Digital Music with out a CD Player

Phil, I'm still sitting on the fence between the Sonos and squeezebox touch, each has their strengths. My main concern is at least getting cd quality sound. Would you say the sonos has at least a cd quality sound to it ? Have you done any comparisons between your cdp and the Sonos ?

Squeezebox Touch and don't look back. Love mine would never go back to cd's only.

H9

67jason wrote: »

While we are on this topic, which is the better unit, the touch or the duet? What advantage does one have over the other?

thanks

I recently got a Touch after some extensive Googling. In a nutshell, from what I have read, the Touch has a better DAC so if you are going to go analog out it would be a better choice. It also probably has the better power supply and better wireless performance. Evidently the Duet can be quirky with wireless performance, but some of that might be network dependent too. There is a huge debate with some saying the Touch sounds much better even using the digital outs, and some wondering if that is bogus or not. The Touch also supports sampling rates up to 24/96, whereas the Duet doesn't support that high of resolution. The Touch also accepts USB input devices whereas the Duet does not. My thought is that if you are going to be ripping CD's to FLAC and/or listening to hi-res recordings and want the highest sound quality available go with the Touch. If you are going to be listening to internet radio/mp3 quality it might not matter. Also depends on the application it will be used for. Critical listening, background music, external DAC into a hi-end system or digital out to a mid-fi HT system, etc. I may leave this Touch in my 2-channel system for listening to my ripped CD's in addition to the fact that it gives me the radio option when I'm on the computer. For the HT system (which I originally bought the Touch for), I may opt for the Duet as what I am mostly interested for in there is internet radio background music, and I can get the Duet for probably $125 less on the used market. However, I just may end up getting a 2nd Touch too ...... it's only money and it isn't going to make or break me

While it may not be practical for the non-tech-savvy, I have moved my music collection to my Ubuntu Server which can easily be configured with a web interface called Webmin. The music is accessible to every computer on the network. (Samba windows shares) Even better I can stream it over the internet, I constantly log-in to the web interface and stream music while on my college campus. I sit in the library on my free time with my Sennheiser HD 280 Pro's steaming my CD collection.

I rip all my CD's into FLAC and use Foobar2000 as my audio player. It is highly customizable and can be tweaked to add kernel streaming or other bit-precise playback methods. I would use my iPod but due to the size of my lossless music files I cannot fit my collection on my iPod.

Plus Ubuntu Server doesn't require to much horsepower and you can convert that old outdated computer in your basement into an efficient multimedia server (You can put movies or anything else on there)!

I'm not gonna lie it did take upwards of 3 hours to setup everything : (
But I have not had a single issue since! (minus power outages)

At school I am in a library so naturally I only used closed headphones (so I don't get kicked out)
At home I have a pair of Polk Audio Monitor 70's hooked up to my computer via Yamaha HTR-5460. I just recently upgraded from cough cough... gateway speakers that shipped with a best buy computer... So naturally I rediscovered my music collection. I ripped everything to FLAC after finding out there are quite a few sounds missing from my mp3s and know I am in love with sound!

SpiceRoute wrote: »

Heard on NPR that all of the major studios are discontinuing CD production in 2012 -?

You mean just like they said vinyl was dead too ??

LOL!! Yeah Rich, except I've been SOL for 2 years now so when the big day comes in 2012 I won't be too disappointed.

How does it manange a music library? If I had to guess (since I haven't looked at it) it's more for convenience of plugging a small, portable device in and not managing a music library. But yes, we are coming a long way in making things accessible and universal. Other than for a vehicle to carry music from the store to my place, the cd is dead to me. Once you can DL lossless files for a reasonable cost, the cd will wither.

Perhaps not for me because 98% of the music I buy is on used cd's. 'Eff the record companies, I am not paying for a new cd very often. Between Amazon marketplace and the used cd stores I frequent I rarely pay the outrageous price for a "new in the package" cd. I will for artists I really want or a recording I have heard is stellar, but mostly I buy used and rip to FLAC and never look at the cd again.

H9

nap wrote: »

+1 to that. I was explaining to my son that I don't spend more than about 5-7 dollars for a cd. He almost bit his tongue but blurted out, that's because all of the music you listen to is old. I replied, yes but at least its music. :cool:

Thats where the value of a music service comes into play such as Rhapsody. New songs,old, it's on there for 10 bucks a month. I just save the songs to a sonos playlist, done. No more buying cd's for 2 songs you really want.

BlueFox wrote: »

Lossless?

No, I don't believe it is. Unless the pay version is different for some of these services.

H9