CD -- streaming music from server

[Jobbo]

Fair enough - you know you can get rid of the WMA copies when you've converted to FLAC though?

[timhum]

I'm also looking to make the change to streaming and have been reading about the Olive 4HD. I appreciate that it's quite expensive but it seems very appealing as it simplifies the whole process by using the single unit whilst puporting to offer great sound. Is there anybody on here with experience of the Olive machine who can comment on it's ease of use and very importantly quality of sound in lossless format. Will it sound as good as my Meridian 508?

thanks

[LooneyTunes]

mike_knott said:

I looked into this about 18 months ago and did the following:

Ripped CDs to flac format using Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
Tagged with mp3tag
Artwork downloaded with album cover art downloader
Converted to mp3 with foobar2000
Stored on a netgear readynas and streamed over a wireless G network to a Squeezebox boom and a Squeezebox radio (the network will cope with different playlists on each device simultaneously).

It doesn't really matter which format you rip to as long as the initial rip is lossless (but don't use .wav as it doesn't support tagging!). Converting to other lossless formats theoretically does not change the sound quality, and it is only a couple of clicks in foobar2000 to convert your entire collection. I chose flac mainly because the streaming media player I had an eye on played it natively, it supports tagging and compresses files to around 50-60% of their original size.

There is a good thread on the hydrogenaudio forum, in which one of the more knowledgeable posters recommends DBpoweramp as more suitable for most people's needs.

I have subsequently ripped my DVDs in a mixture of .mkv and .iso format and added a netgear NTV550 to watch. I haven't yet increased the capacity of the nas so can't yet comment on the network performance.

HTH,

Mike...

Thanks Mike - most appreciated.

[mike_knott]

LooneyTunes said:

Thanks Mike - most appreciated.

[Ewan S]

Jobbo said:

Fair enough - you know you can get rid of the WMA copies when you've converted to FLAC though?

Oh yeah, but it's not like I'm short of hard drive space, so I kept them just in case. Once I get short of drive space, I'll have a big clear out.

[TheInternet]

mrmr96 said:

Is there a big difference between how 320kbps mp3 and CD audio sounds?

If you were to conduct an experiment in which you focussed entirely on detecting detrimental artifacts you would do well to be able spot the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3. If you were merely listening for enjoyment you would be very unfortunate to come across any audible aberration. Those claiming that it is very noticeable are massively overstating the case.

That said, if I was ripping a large quantity of CDs there's no way I'd want to have to do it more than once or have any doubts about it so would go FLAC if I were you - Mike Knott's process above sounds like a good template. Disk space is cheap, and you can always convert to MP3 at the same time or later with ease.

[Bullett]

I'm going to recommend dbpoweramp. It rips tags and does artwork in one go (99% success rate overall and I have some stuff I never expected it to tag correctly.
However it also uses multiple passes and validates against a db of previous rips of that cd/cutting.
Despite it being a paid for program I just felt my time was better spent than carrying out multiple processes.

[allgonepetetong]

All my music is stored as FLAC for streaming over multiple Squeezebox devices. For my portable device I use Winamp Pro to upload to it which I have set to convert to MP3 as it goes which I have found to be the best solution.

[ceebmoj]

mike_knott said:

It doesn't really matter which format you rip to as long as the initial rip is lossless (but don't use .wav as it doesn't support tagging!). Converting to other lossless formats theoretically does not change the sound quality, and it is only a couple of clicks in foobar2000 to convert your entire collection. I chose flac mainly because the streaming media player I had an eye on played it natively, it supports tagging and compresses files to around 50-60% of their original size.

Great advice. All the people that I know that have previously ripped there collections in lossy formats (for storage space reasons) are now re ripping to a loses format, preponderantly FLAC.

mike_knott said:

I have subsequently ripped my DVDs in a mixture of .mkv and .iso format and added a netgear NTV550 to watch. I haven't yet increased the capacity of the nas so can't yet comment on the network performance.

I'm in the process of doing this at the moment and having everything available on the network is great.

[pmanson]

TheInternet said:

If you were to conduct an experiment in which you focussed entirely on detecting detrimental artifacts you would do well to be able spot the difference between FLAC and 320kbps MP3. If you were merely listening for enjoyment you would be very unfortunate to come across any audible aberration. Those claiming that it is very noticeable are massively overstating the case.

That said, if I was ripping a large quantity of CDs there's no way I'd want to have to do it more than once or have any doubts about it so would go FLAC if I were you - Mike Knott's process above sounds like a good template. Disk space is cheap, and you can always convert to MP3 at the same time or later with ease.

There are now companies where you send them your cd collection (they normally provide boxes) and the HD you want to copy them to and they do all the work for you!