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Slim Devices kicks it up a notch
If it weren't for the fact that I'm very satisfied with my original Slim Devices Squeezebox, I might well have some buyers remorse over the upgrade they've just announced.
The Squeezebox 2 takes it to a whole new level - lossless music formats, Burr-Brown DAC, 802.11g WiFi, higher-resolution screen, visualisers. Not to mention "High precision dedicated crystal clocks and separate linear power supplies for the audio stages" and "Huge 64 megabit buffer for extreme resilience to adverse wireless network conditions."
I wonder if it would interest truly hardcore audiophiles now wanting the convenience of keeping music on a server, such as Sun's Tim Bray.
I'm not in the same audiophile league as Tim, no doubt, but he's thinking of a Mac mini and firewire drive setup near his hifi. That's certainly one way to do it. I'll be following his investigations with interest.
Me, I've got an 1466 Mhz AthlonXP/100 GB Seagate IDE/ 1.25 GB RAM/
mid-tower setup, with UPS, Apple Airport hub etc etc - messy. noisy, hot
etc. The thing is, it's in the basement, and I'm listening to music on the
ground floor. Works for me.
posted at: 10:35 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
So my Squeezebox arrived. Absolutely outstanding. Nicely packaged, good printed documentation, little extras like batteries for the remote and nice quality phono cable.
The server software is very professional on the Mac, and the sound is great.
My wife thinks it lacks a little something compared to my CD player, but for every bit of extra depth or punch I get off CD, I find an equal or greater amount of harshness. With my hifi setup and now my Squeezebox receiving my 192kb mp3s, I have a nice balance of quality and convenience. Of course, my ears are not as good as hers. I think I've had a spot of tinnitus since I was little. I can remember thinking that our solid state TV was "noisy" in my right ear. I must have been under 10, maybe about 9. TVs can be noisy, but not in only one ear generally.
I particularly like the server software feature where it finds
iTunes playlists and integrates them into the selection even via the
remote. I made a playlist called "Back to Mine" after the CD series
(I have the Orb and Orbital Back To Mine compilations). Right now
it's playing "To The Unknown Man" by Vangelis, which is soothing my
jangled nerves (bad day at work).
posted at: 22:19 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
Closer to mp3 nirvana?
Current iTunes status : 5344 Songs, 30.42 GB
I'm nearly organised in the lounge. Soon there will be only a small selection of favourite CDs, and only as many as can easily fit in the drawers. All other music will be put away, and most of it will also be on-line on a hard drive somewhere in the basement. I'm trying to make myself rip even cds I'm not THAT fond of. If I don't put them into MP3 format, there's even less chance I'll make the effort. Some of my CDs should probably just be discarded. If I'm honest, my Candlemass Live CD doesn't see the light of day very often.
I think Netflix should start a new service, Netdiscs. They send you a bunch of envelopes and you dispatch all surplus CDs. They wait until someone else buys them and credit your account, which is good for buying other CDs that other people dispensed with.
I know, I can see the flaw immediately - buy CDs, rip them to hard disk, send them to Netflix and eventually get some other used CDs and rip them too. Net result, less new CD purchases. The thing is, since this is hard to stop already, it would be interested to see how the record companies could squash it. I'm sure plenty of people simply rip and resell CDs to allow themselves access to more new titles without paying full price for every one.
I'm probably a bit old-fashioned, but I have nearly every CD I've
ever bought. A few have gotten lost, but I tend to eventually give
in and buy such titles again. In fact nothing highlights how
essential it is for me to hear an old CD, or at least one or two
favourite tracks therein, than the feeling I've lost the CD. "Oh ...
no ... I seem to have lost Rust in Peace by Megadeth... must ...
hear ... Hangar 18". Next thing you know I buy it again, full price
in Border's, only to listen to it 1.5 times, rip it and consign it
to the bottom drawer. But at least I know I _could_ listen it ... if
I wanted to.
posted at: 21:06 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I like having a real hifi with a cd player, decent amp, decent speakers etc. I've even still got my turn table hooked up. However, my CD collection is getting completely out of control. Having a young daughter also adds to the havoc in the living room. Anything left lying around (like a cd case) is fair game for abuse, including being stepped on or perhaps chewed a bit.
