Re: [slim] Logitech - please work with Pandora for 192kbps streaming!
Rather than wait for Pandora or Logitech to blink, try this work around - Use the Pandora One desktop applet (a very nice impovement over Open Pandora). Because it's coming off your PC and not SqueezeCenter your Pandora stream should be 192. Pipe it to the SB via your wave input entry in Favorites, using the WaveInput plugin (a pain to configure, but worth the effort): http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/WaveInput_plugin This should take the Pandora stream right off your sound card, with whatever quality level you have set for wav in your SC/SB Settings - enjoy. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71602 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Coverjuke - Album cover flow GUI works with SB
I've grown increasingly dissatisfied with most of my music players, and with the slow and buggy behavior of SC (using SC 7.3.1 currently). All of them seem to get in the way of that pure and simple process of just selecting something and playing it. Itunes is a mess, any program that alters your files or adds new ones (invisible no less) is DOA for serious music buffs. Winamp may be the best alternative, but (like Itunes) it has grown increasingly bloated with each subsequent version. And SC's web interface is just too S-L-O-W for big collections (48,000+ tracks in 3,550+ folders). Moose filled the bill for a while, but the lack of an embedded player in Moose or SC always meant one more buggy step to deal with. By the time Moose or SC and softsqueeze or squeezeplay etc. were all up and running and paged to the CD or track I wanted to hear, minutes would have passed, along with the mood or opportunity to listen. Not to mention the hours required for a rescan every few dozen CD's. Coverjuke to the rescue! You'll find this little gem at Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/coverjuke/ It is a simple and fast XP/Vista emulation of Apple's glitzy cover flow software. It gives you instant access to all your music folders, using the folder.jpg etc. to quickly spin through your tunes. (And yes, I know about the SB Album Flow applet, but those of us living without controller units can only admire it from afar). The cover slider can be dragged by the mouse, or arrow keys etc. can be used to flip through the cover art. Find what you want give it the old double click and you're tapping your toes to the tunes. Right click and there are the filenames, you can select single tracks, even build a playlist with Ctrl double clicks. It has a winamp plugin, or you can point the prefs in the direction of your preferred external player, but if you want simplicity the embedded player is instant and effective. Nice package, and the price is right. There are no advanced music management features, though it has a limited folder search function. There are also several nice skins available - I like the black Vista skin myself... So how do you get it to work with your SB? Install the WaveInput plugin, and go to the entry in your Favorites. (waveinput is the last alpha entry in my favorites list so it's easy to get to by scrolling up instead of down.) Now the SB is receiving the sound card output and whatever you hear on the PC (for better or worse) is piped through the SB (no way to synch, of course, and no track info on the display, which I assume is due to using the plugin). Find the SC plugin and setup info at: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/WaveInput_plugin It takes a minute to initially load Coverjuke or to rescan for a big collection, but it's WAY faster than SC or even Moose, and once it's up you can hop around your collection at the speed of light. Try it! -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=74225 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Best Sites to Download Music in FLAC
Try Chewbone at: http://chewbone.blogspot.com/2008/03/mp3-blog-search-results.html using flac as a keyword in your search. And while not flac, for the next best thing (320 CBR) with over 600 Gigs of classical music (!) go to the very aptly named Classical Music Heaven: http://classicalheaven.ucoz.ru/load/ Site requires (free) registration, but worth the hassle. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=60749 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
[slim] SC Starting - The Balloon That Would No Die...
A minor but genuinely irritating bug (or is it a feature?). Whenever SC 7.0 starts up I get the usual SC starting taskbar balloon. But it persists indefinitely, rather than auto closing when SC is up and running. I always have to X out of it - anyone else with this problem? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51265 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SC needs an embedded player, folder.jpg db
Firefox is already turbo-charged, I made those revisions months ago - as to why 600 albums, like so many folks I often like to browse cover art for what to play next - a time-honored tradition, flipping through the stack of tunes. I don't think - gee, what would I like to listen to that starts with J through M? If I forsake SC altogether for WMP, which I find myself doing more and more often, due to SC/SS glitches and hangs, I have my entire collection spread before me like a living carpet in Windows. Nor do I think it is somehow an inherent limitation of the web GUI, I think Firefox is more than up to the challenge of displaying that many thumbnails in a simple scroll. It is, I believe, a flaw in the basic code or design of the way album art is cached in SC that is the culprit. I don't see Itunes or Ipod even blinking as I cover-flip seamlessly through my entire album collection. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51140 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Urg! Pandora may be shutting down?!
