Music Streaming

[shakham]

I have a dilemma...
Presently I stream music using an Airport Express. The sound coming through is 16bit/44.1KHz. I have it setup with 4 zones around the house and am extremely happy with the flexibility and ease of use.

I have been considering moving up the quality solely on the ML system.....
I can live with the additional complexity as nobody else would need to use it..I would still keep the existing setup.

The options I can think of are..
- get a squeezebox to run 24/96...
- tinker with TVersity with a PS3 (or Xbox360)...supposedly can also do 24/96 or even 24/192.

My questions....
The source for all my music are CDs which are 16/44.1 ripped as ALAC. Why would 24/96 make it sound better?

Has anybody tried any streaming solutions via Xbox360/PS3?

Also, is there a diff in the sound quality between the older (non-touch) squeezebox and the touch? The older one you can get much cheaper.

 

[amey01]

The source for all my music are CDs which are 16/44.1 ripped as ALAC. Why would 24/96 make it sound better?

It wouldn't.

Has anybody tried any streaming solutions via Xbox360/PS3?

Nup.

Also, is there a diff in the sound quality between the older (non-touch) squeezebox and the touch? The older one you can get much cheaper.

The Touch supports 96k. The older one (SB3) supports up to 24/48k I believe.

They both have a very good DAC for the price, however to make these true high-end devices, they need to be connected to a DAC.

What may make a difference to sound quality of your 16/44.1 files is how you clock that data. I am not familiar with the Airport Express to comment.

 

[|Tch0rT|]

Has anybody tried any streaming solutions via Xbox360?

Yes. They both suck.

The 360 is loud and the built in music player is terrible, though I have not used it since the last few updates that added Kinect support so they might have changed it since I last used one for that purpose. It's hard to see the band and song info for long titles as it doesn't scroll through it and it doesn't support a true random. The random function on large collections will do weird stuff like only play bands or songs that start with D or M. I have 1100+ albums and it seemed to only randomize A - D missing a lot of my collection. It also appeared to favor certian songs as weird as that sounds...

The PS3 is better but it can be kind loud too, not as bad as the 360. I have an older "fat" model and use the optical out and I don't know if it's my receiver or the PS3 but it liked to cut off the first split second of a song if there hadn't been any sound for a few minutes so I constantly had to start a song and then hit previous track. Annoying...

The biggest reason not to use either is that they are both power hogs. I ended up building an HTPC based on AMD's Zacate platform of low wattage APU's. It killed several birds with one stone. It's a music, photo, TV show, and movie player/server.

 

[shakham]

@amey01: The AE has an optical out so I'm using the DAC on my processor. The AE doesn't have a clock, but does that affect the sound quality?

I do get that delay when I manually switch songs (a quick press-rewind fixes it)....but if I'm playing a playlist it doesn't happen, so I assumed it was because of the iphone app control and how it's setup.

@Tch0rT: How is the sound quality?

I can see the UI issues...but I may be willing to live with that. For the noise, I'll have to see...mine is in a closet so maybe it won't be a factor.

What OS are you using on the HTPC? Windows Media Center?
Did you get a specific sound card for higher quality sound?

 

[amey01]

@amey01: The AE has an optical out so I'm using the DAC on my processor. The AE doesn't have a clock, but does that affect the sound quality?

It does if you're using SPDIF.

 

[tsv_1]

It does if you're using SPDIF.

To elaborate on Adam's adroit assertion... SPDIF "embeds" the clock within the serial datastream. Therefore, the receiving device must regenerate the clock (usually by PLL based circuit). The receiving device then uses this reconstructed clock to sample each bit of the audio datastream. This process is prone to jitter (mostly) in the incoming signal and errors can, and quite often do, result. Alternatively, when a clock is supplied along with the data (and both are treated lovingly by the interconnecting media), the receiver has the luxury of using the incoming clock to sample the incoming datastream with a much lower potential for bit errors.

I'm over-simplifying here for illustrative purposes, and there are other means beyond traditional PLLs to reconstruct clocks... just trying to supply a little more background on why data+clock is generally preferred above data-only.

 

[Cherian]

Why not build your own? All you need is a computer and a good sound card. This is what I do. I use an old Dell Core 2 Duo with a HT omega Halo XT sound card. With this system I have access to internet contant and my NAS drives. This card has 7.1 channel output with the XT card. I'm only using it in 2 channel mode but I can expand If I ever need to.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829271005

 

[shakham]

tsv_1: Very understandable. I'm surprised the protocol allows for functioning without an explicit clock.

Cherian: At the price point of the card, wouldn't it be better to get a Squeezebox Touch? Is HT | Omega the brand to get these days? Historically SoundBlaster used to have the good stuff until sound cards went by the wayside. I'm talking waay back .

