Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Moving into downloading music which one to get??

I want to move into the 21st century and begin playing music thru my 861 and a
lossless system- which one due you guys rec.?- seems the transporter is mentioned quite often as is Sonos- what about the Mcintosh music server??=I know zero about these and could use some rec.- I will be running the system thru ATC active speakers- thanks and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Both Squeezebox/Transporter and Sonus systems have their fans on this site and for good reasons in that they are both excellent systems.

Superficially speaking, the Sonus system has a more elaborate interface with a larger display (at higher cost) and is user friendly while the Slimdevices system is arguably more flexible and cheaper but requires a more geeky mentality to get it all going.

I've only practical experience of the SB3 which I think is superb. Just upgraded to the beta Squeeze Center 7 release which offers a lot of features. My SB3 also acts as a wireless bridge for my EP35 HD DVD player. I suggest you do a lot of reading. You could also download the Slimdevices software on your computer system (together with SoftSqueeze) to get a feel for this system.

Cliff

PS Happy New Year

It'd be useful to know what you have already on the computer side, and what you hope to achieve as there are many options.

McIntosh seem (not too familiar with them tbh) to be going for the standalone market i.e. you buy one of their servers, you chuck a disc in it, it rips it and you play it back via the server etc.

IMO you'll pay a HUGE premium for this sort of thing.

A cheaper option is often a PC or Mac, coupled with a streaming player such as a Squeezebox or Airport Express, into a DAC.

I'd say control is as big of an issue as sound quality with this kind of thing - for example a Squeezebox comes with a remote control and an LED display on the streamer itself so you can have your computer in another room and select tracks from a remote in your listening environment.

thanks guys- The unit will be in my equip. closet adjoining my room- I have a Dell laptop in there now to do the updates on config- I am not overly computer savvy but can figure out what ever I need to do= I want to be able to kind of do what I do now -put on a CD and sit and listen-

I'd echo what CliffS said tbh.

The Squeezebox is probably the cheapest yet decent solution that gives you a remote in your hand whilst you're listening, as does the Sonos but at greater cost.

Also Sonos is a closed system AFAIK, whereas there's a very active community developing stuff for the Squeezebox/Slimserver platform.

Personally I have an Airport Express feeding my humble little F80, and to me it sounds fantastic, though it is parked practically next to my Mac so control isn't so much of an issue.

Presumably we're talking predominantly CD here?

I ask as the more expensive devices will be able to play higher quality source files without having to down-sample them.

I forgot to mention that there are major improvements underway for the SB system in the form of a much improved remote system with colour screen etc. This should certainly level the playing field between SB and Sonos systems when it is released. See the Jive Platform threads in the Slimdevices forums for details (and speculation).

Cliff

With the SB3 (or Transporter) you will have to be able to see the unit's display when you cue up the CD or Playlist. The remote does not display what's playing (as the Sonos does).

I too have a couple of the SB3's. Love the concept, but the players are not quite robust enough yet for widespread market appeal. Have been thinking about switching to another player because I really would prefer to truly plug and play and not have to worry about maintenance issues. Altho wife is able to use it, if something goes on the blink I have to intervene when I'd rather not have to.

Haven't looked at Sonos lately, but since all of my music has been ripped to FLAC, need a player to support it as I do NOT want to re-rip.

You can convert pretty much any lossless format to another lossless format with no loss.

I use the Squeezebox 3, an added bonus for me was that it plays internetradio which in some cases are very good with higher bitrates, and ehum very aviable at lover bitrates and the LiveMusic Archive is aviable to !

It's a bit geeky, especialy if you using a lot off geeky pluggins or diy pluggins youself, the brigth side is that it's very plattform independent. Folks install slimserver on everything.

The user freindliness issues will actually in for example my case not be with neither the Squeezebox or Slimserver itself they are easy.

But it uses ethernet trough your pc and/or router, so you need to learn and configure your router. and if you want run it wireless you have to learn how to configure your router or ap for that and so on, especialy if you want internet radio without the pc running.

There is also a learning curve for ripping and tagging.

Otherwise In my case it is stable, it don't fuss more than a Meridian product;-)

According to their website, Sonos support FLAC. The new SB remote looks interesting though.

That's not true in my experience. You take the SB3 out of the box, plug in it and connect the SPDIF to your G68 (or whatever else you want). The SB3 finds your Slimserver with very little effort and no instruction required at all. If your wi-fi is passworded, then just apply the password when prompted and away you go. I got mine playing in about 2 minutes which really surprised me.

There's nothing to actually configure in the router as far as I know to make a SB work.

Ah, but my perspective was that i did not have any router to begin with, only the adsl modem from (speedtouch) provided with my isp(preconfigured).

I had to learn how to setup a small network, bridge the speedtouch and move the ppoe loggin to my new router set it up as dchp, reserve permanent IP numbers for pc and sb3, netstumble a bit to choose a relitivly unused ch for wireless, understand the WAP-PSK encryption and mac adress things on the wifi side.
Nowdays i think's it a breeze, but i had never ever done it before. So i had to learn the lingo and what was needed on the go. And then i had learn how to portforward (not for the SB) but for other applications

For starters I conected the sp3 directly to my pc and got it working in that way (fast ans easy), but it did't yeild the functionality i wanted (radio with out pc) so I ran to nearest electronic shop and bought a thing called "router" :-)

If you already have a network and now how to use it, sure the sb is a drop in and forget thingy it is stable.

I would recomend wired setup, if you got your own house and can take upp holes wherever you want to do that.

Wireless works to,but I'm sometimes at the mercy off my neighbours.

Not so netsavy people misses alot of "obvius" things.
Again this is my perspective, but thats exactly the purpose of my post, The SB Experience can be very different for different people as you use existing network and computers whatever that is.

Some other'server solutions provide all hardware too, this vill be simple but expensive for end user's. I've seen examples on server boxes that only support certain formats and locks the files inside the box, not very flexible.

I love the slimserver way of doing things because it is flexible and leave me in controll off how things work.

/Mikael

PS someday I will learn how to write a short post, but not today