Nowplaying 2005

[pete]

Sorry. I have deleted the offending posts.

. . . what was offending ? . . . damn, I hate when stuff gets censored, that's just wrong :angry: . . . just because the original poster didn't like it, or found it off topic, someone thought it was and posted it trying to inform/enlighten others . . .

. . . isn't this forum about the FREE flow of ideas to help each other . . .

for instance, I've been looking at web based music streamer/jukebox called jinzora, it looks real promising . . . although its not NowPlaying2005, it is on topic, and might be just what one of us is looking for as I'm sure their respective feature sets are not identical . . .

Pete C

I love my country, but fear my government.

 

[bfisher]

The off-topic discussion got into whole house audio... nothing related to the thread.

As for APE vs MP3 - I agree, MP3 isn't perfect. At 192kb - without doing an A/B comparison, it's quite good. If you A/B compare (2 songs side by side) and really concentrate - APE wins.

The convenience of MP3 is deciding factor for me... from my exercise MP3 player to my car CD, to purchasing music online - keeping music in MP3 is easiest and pretty damn good (at 192k)

 

[Mike]

Has anyone done a comparison against 320K MP3's and a lossless format? I was considering redoing my library with something lossless (and looked at the XiFi sound cards as they reportedly improved the sound in the process but I'm not sold on that, havent heard it tho either).

Has anyone done this type of comparison already? I maxed the setting on my MP3's awhile back and at this point am not worried about hard drive space and just want to 'finalize' the collection even if it means reripping.

 

[electron]

I was actually considering switching to Ogg, looks pretty interesting as well. I am a little concerned about HD storage, but quality is extremely important to me.

 

[ver0776]

Storage in the music area is irrelevant.

When 1 mp3 album filled a computer, it was a very big deal. Today I have never even met an individual who could fill a single hard drive (500g) with music. With prices at $.25 per gig, anyone who would spend weeks of their life re-encoding to save space needs some serious councelling or technical consultation. hahaha

I am not picking on you, just having fun with my point. Re-encoding for quality reasons though makes sense. Which setting do you use? The BEST! Which Codec? The most popular. Don't worry about the size at all... Hard drive sizes are growing faster than anyone's collection ever could.

If you do compact for size, about every 96 albums, when you save a gig of space, give yourself $.25 and when you are all done, go to Wendy's and get a Jr. Bacon Cheesburger with your savings.

In switching to a lossless CODEC the most important things to me would be:
1. Am I going to lose my TAG info.
2. Can I script the conversions (Now or later if I change my mind)
3. Does all the devices and software I use support the new TAGs
4. Will anyone but me notice or care? Maybe I didn't need that Jr. Bacon Cheesburger anyways.

Vaughn

 

[electron]

right, that's why I am impressed it can achieve 50% compression, and still decompress in real time (unless it buffers big time). I am doing a Netremote/Girder/JRMC setup as well, so I need to figure out if I am going with Ogg or APE.

 

[Mike C]

right, that's why I am impressed it can achieve 50% compression, and still decompress in real time (unless it buffers big time). I am doing a Netremote/Girder/JRMC setup as well, so I need to figure out if I am going with Ogg or APE.

Hate to ask... :angry:

but why not lossless WMA?

Especially if you want to use a portable device. WMP will down encode it on the fly.

 

[electron]

you know, I have no idea, I didn't think about that. John is as picky as me when it comes to music quality, and he selected APE, so I figured he already checked it out.

 

[jwilson56]

Yep sounds great to me... and JRMC supports it. JRMC also lets you convert to any other format later so it never has been an issue with me.

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

John

 

[Mike]

This is great. I was planning on getting JRMC anyway, and Monkeys Audio seems to be the way to go. The only other item I had been reviewing was if the new XiFi cards were worth checking out, but they are actually changing the music so I think I need to go find the monkey.

 

[jwilson56]

If your serious about multizones then look into getting the Delta 410 PC card. It has 10 channels on one card... They can be had for $100 on Ebay.

John

 

[Mike]

I bought JRMC and ran a few tests with APE. I did a comparison against MP3's and was amazed. Definitely the right way to go. I guess I 'got used' to the MP3's.

As you might guess the box of CD's was hauled out and the conversion process is underway.

 

[jwilson56]

I have been fairly quiet. My Now Playing works great so there has not been any need to touch my setup. I am looking to go into HDTV within the next year and will probably do some major changes then. But for right now everything works well. In fact I recently purchased a backup for my Delta 410 card and Xitel HIFI Pro device as they are the heart of the system. I can't say enough about how good the Delta 410 card is.

As for my library.... I guess at my age (recently turned 50) I am experiencing the generation gap. I think all the good music has been written... hahahaha....

I think I added a mere 10 CD's to my library last year....

It still all fits on a 250GB drive but my new server has a 300GB SATA drive for my library. Who knows maybe some of those old timers will go and make new albums this year...



John

 

[jwilson56]

Well after some investigation it seems that Netremote and MusicLobby use JRMC and most of the other GUI frontend use other players or have their own built in.... its a shame as JRMC is an awesome player/database. It handles true multizone/multiviews flawlessly as well as great lossless formats like APE. It would be hard to get me to change from using it.

John

 

[DavidL]

John, I agree. J. River makes a nice product. and they have been great to work with. Nice folks.