Malcolm H wrote:

* The media player I use is a Squeezebox made by Slimdevices Inc.
See: http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_testimonials.html for some
testimonials. This is a wonderful box controlled by open source
Slimserver software which runs on your PC. It is high quality,
robust, reliable and extemely easy to use. The PC is in a separate
room and connected to the Squeezebox by Ethernet or WiFi.

I like the look of those from a technical point of view. The problem I
have is that there's no "hi-fi separate" sized unit.

The current form factor is great for a second, third room etc, but no
good for integrating with your existing hi-fi.

I currently use two Turtle Beach Audiotron media players (sadly now
discontinued) which don't require any server software, they access files
through normal Windows (or indeed Samba) file sharing. My MP3 collection
is held on a media server running Samba for Windows PCs and the
Audiotrons (and for copying files to the system), daapd/howl for iTunes
streamers, and I'm trying to get streaming to work for the Pinnacle
ShowCenter.

* After careful listening tests I have found that, for me (and
everybody else that I know), digital audio at 192Kbps and above is
indistinguishable from the original CD. I have therefore ripped my
CDs and LPs to mp3 at 192Kbps.

You're lucky. I can hear quite a difference (loss of detail) between MP3
at 192Kbit and WAV (played through the SPDIF output from a USB
soundcard, feeding into an Arcam Black Box 50). Get up to 320Kbit and
there's a tiny difference, although if you use the latest LAME encoder
with -q0 (which encodes at about 0.3x real time) that difference all but
disappears. With most modern processed pop though it's inaudible at -q1.

The best LAME options I've found for encoding a

lame -q1 -mj -b32 -V0

Q-factor of 1, joint-stereo, bitrate minimum 32Kbit/sec, VBR highest
quality.

Takes about 30 seconds to encode an average length track.

It generally takes me about 20 minutes to rip and tag a CD.

That long? Takes about 5 minutes here using ripit - a wrapper script for
cdparanoia and lame, modified by myself to then apply ReplayGain using
mp3gain. I can then sanitise the ID3 tags (my weapon of choice is
ID3-TagIT) whilst the next CD is encoding.

Once all CDs are ripped, encoded and tagged, I copy the MP3 files over
the network into R:\mp3\incoming (R: is mapped to a shared disk on the
media server), log in to the server and type "makemp3list" (command name
kept for legacy reasons).

The media server then sorts out the tracks dumped in the incoming folder
by moving them into the correct artist folder and renaming the track as
Artist\Track name.mp3, imports all the tag details into a MySQL
database, then generates an .m3u playlist file for each complete album.

It then creates an "atrontc.vtc" file, the Audiotron units will load
this file when they start, takes about 20 seconds rather than 5-6
minutes to scan nearly 8,000 tracks.

When I move house in the next 6-8 weeks I'm intending to install a
couple of Hifidelio client units (assuming they're available by then)
into the kitchen and bathroom (and possibly the conservatory as well)
which will stream using DAAP (iTunes protocol) from the media server,
giving me the ability to access my entire music collection from anywhere
in the house.

Kick-ass! :-)

--
Glenn Richards Tel: (01453) 845735
Squirrel Solutions http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/

IT consultancy, hardware and software support, broadband installation