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FLAC will store all the usual tags quite happily...?

Mark

Mark, How does FLAC do that?

I have never managed it. I find I have to add them with a program such as Foobar or Tagscanner etc.

This takes all the free time you have in my experiance.
Once done its great, but I am getting fed up with doing it.

Perhaps I will try WMA next.

Cheers, Chris

Hi Gianni

Like yourself, I started completely from scratch, and had to research ripping, wireless networking and storage. I'll make some suggestions here under broad headings.

General:

Although the SB3 is around �190, my total was around �550 as I also had to buy a wireless router, a new 500Gb HDD for the PC and a 500Gb external drive to back everything up. Hardware costs have dropped in the past 18 months though.

The Hardware:

Although there are many options to choose from, the basic rig to get you going is a Squeezebox, a large hard drive for your PC/Mac and a wireless router. Installing a new HDD in your PC is very straightforward and most routers these days have good step by step set up instructions (which are also easy). The SB is also straightforward to set up, and it will normally communicate with Slimserver (the SB software) on your PC within a few tries. Encryption of the wirelss network can cause some frustration if you haven't done it before, but I'd be happy to talk you though that if you want. That's it. You can have it all installed and running within a couple of hours (theoretically ~30 mins, but this is the real world!)

Ripping:

Use a lossless codec. FLAC gets the popular vote, but there are alternatives. With my purist's hat on, my original intention was to rip everything as WAVs (the files on a CD), so no compression at all. The problem was that I couldn't get anything more than the most basic track info this way, and it would have taken more effort than I wanted to invest to get everything tagged properly. So, onto a lossless codec. I used EAC to rip to FLAC as everyone here suggested. However, it didn't sound as good as CD via the 500/518 or 598, and again, it was difficult to get track info. Having just bought an iPod for the car, I tried Apple Lossless (ALAC), and frankly, couldn't hear a jot of difference between the ALAC and FLAC files when played back via the 8000s (both still inferior to a real CD). However, the use of iTunes made life SO much easier. Discs rip quickly, they are organised intelligently, they are fully tagged with all the info you'll ever need, you can automatically import album artwork (setting up an iTunes Store account is free and you don't need to buy anything, ever, to get the artwork), Slimserver can work from your iTunes playlists, and you have complete integration with your iPod. On the rare occsions when iTunes doesn't have the album art, I copy it from illustrations on Amazon .

Storage:

I can't comment on NAS servers other than an impression (possibly wrong) that things have progressed a lot in the past 18 months, so I think it may be a lot easier now to have such a device, at reasonable cost, which allows you to access your library when the PC is switched off. I installed a second HDD (500Gb) in the PC and bought a Western Digital 'My Book' 500Gb external drive to back up. The latter is pretty low tech, slow to use, but does the job (and it's now dirt cheap). A CD will be 550-700Mb in size, and Apple Lossless or FLAC will reduce that by 40%. I have around 600 CDs and they occupy 187Gb on the Hard Disk. I originally chose 500Gb disks on the basis that I'd be ripping as uncompressed WAVs (so my 600CDs would use ~360Gb), but it just means I have even more room left for adding to my collection!

I think that covers the basics, not sure if it constitutes sugar on top, but if there's anything else, drop me an email!

Cheers

George

Gianni

Similar story here. I have a Synology CS407 running SlimServer with 3Tb of mirrored disks. It connects over a wired network to a SB3, which goes digitally directly into a pair of DSP-33s. All my CD's were ripped using EAC to FLAC. Took a few hours to set up the back end, really quite a long time to do the ripping, and now it Just Works. I also get Internet Radio over the same back end, direct to the SB3.

Regards

Mark

George,

I'm about to put my toe in the water with a digital storage system as well. I have roughly 200 CD's, some high rez, some not. iTunes looks like the way to go since I can't see the point in continuing to buy CD's if what I'm looking for can be downloaded. If I'm understanding you correctly the audio quality with iTunes is still a bit off a CD no matter what format you use? Have you had any experience with MusicGiants? They offer high rez downloads, like others, and even a service where they will load an external hard drive for you with your choice of music. However their music library is tiny compared to Apple and they're not cheap either. Bottom line, I'd like to be able to get the same audio quality off a music server I get from my trusty Oppo player. Seems like there are conflicting opinions here!

Ken

Hi Ken

It's not so much that iTunes as a ripping tool/repository falls short of CD, rather the lossless codecs themselves sound inferior to a CD IMO (and that of Mrs M...she spotted the difference between lossless via the SB3 and a CD immediately and offered the opinion unsolicited!)

When I first ripped to WAV, and then FLAC (both via EAC) I was using Slimserver; iTunes wasn't involved at all. I have a total of 10 DVD-As, so high rez hasn't been an issue for me, but I think Slimserver and/or the SB3 only handle signals up to 48kHz. Having found that the SB3 with WAVs wasn't going to sound as good a CD, I thought I might as well enjoy it from the convenience perspective, so Apple Lossless and iTunes is a very good solution in that respect. I've never bought or downloaded anything from iTunes (can't see why I'd ever want compressed files, and CDs are so inexpensive now) and I'll continue to buy CDs indefinitely. It's been mentioned here and in previous threads that the performance gap is very narrow. I'd say that I get ~85% of CD quality from the SB3 and lossless files, which for background music is fine. A whole lot better than a compilation tape made on your cassette deck a generation ago! (okay, several generations...) However, having spent a fortune on the best audio kit I could afford, why would I want to accept any performance hit, even if it is only 15%

If you are starting to amass a library of high rez downloads, Slimserver can still access that alongside iTunes, so two independent music folders can coexist happily. I think the only issue is when you try to go beyond 48kHz files. I don't know if any of the other systems can handle those either? (Sonos?) Perhaps someone else could comment on that?

Cheers

George

Breathe! Breathe!

http://www.ripfactory.com/ripserver.html

Regards

Mark

[smug hat on]
I hadn't ripped anything for at least a couple of years having got 99.9% of my CD collection on iTunes. Yesterday I decided to RIP a couple of missing CD's. Kate Bush box set and today I will do my Beatles box set. It was also the first time that I had used my new PC to rip music having organised my iTunes to allow access from 2 PC's and slimserver concurrent access to the library from my trusty 500Mhz P3 machine.

I was flabbergasted at the speed difference. When I ripped my CD collection previously it took 30 minutes a disc, with error correction turned off. I put my first Kate Bush CD in yesterday and turned my back. When I turned back round again, the whole disc was ripped. It was taking about 2 minutes per disc to rip, including error correction on and organising the music details. Tonight I may try and get some cover artwork and work out how to organise that.

Almost makes me want to RIP my collection again into something other than 192k MP3's now I have more than a 60G hard disc available to the machine.
[smug had off]

Hi George,

How's the extension coming on?

The Transporter outputs 44.1, 48, 88.2 and 96 and I think with the SC7 and firmware 40 there are some added bonuses to using the transporter?

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=40315&page=3

Tim.

Ian

2 min per CD - that's really fast! What set-up is that?

With a reasonably fast read only DVD drive, I though I was doing well getting the ripping time down to about 7-8 min.

Cliff

Chris, did you read my reply in the other thread?

https://www.meridianunplugged.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=70137#Post70137

Chris, don't forget there is now a Wiki entry covering some of this too:

http://www.meridianunplugged.com/wiki/index.php/Settingup%20EAC%20for%20Ripping

Mark