Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Anyone moved from Sonus to Sooloos

yes if ripped directly on the Sooloos the artwork is 200x200.

Once you've got the stuff ripped, the Sooloos UI beats SB Server into a cocked hat. Plus some people hear an audible SQ improvement by passing FLAC files to the ID40 in an 808.3 or an 861v6 rather than streaming via SPDIF. My motivation to consider Sooloos is 95% the definite UI benefits and 5% the possible SQ improvements. But if the ripping and/or the importing is as troublesome as it seems to be, given what people have said on this thread so far, then that's a big negative and I might just stick with SB only - means that I would have a redundant ID40. On thing's for sure now - I won't buy any Sooloos kit without trying to import what I've ripped before committing.

Maybe sonus will one day produce a hires zone player which would probably be enough to make me save the money and buy a new takahashi telescope instead! I always believed Sooloos was all about the interface and that it is state of the art, not so sure now. Perhaps some comments from happy Sooloos owners to readdress the balance would be good
David

Hang on everyone, your all running in different directions with different issues.
Firstly, let's just get back to what Sooloos claims to be.
It is a complete 'managed' solution for archiving and replaying one's music collection at very high quality in multiple zones, all controlled by what is widely acknowledged as the best and fastest user interface.
It is NOT a 'one size fits all' media player that offers seamless integration with every third party piece of media software and hardware.
We all know the dangers of trying to design product to work with 'everything', it usually ends up not working well at all. There are too many variables.

Sonos, excellent though it is, does not offer a ripping solution therefore users must find there own solutions such as Media monkey, itunes, windows media etc etc. Whilst this is fine for many users, there are, not surprisingly, a significant number of 'high end' users who will not wish to fiddle about with various bits of software, then set up a NAS, let alone decide which codecs to use. They just want to buy something that works, sounds great, looks good and is EASY. That, I believe is what Sooloos & Meridian are trying to achieve and so far have done a pretty good job.

If you're going to have a managed system, you have to use a database and they've chosen to use AMG.
which like most databases is not perfect and does have omissions now and again. I believe that Sooloos actually monitor this and as i'm sure any of you who've looked at AMG would know, it can be modified online to correct mistakes. The way that AMG manages 'various artist' albums is different from some other software. It DOES recognise album artist but what Duncan is pointing out is that it does NOT create a separate field for the track artist within a 'various artist' album. It simply amends the track title and 'adds' the artist to that. This is not a Sooloos thing, it's an AMG thing. However it doesn't create a problem within Sooloos because the system would still be able to find those track artists in a search.
It ONLY becomes an issue if you use Sooloos (and therefore AMG) to rip your music and then export it to your NAS so that Sonos or some other system can see it.
If you do it the other way round .... rip to your NAS using whatever software you're used to then import TO the Sooloos, it 'shouldn't' be a problem.
Regarding cover art, again it's a difficult one for any manufacturer. If the database you are using only offers 200x200 art , that's what you'll get. However it really is very easy to add a higher resolution file. One of my clients has re scanned everything he's got! Rather time consuming but it looks fabulous and you only do it once!

The point i'm making here is that we shouldn't be too hard on Sooloos for trying to do it the right way and possibly compromising 'some' integration on the way.
What it does ..it does VERY well... and is great to use. It imports/exports well with itunes and let's face it, that's more than Sonos did for a long time ....when that first came out, it wouldn't go anywhere near itunes or AAC.
That said, Sooloos is still evolving and i'm sure that integration will improve.

Gerry

Is the use of 200x200 artwork (by default) in Sooloos in order to keep the interface fast and responsive?

I've been demoed the interface and I was very impressed by how quick it was - perhaps it slows down with large quantities of bigger images?

S

Nic, yes there is, but I like to search my classical composers on surname: so "Rachmaninov" not "Sergei Rachmaninov" or "Sergey Rachmaninov"; Finzi not "Gerald Finzi". Some systems (eg dBpoweramp) support a ComposerSort tag that organises by surname, but I don't know how universal that is ( and I lost confidence in it when it presented me with "Bingen, Hildegard of"). Anyway, if I make the 'album artist' the composer then I can search by album artist, or by folder, and it all works with my non-classical albums where album artist is "Dylan" or (The) "Clash" or "Elvis Costello and the Attractions" or whatever.

Furthermore where there are two major pieces on a single classical album - say Mendelssohn and Bruch violin concertos, I rip each separately with a different album artist as though they were two separate CDs and avoid all the problems with <Various Composers> etc.

Blech

Given someone is starting from scratch with a Sooloos system, is it preferable to rip via Sooloos or something like dBpoweramp or does it make little difference?

If you rip using non Sooloos, does the import routine use AMG to recheck album art etc or just imports what is already in there?

My current rips were made to be iPod compatible and were made using itunes to apple lossless with error checking. I have used the dBpoweramp batch process to make MP3 versions. Will the Sooloos import convert the apple lossless files to FLAC. In the real world (without getting into a deep technical debate)is there any audible difference between an accurately ripped apple lossless file and a FLAC file.

The crux of the issue is, assuming I invest in Sooloos, am I better to

1 rerip my collection and let Sooloos do its work (would this be better via control 15 or my PC?).
2 import my apple lossless
3 rerip using dBpoweramp and import.

While the sonus link is a pain, thinking about it a bit more, I don't buy many new albums so to rip twice, once on Sooloos and once via itunes to my existing NAS would not be a major issue, just annoying.

thanks

David

Thanks for this overview, Gerry. However, using dBpoweramp you get metadata from four databases which I generally review, and good as AMG is, it gets chosen less than 50% of the time. In other words, if I was ripping classical albums in Sooloos, some of which are relatively obscure and have only a handful of entries, and I didn't have other databases to choose from then I would have to manually enter and correct a lot of stuff.
In other words, contrary to what others say on this thread, it will recognise the album artist tag and allow you to sort by it? Does it create an album artist tag on its own rips? AMG certainly supports album artist.

Your point's well taken, but if I'm spending thousands for UI slickness and then I have to spend hours sorting out the tags so I can find what I want, then, weeeellll, hmmm...

I do recognise that tags are an interminable problem for everyone.

Strangely enough, as a die hard CD user with only occasional Squeezebox use, I found myself contemplating the Control 15 today as a nice, self contained, easy to use comprehensive source which should sound pretty tasty for the most part. The price is a stretch, but just about do-able.

However, having read the comments above about it having trouble with meta data, and artwork at a paltry 200x200 on a 17" screen, I've promptly binned the idea. I think it's inexcusable for a system at this price to be sold on it's ripping/metadata/ease of use benefits whilst having issues like this.

George

With iTunes, it doesn't matter whether I have Ludwig van Beethoven, Ludwig v. Beethoven or Beethoven in the Composer column, a search on "Beethoven" in composer will still find it.

Are you saying that with SqueezeBox that is not the case? I was sure that Sooloos behaved the same way, but perhaps that was a hasty assumption.

Well yes, but the ads for Sooloos which show the screen holding a whole album cover don't appear to have only a 200x200 image on the screen. I find that quite confusing...