I made a start at switching from CDs to MP3 back when I used to use Linux exclusively as my home desktop. I used Freeamp and Grip/Lame to build up a small collection of .MP3 files at 128kb/s and played them back on the computer speakers whilst working. Sounded really good for a while, but I didn't see it as a serious alternative to the hi-fi. It was a thrill to rip CDs at 4-5X normal speed on my original Athlon 750MHz system. Nevermind that it made enough noise to destroy all fine detail in the music, I was happy enough to just rock out as I hacked code.
Then one day after a system upgrade, KDE reset the volume to max, and it blew out the tweeter on one of my Logitech speakers when I played a CD. That was not too fun, especially since I didn't feel rich enough to replace them and Logitech's customer helpdesk website was unusable from Linux. I ended up with some cheaper, nastier speakers, and I eventually got a bit frustrated with the Linux song and dance - where did Freeamp go? Oh it's Zinf now. Ok, Zinf needs MusicBrainz, fine, I can do that. Oh crap, that has an M4 bug etc etc.
I may be a professional programmer, but when I start out to listen to music, and end up debugging someone elses M4 bug, the fun is starting to wear thin.
I also had an inkling that MP3s on a real hifi could be good. I bought a SliMP3 from Slim Devices Inc., together with a 100ft ethernet cable. It worked for a while, but my device was one of the original hand-soldered models, and it wasn't very reliable.
Fast-forward three years, I now prefer a Mac for music, and I've been converted by my iPod. MP3 at 192 kb/s is good enough for my ears, I can hardly notice the difference in headphones. Best of luck to the zinf, musicbrainz, grip, lame etc guys, but buy a Mac and Apple takes care of all of that for you, legally, and reliably. And my laptop does ripping at 10X speed on most discs, sometimes 12X. Awesome.
Best of all, Slim Devices kept going, building on the success of
the SliMP3, and now sell a wireless version called the Squeezebox. So I
just ordered one, and have spent most of today ripping more of my
CDs. Current status 4697 songs, 26.60GB.
posted at: 23:06 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
This morning I played some Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life, Volume 1.
When it came to "Sir Duke", she smiled and jigged. So she's got good taste (is is a classic track), and enjoys one of her daddy's favourite songs. The thing is, she 18 months old
I used to play this song in a brass band. The horn breaks are quite
hard to read, but if you understand the flow first and the notes
second, it's much easier. It's really not that complicated a sequence
if you played it without swing, but the swing is why you want to play
it. I was playing solor tenor horn, but I still had to play the full
"solo" line.
posted at: 23:03 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
I recently bought a CD by this name by Deutsche Grammophon which has a nice selection of organ classics - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Vidor's Toccata (Allegro) from Symphony No. 5 in F minor and so on.
It's nice to have these all collected together so I can start to put names against these famous pieces when I hear them.
[Aside : I'm a big fan of organ music, especially on a Really Serious Organ - living in Brooklyn as I do now, it's been a long time since I've had the chance to enjoy an Ian Tracey voluntary, but there is absolutely no substitute. If you are ever in Liverpool just before Christmas, take the opportunity to catch a Carol service at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, he always plays something spectacular at the end, and you can walk up and stand between the two towering organ banks. It doesn't get much better than that.]
But I don't get back to Liverpool very often, so...
Here's a way to possibly get some idea what it's like.
Disclaimer :- The following could upset your wife, it could scare your pets, it could kill your house plants, and it will certainly strain your HiFi!
The big discovery for me on this CD was Apparition de L'Eglise Eternelle by Olivier Messiaen. It follows immediately after the Vidor piece mentioned above. The piece has a sort of arch structure - building from a quiet start to an epic, tooth-rattling climax and then fading away into the aether.
If you have a decent hifi, and a copy of this CD (and you should) try listening to these two tracks as follows :
If performed correctly, you should look a bit like Peter Murphy in those famous Maxell Ads - ok, maybe not the extremely gaunt cheeks.
Equipment used in this experiment :-