Moving music to the cloud and Squeezebox to Sonos?
Discussion
Not sure this is the right forum but worth a try.
I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
Sonos and a Spotify subscription to give you 320kbps streaming would probably cover a lot of what you want ? Sonos is supposed to be very simple to use.
I'm not aware of any streamer that will stream your own music files directly from the cloud, afaik they all rely on a local server of some sort (UPnP, DLNA, LMS etc).
If you don't mind a bit of DIY computer hacking, you can build a very cheap and low-power music server from a Raspberry PI, Squeezeplug OS, and a USB hard drive. This is what I use for driving my Squeezebox devices.
Mags said:
Not sure this is the right forum but worth a try.
I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
I use google just to back up my music in case of NAS failure, but I believe there is an 'unofficial' Google Play app for sonos.I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
Sonos is still the best for multiroom and controlability and connection options. But if you stay with something like spotify and don't want true multi room then there are cheaper solutions than Sonos. the trouble is if you choose them and want to change your mind later - you can't.
NAS's are useful for other things as well as music so don't discount that option. All my films and TV programs are on my NAS making accessible from all the smart TV's and PC's phones and tablets. Cloud is good but start streaming films and music etc you may have problems, also the kind of storage you are talking about would be costly. I have 2TB on my NAS, not sure how much cloud that would cost...........goes to look
edit - not much by all accounts - so you could stream direct from a PC or phone/tablet to sonos
Edited by sparkyhx on Tuesday 14th October 21:18
Edited by sparkyhx on Tuesday 14th October 21:22
Mags said:
Not sure this is the right forum but worth a try.
I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
Funny you should ask!I currently run a squeezebox with all my music on my PC running a squeezebox server feeding into an old Denon amp with TDL RTL3 loudspeakers.
My PC is past its prime and needs replacing. My original plan was to buy a NAS device running 2 disks and mirroring for backup so I could leave the NAS running all the time with the SB server. Then I can use the NAS to store music/photo's docs etc and junk the PC.
Someone has suggested I forget a NAS drive and just put everything in the cloud (e.g. Google Drive) but the Squeezebox wouldn't be able to access it. I could replace it with a Sonos Connect as my wife isn't a fan of the SB anyway but I'm not sure if the Sonos can access Google Drive or Amazon cloud and wanted to know if anyone else has done this? at the end of the day I just want a single cloud service to keep all my stuff.
It's been suggested I upload my music to Google Play but I think its limited to 20,000 songs, not enough. Amazon cloud looks pretty expensive too, £160 per annum for 500Gb, hmmmm.
I went SB to Sonos some years ago.... In short.
Spotify OK - I find most streaming services a bit hit and miss. At peak times they can freeze or be a bit unresponsive - but they're all like that. I have around 20Mbps broadband, it can be very frustrating.
Didn't get on with the music library system terribly well - stored on a remote flash drive. Tried NAS too - again, lots of drops, fiddly. I have a library 40,000 songs -so not small.
Soooo - I recently moved to Amazon Music. £21 a year for 500,000 MP3's. Brilliant - works superbly. 100% success rate - accessed from anywhere on my mobile or laptop... works effortlessly with Sonos. Love it.
The only downside is that it doesn't play Apple Lossless (so they need to be re-ripped or converted within iTunes).
So a big thumbs up for Sonos and Amazon Music - do note that this is not Amazon Cloud, but Amazon Music.
HTH
Thanks for the replies, to try and answer the questions:
@outnumbered, I'm not really into that sort of solution and to be honest I'm trying to limit the amount of dicking around it would require going forward. I spend my life sat in front of a computer so I'd prefer an easy to use solution for the future. I've never really thought about using a streaming service but I should give it a go I guess. I do have a large amount of 2 hour radio show rips that I listen to the most but I think these may be available via Spotify now, the only challenge there is I listen to music on my phone 2 hours a day whilst commuting so need this to be on the device, not streaming.
@Flossythepig, Several hundred GB's although I could ditch some of it. Don't care about upload, I know it will take a very long time, but I can do this over time.
I'm not expecting free storage, I'm happy to pay and it needs to be private which according to Google Drive (the only one I looked at) it is.
@sparkyhx, Yes, its not just Music, I want everything to be safe, especially photo's and documents. Even a NAS drive would require some offsite backup in case of fire as a colleague who has first hand experience of losing everything has reminded me.
@NDA, Thanks, interesting.
I'm starting to think I should sort out my music, ditch stuff I will never listen to (like the old radio show mixes) and either put this into a free service that a Sonos can access and pay for a small amount of Cloud for Photo's & docs so I don't have to worry about local backup. Sonos does work with Google Play and Amazon Music, is there another system that can bridge a music library to an amplifier?
@outnumbered, I'm not really into that sort of solution and to be honest I'm trying to limit the amount of dicking around it would require going forward. I spend my life sat in front of a computer so I'd prefer an easy to use solution for the future. I've never really thought about using a streaming service but I should give it a go I guess. I do have a large amount of 2 hour radio show rips that I listen to the most but I think these may be available via Spotify now, the only challenge there is I listen to music on my phone 2 hours a day whilst commuting so need this to be on the device, not streaming.
@Flossythepig, Several hundred GB's although I could ditch some of it. Don't care about upload, I know it will take a very long time, but I can do this over time.
I'm not expecting free storage, I'm happy to pay and it needs to be private which according to Google Drive (the only one I looked at) it is.
@sparkyhx, Yes, its not just Music, I want everything to be safe, especially photo's and documents. Even a NAS drive would require some offsite backup in case of fire as a colleague who has first hand experience of losing everything has reminded me.
@NDA, Thanks, interesting.
I'm starting to think I should sort out my music, ditch stuff I will never listen to (like the old radio show mixes) and either put this into a free service that a Sonos can access and pay for a small amount of Cloud for Photo's & docs so I don't have to worry about local backup. Sonos does work with Google Play and Amazon Music, is there another system that can bridge a music library to an amplifier?
Edited by Mags on Wednesday 15th October 08:59
Edited by Mags on Wednesday 15th October 09:00
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