have logitech cornered the market? i know very little about streaming flac bit perfectly across wireless network but find it hard to believe that the squeezebox is the only way? I have a dac that i want to send my music to from pc but cannot afford the logitech solution, anyone know any cheaper methods?
stuart
stuart
How about the airport express from Apple?
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/features/airtunes.html
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/features/airtunes.html
surfstu said:
Oh, your right. I'm not sure if you can use songbird with apple's airport.
I found this. This maybe interesting.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10008349-1.html
You could also try a cheap Wyse Winterm <ebay link with a good soundcard
running from a flash card adapter with GeeXboX.
Either use the analog out or digital, which most (even the cheap) soundcards have.
The ebay one needs a respray to make it look decent next to the rest of your equipment
but I bought 22 good looking ones at a local computer sale for 18 euro each
Plays almost anything you throw at it including flac and can be controlled from a web page
on your computer. Added bonus is streaming internet radio although this is of course
of a pretty bad quality 32/128kbps mp3. And it beats any standalone player with codec
compatibility and quality.
You can even insert your usb drive with music on it or play cd's. Even better is to put
in a decent size disk and fill this with music.
You just share your music directory on your computer, power on the geexbox and
browse to it's ip address to control the player. You do have to get wired or wireless ethernet to it
Also great as a movie player but then you need something faster as the winterm
uses a 550Mhz cpu.
You can download and burn geexbox on a cd to try it out. Just reboot your computer
with the cd inserted and make sure it boots from cd.
running from a flash card adapter with GeeXboX.
Either use the analog out or digital, which most (even the cheap) soundcards have.
The ebay one needs a respray to make it look decent next to the rest of your equipment
but I bought 22 good looking ones at a local computer sale for 18 euro each
Plays almost anything you throw at it including flac and can be controlled from a web page
on your computer. Added bonus is streaming internet radio although this is of course
of a pretty bad quality 32/128kbps mp3. And it beats any standalone player with codec
compatibility and quality.
You can even insert your usb drive with music on it or play cd's. Even better is to put
in a decent size disk and fill this with music.
You just share your music directory on your computer, power on the geexbox and
browse to it's ip address to control the player. You do have to get wired or wireless ethernet to it
Also great as a movie player but then you need something faster as the winterm
uses a 550Mhz cpu.
You can download and burn geexbox on a cd to try it out. Just reboot your computer
with the cd inserted and make sure it boots from cd.
And even I have given in and bought a skwishboxen
Works great, usable interface on the box itself and the
web control is also quite good. Now to clean up the
mess I call a directory structure. I have not listened to
the internal dac, might try that tomorrow.
The GeexBox will be the movie player for now but the
project usb dac will have to find a new home.
Works great, usable interface on the box itself and the
web control is also quite good. Now to clean up the
mess I call a directory structure. I have not listened to
the internal dac, might try that tomorrow.
The GeexBox will be the movie player for now but the
project usb dac will have to find a new home.
sooo...
squeezebox is still the only available option?
For flac over wireless?
I can't believe it, squeezebox is £200, yet wireless routers are so cheap, all I want is an spdif out at my hifi rack.
Have used coax spdif to stream bit perfectly to dac for years, using jriver media player, but now i NEED wireless, why have they not caught up??
stuart
squeezebox is still the only available option?
For flac over wireless?
I can't believe it, squeezebox is £200, yet wireless routers are so cheap, all I want is an spdif out at my hifi rack.
Have used coax spdif to stream bit perfectly to dac for years, using jriver media player, but now i NEED wireless, why have they not caught up??
stuart
valleyman said:
It does. I stream from my Mac Pro to my airport express in my equipment rack and another in my bedroom.
Best part is using the "remote" app on the iPhone to control the whole thing (including library text searches) from any room.
There's a program called Fluke that will allow one to import Flac files to iTunes, then use the "convert to apple lossless" function to support streaming over the network. I couldn't be happier with the whole setup.
Then the squeezebox is imho the better option. Does wireless and wired, does
bridging so you can connect another computer to the box and use the wireless link.
It plays almost all sorts of audio, no need for recoding and the web interface is
available form al computers on the network. We already have lots of fun killing
songs the other started and playing something loud and annoying
It has a display which the AE lacks and it plays standalone internet radio without
the need for your computer. Not to mention buying apple audio cables for E39
bridging so you can connect another computer to the box and use the wireless link.
It plays almost all sorts of audio, no need for recoding and the web interface is
available form al computers on the network. We already have lots of fun killing
songs the other started and playing something loud and annoying
It has a display which the AE lacks and it plays standalone internet radio without
the need for your computer. Not to mention buying apple audio cables for E39
Fenris said:
That's what I did before with a winterm and project usb dac. Then I missed a
view of what was going on without switching on the tv but could control it with
a remote (blind) or the web page on my computer. The advantage of a display
on the player with a remote and the standalone option made me get the
squeezoid. As drm does not enter our house this 'one caveat' does not bother me a bit.
Westerp said:Then the squeezebox is imho the better option. Does wireless and wired, does
bridging so you can connect another computer to the box and use the wireless link.
It plays almost all sorts of audio, no need for recoding and the web interface is
available form al computers on the network. We already have lots of fun killing
songs the other started and playing something loud and annoying
It has a display which the AE lacks and it plays standalone internet radio without
the need for your computer. Not to mention buying apple audio cables for E39
Don't have to use apple cables. This one is $3.99
http://www.amazon.com/6ft-Toslink-Mini-Cable/dp/B000FMXKC8
I don't need a display for my equipment rack which is in another room in a closet. That's the point of the iPhone. I have the entire interface in my pocket at all times.
No reason you couldn't set up a wired system with iTunes using the optical output on the computer. That's certainly not as easy as cat5 though. The wireless solution is just easier in my case. iTunes will play a variety of formats, it just won't stream flac, which I agree is a pain, but I just auto-convert everything.
All of the laptops on my network can control the system.
The squeezbox certainly has some advantages, but I wouldn't trade my current system for it. The iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote seals the deal for me. If one doesn't have one of those devices already, the decision might be more in favor of the squeezebox.
But the original question was whether logitech has the market cornered. For Flac streaming, maybe. But if other formats are an option, there is at least one other solution available.
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