £150 range (amazon) Would it not be possible to buy one of these drives and download and install slimserver on them or am I missing something?

Basically I would love to be playing music through a nice interface without the computer on at all. If the computer has to be on then I guess I will go for a mac, but the interface is currently not so good as it requires a keyboard to operate itunes or a naff remote to operate a naff front row program.

I have considered sonos but the cost of a bundle plus a NAS server is OTT imo.

Would love the squeezebox duet but the slimserver site is very vague on whether it will work with NAS.

Is anyone here actually successfully operating a squeezebox duet via a NAS drive (other than the Qnap) without the computer switched on? Love to hear about it!

I guess there is always the squeezecentre network thing, but I imagine it will stream mp3 only, and would probably not match my cd player sound quality....

Anyway, thanks again.

ant
 

PJPro

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[quote user="fr0g"]The duet doesnt work with the QNAP yet, but I think they are working on it.
The problem is the new controller requires Squeezecenter 7.0 rather tahn the old Slimserver 6.x.x ( I have a QNAP 101, and although it runs slimserver 6.5 happily, I cannot use it for my duet (just yet)[/quote]
Don't want to disagree with fr0g but I've just bought the QNAP 109 (in post) with the Squeeze Centre (v7.0) pre installed from here. If it doesn't work with the Duet I'm gonna be somewhat hacked off!
The QNAP with a 1Tb Seagate drive, Squeeze Centre pre-installed and the whole lot tested is costing me £362 delivered.
 

PJPro

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Yeah, you're right. SSODS Squeeze Centre. Have to say, I was expecting the QNAP to have arrived by now. The Beresford has and I'm listening to Climbatize (Prodigy) thru it right now.
 

PJPro

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[quote user="fr0g"]...and I am hoping you can feel the improvement?[/quote]
I have to say that it's not night and day but it is early days yet. So I'll reserve judgement for now.
I do suspect that the soundcard software is having an impact. Have tried to turn off all the effects but expect further processing is going on under the covers.
 

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