 

[|Tch0rT|]

@Tch0rT: How is the sound quality?

I can see the UI issues...but I may be willing to live with that. For the noise, I'll have to see...mine is in a closet so maybe it won't be a factor.

What OS are you using on the HTPC? Windows Media Center?
Did you get a specific sound card for higher quality sound?

SQ on the 360 I can't say since it's been too long and I didn't have my ML's at that time. Between the PS3 and HTPC they sound identical to my ears. Both of them I used toslink optical out to my Marantz receiver. The HTPC runs Windows 7 for an OS and XBMC for all media. No soundcard just optical out from on board.

 

[Cherian]

To me the Squeezebox is a one trick pony. I use the PC for video, internet, audio, Gaming and anything a PC can do. The other big thing is wired access to my NAS drives and all of the Video and audio contant I have on it.

 

[amey01]

To me the Squeezebox is a one trick pony. I use the PC for video, internet, audio, Gaming and anything a PC can do. The other big thing is wired access to my NAS drives and all of the Video and audio contant I have on it.

THAT: is exactly the appeal for a lot of people. It does that one trick extraordinarily well.

There are a lot of us that don't do anything in our listening rooms other than listen. There is no screen or TV in my listeining room. No gaming. No computer. Certainly no video.

The Squeezebox allows no-compromise music serving abilities without any of this distracting, extraneous stuff.

 

[jmschnur]

Unless one works very hard, a pc will make some noise , fans or a hard disk (if not an ssd). The squeezetouch is silent. My servers are in the basement but the touch is connected by Ethernet cable.

I like the room to be less than 30 db for serious listening. Ac off, lights off etc.

Makes a difference to me for stereo only listening. I do have a quiet computer but I primarily use this for Skype these days.


J

 

[Cherian]

The PC and NAS drives are placed in another room. Only the video and audio cables are brought into the TV and preamp. I also use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. For what I call critical listening I use the Esoteric DV-50 with CDs or SACDs.

 

[Audioseduction]

I have a SSD in my laptop which is silent. Laptop is dedicated for music play back only. I don't even have the LCD screen on at all by keeping the lid shut.

 

[churchill]

THAT: is exactly the appeal for a lot of people. It does that one trick extraordinarily well.

There are a lot of us that don't do anything in our listening rooms other than listen. There is no screen or TV in my listeining room. No gaming. No computer. Certainly no video.

The Squeezebox allows no-compromise music serving abilities without any of this distracting, extraneous stuff.

+1, agree with Adam!

 

[shakham]

I'm trying to just get higher quality music, ideally with the equipment I have, as I have quite a bit of stuff.

I quickly tested TVersity with the PS3...I hated the interface, and was getting choppy sound....wired ethernet would probably fix it or greater buffering (some parameter somewhere). For now I copied 1-2 songs over into the PS3 temporarily. I can't tell if the sound output is 16-bit or 24-bit as my Sunfire TV-IV doesn't tell me...nor does the PS3.

Also I'm seeing weird frequency options...88.1, 88.3,or something like that...the PS3 supposedly upsamples, but again, I have nothing showing me concretely what is happening. I have to dig into it a little more. I did a back to back test against the AE. It sounded different....the question is if that different means it sounded better....initially it sounded better, but the base volume of the PS3 is higher than the AE so that may account for that as the music sounded more pronounced. Again, more testing needed.

I'm a little reluctant to get a Squeezebox unless there is no other reasonable way to work with the stuff I have. Mainly because I'd prefer not to add more and more equipment.

 

[shakham]

I have a SSD in my laptop which is silent. Laptop is dedicated for music play back only. I don't even have the LCD screen on at all by keeping the lid shut.

How do you control the music?

 

[amey01]

I don't even have the LCD screen on at all by keeping the lid shut.

It begs the question then (sorry) - why have the laptop in there at all then? Why not put it somewhere else, well away from your listening room, and have a nice, eloquent, purpose built little music streamer (eg Squeezebox, but could be anything else - Sonos, Cyrus, Naim, Cambridge Audio, etc) in your listening room?

 

[jmschnur]

How do you control the music?

With the squeezetouch , IPeng an iPad app is a fine solution for control of the touch as well as selecting music.


J

 

[Audioseduction]

It begs the question then (sorry) - why have the laptop in there at all then? Why not put it somewhere else, well away from your listening room, and have a nice, eloquent, purpose built little music streamer (eg Squeezebox, but could be anything else - Sonos, Cyrus, Naim, Cambridge Audio, etc) in your listening room?

I like the playback and functionality of jRiver Media Center which runs on my laptop. I also have the laptop setup to play from memory with a dedicated 3TB ext. HD for my music file storage. My playback experience with this arrangement is just jaw dropping performance. I've had several audiophiles say what a great reference system I have after listening to it. :music: