Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming MC200 Owners Thread

Carl

I ran it, it found 7 duplicate artists, I clicked resolve (or something) and it cleaned them all up... thanks for the reminder.

Mike

Hi Mike, good one; glad to help.

Hi all,
We are poised to order an MC200 and I've started to think about how best to host the ControlPC program and associated file archives. In addition to a home desktop PC, I have a few laptops as well as various systems at work. Would it make sense/be functional to host all the Sooloos-related PC files on a large-capacity USB drive that I could move between my various computer systems? I'm imagining running the ControlPC routine to rip CDs in background at work, then carrying the drive home to update the MC200. Or ripping from the home desktop system at other times.

Also, for upload to the MC200 itself (that I won't be able to wire directly to my home network) could I connect a laptop with the USB drive directly to the MC200?

What do you think?

Hi,

For archiving the Sooloos system have a read of thisSooloos Backup Strategy .

For ripping with the ControlPC you laptop must be connected to the same LAN as MC200 and have internet access.

You can of course rip to FLAC with a 3rd party tool, DB PowerAmp is a good one, and then import the FLAC files with ControlPC later.

The MC200 should be connected to your home LAN router, idealy hardwired but if this is a problem them you could look at WiFi access port device or IP over mains convertors.

Regards,
Carl

A quick question about 'Importing'. (Asbestos suit to hand)

As Meridian often have their own, superior approaches to established codecs, would there be any advantage to ripping CDs to WAV, and let the MC200 do a Meridian FLAC conversion.

Alternatively, has anyone compared a C15 rip to a db poweramp one? I know bits are bits, but then why do we use Meridian?

Thanks,
Richard

When the Sooloos imports the files it doesn't change them to FLAC, it leaves them as their native format.

Rick

dBpoweramp is transparent about logging successful/unsuccessful rips, uses checksums extensively (see http://www.accuraterip.com/), using the codec of choice (FLAC in my case).

I imported N (I don't know really how many) album rips over the weekend into my MC200. Every studio FLAC rip worked, except for 1 Smiths CD that had a corrupted FLAC file in the set. I will remedy that by buying one of many "Best of" compilations from Amazon.

I would compare rips, but I can't figure out how to export native format one album. I fooled around with it with ControlMac and gave up. The backup format is somewhat obsfuscated, similar to how the file system looks on a Apple iPod.

Sooloos makes it simple and not complicated to rip a CD, just feed it in, no questions asked. As to comparing rips, they sound the same to me. I may continue to rip with dBpa and import files into Sooloos, this workflow seems to work OK.

Know what happens when you run out of 500Gb of storage space? I suspect I do :-).

I don't believe M has any special or secret way to make WAVs sound better converting to FLAC. With two channel the magic is elsewhere, I suspect. I heard it's hiding in all the 808.3s they build in the UK :-)

Thanks for the responses.

I too have had some corrupted FLAC files and don't know why. Might try converting them back to WAV and see if that works. Amazon only sell MP3.

I think I had some UK reveiwers in my head sayin ghtey preferrred playback of WAV files from a PC, but that is not Sooloos.

I would very much like to know what happens when you reach the 500Gb point - is there any warning before? Does it swell up, then divide into two MC200s, and give you twice the space? Does the white laser LED turn blood red? Just a few ideas....

The MC200 does really raise the standard for Meridian lower cost products, and that questions the value of any disc spinners, apart from the legend that is 808.3.

Curious as to how the MC600 is in comparison.

Richard

My old ripping windows computer sometimes corrupted the FLAC's due to probably some dodgy RAM. Now i use vmware + dBpa saving to a checksummed ZFS partition ... plus I verify at the ripping step to doublecheck. A corrupt FLAC file shouldn't expand to WAV unless you ignore the errors, which will lead to skipping or discontinuous drops. Better to re-rip or find a replacement CD and rip again.

Since there is no way to tell what capacity you are at when you don't own a C10/C15 with your MC200, I believe I ran into the end of the road on mine when I ripped a new CD and it just said "waiting to transfer to ..." forever and never transferred the ripped files. I had to delete some voluminous Grateful Dead Dick's Picks in order to make room. And also order a TwinStore even though my main NAS has over 6 Tb free!

btw, I put some black electrical tape over "Sauron's eye", the eye may have turned blood red, but since it is obscured, I wouldn't be able to testify to that!

The MC200 gets a lot of value in my estimation, too.

Has anyone filled up their MC200? Now, all my Import CD and Import Files never complete, getting stuck at "Waiting to Copy (album name) ..."

I have deleted all my Grateful Dead and all of my beloved John Coltrane to make room, but I still can't import into the database. The backup I have done to USB drive takes up 437.07 Gb of disk space. It would seem to still have about 62 Gb left but I can't save any new albums (and 5 arrived in the last two days!)

Any suggestions?

"Has anyone filled up their MC200? Now, all my Import CD and Import Files never complete, getting stuck at "Waiting to Copy (album name) ..."

The same here, been struggling with it all day thinking it was a network or internet/router problem.
On the Mac I get the Image Upload to 84 % then freezes and nothing happens; on the PC after I click the 'accept and transfer' button I get the same message as yourself. Without a Control unit I have no idea how many GBs of music are on there, I had thought the addition of a TwinStore would have sorted out the storage but as yet it is still impossible to turn storage off on the MC200.

M

The backup compresses the data so will take up less space than it does on the MC200.
Sounds like it's full to me!

Have you rebooted after you've deleted?
Maybe it needs a reboot to make the deleted space available?

Rick