I just tracked down the home page of Sound Exchange, the industry copyright group that is driving all this. The only general email they list is below, with their other contact info. At bottom is the text of the email I just sent to them. All aboard... [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1121 Fourteenth Street NW Suite 700 Washington DC 20005 202-640-5858 202-640-5859 (fax) Sound Exchange - I just wanted to thank you all for your efforts to kill internet radio, and all of its nasty services like Pandora, which I read is about to go under thanks to your unreasonable demands. As musical fascists, you should be proud of the work you have done in killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. I want to especially thank you for the great financial savings I will realize in not bolting to Amazon to actually purchase recordings of the artists I would never have listened to were it not for Pandora and similar internet stations. It is comforting to know that we live in a sane world, where the business model of the 19th Century still reigns supreme, and where only the lawyers win in the end. Congratulations on selling the industry's sole to the devil. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51180 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SC needs an embedded player, folder.jpg db
I know Moose is a fancy slipcover for SC, but my point is that the minute or two it takes 600 album covers to load in SC takes about 15 seconds or less in Moose. Moose does a far superior job of handling cover art. If it is drawing on the same db cache file as SC, then something in the web interface is the culprit, maybe Firefox (which I am using) vs. IE? As to player, yes I am thinking of the upper right corner screen of the SC 7.0, wher the album art, play/pause/synch buttons are located. Squeezeplay might be the answer, though folks like myself who do not have a controller have no clue what to expect. Is it a separate software app like SS or integrated into the SC GUI? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51140 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] SC needs an embedded player, folder.jpg db
Having lived with SC and SB3 for nearly a year, there are two areas where this otherwise amazing interface is sadly lacking. An embedded player, such as in Itunes (yuch) or mp3tunes.com, or Pandora etc. etc. would be a gift from the gods. Softsqueeze, while impressive in its ability to do many things, is the buggiest piece of software I have ever used, and I have tried every version and flavor of SS, all have the same fundamental problems. Judging from the dozens of posts on this issue, I am not alone. I spend half my time trying to get SC and SS to play well together, instead of just listening to the music. Each new version of SS has just carried the same old problems forward. Embedded players can' be that difficult to code, judging from their prevalence in other software and web GUI's. The basic interface is sitting right there on the new SC 7.0 GUI, in the guise of a remote control for SB and SS. Another BIG step forward would be for SC to use a single central db file for album art, like Moose. Moose has its problems as well, but one thing it does infinitely better than SC is to remember album art and present it nearly instantly, instead of reinventing the wheel every time album view is invoked. And yes, I've read all the threads about why SC can be so slow to show album art, and the alternatives - rescaling all my 600 plus folder.jpeg's to a uniform size, or chopping up album view into a dozen smaller pages etc. - all truly suck. If Itunes and Moose can do these things well, so can SqueezeCenter! -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51140 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] What speakers?
The Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 is also a great PC system for a little less money. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46991 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] How to get faster album art load in web gui?
You're right, selecting any option other than artist as first sort I get almost instant page loading. Bit of a problem as that is the most logical way to browse the collection. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46708 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezecenter 7 fails to start on XP
When I use the option to try to start SC as a service, and enter the login pw etc. it goes to DOS, displays squeezesvc installed as Squuezecenter, cursor blinks for a while, then it flashes an error message that runs to several lines. I hadn't noticed it before because it is gone in a second or two. Is there a log file somewhere that would contain this error message? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46730 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] How to get faster album art load in web gui?
After a few hours of poking and prodding, SC 7.0 is playing nicely with my XP box, but one nagging problem removes some of fun from this otherwise HUGE step up in GUI. I like to browse by album art, sorted by artist/album. SC web gui always defaults to the home page - OK fine, I click albums and wait...and wait...and wait...half a minute or more later, the thumbnails of my 400 albums finally finish trickling in. I am assuming these are cached in such a way as to load quickly, but this ain't happening. Is it wrapped up in the cookies that SC now uses to track preferences (a very bad idea on many levels, a simple gui preferences page would be WAY more friendly and easy to alter). Where/how is the art cached stored and accessed? Even miserable old Itunes loads the album art in a flash... -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46708 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezecenter 7 fails to start on XP
Same problem on XP SP2 w/ all updates etc.. 6.5 never worked on start up either until I tried giving it admin privileges to startup (a strategy that doesn't seem to work with 7.0). SC 7.0 changed the rules. But it still doesn't start up, either as service or .exe,. The tray icon shows starting but never does. Disabling zone alarm and/or McAfee doesn't help. Strangely, an identical box the with same version OS and SC etc., same antivirus, starts every time since installation. I tried fooling my balky box by making a shortcut to the squeezetray.exe file and sticking it in the Programs/Startup folder (shades of Windows '95). That works about every other startup or so. I tried setting it up as a service, no joy there either...SqueezeMySQL shows as stopping in Task Manager, but never actually stops, and can't be stopped from TM or services.msc. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46730 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] How to get faster album art load in web gui?
I clocked a full load of all thumbs in the web gui this afternoon at 95 seconds...My thumbnails were set to 100 in SC Settings. Tunes are individual folders with m3u and art etc. All art is folder.jpg (most folders also have folder.png). Each individual track is also tagged with art courtesy of MP3Tag, SC is correctly pointed to the folder in which all the albums (folders of flacs) reside. Currently 412 folders of very fine tunes, headed for 500 this summer. XP is latest update SP2, SC 7.0, Firefox 2.0, Zone Alarm and McAfee on but program control in ZA is off. Memory to spare, a 3G Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM to play with, SB and Firefox rarely get a third of the way to the edge of the system envelope when both are running (though Squeezecenter can be a Java hog when running). Tunes are on a very zippy Iomega Ego 250 Gig USB on a fast port, flacs stream flawlessly. Strangely, setting the thumbs to 50 took a full two minutes to load! With thumbs set to 300 pixels (closer to the average folder.jpg image size), it took a mere 40 seconds. Folder.jpg pixel size may vary from flac folder to folder, depending on where MP3Tag found the art, so resampling could be part of the problem. Though it seems as if rescan should create a master thumbs.db of some sort that enables a faster load regardless of image size or location. Tried Explorer also, but same slow load as Firefox. Changing thumbs to 300 and albums per page to 100, however, cut the load to 12 seconds - but it sure was nice to be able to flip through them all without paging. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46708 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Squeezecenter not starting
I can't get SC 7.0 to start up properly on boot. I get the usual starting message on the tray icon, but it never actually starts up. You have to exit SC altogether and start it by double clicking squeezetray.exe (I'm on XP running SP2 etc). Had this trouble with 6.5, and fixed it by giving admin privileges to start the service, but this does not seem to work with my ongoing problem with 7.0. More mysteries - it worked fine for the first two weeks, suddenly no joy - with no major software or hardware changes in that time frame that could explain it. When I go to services.msc, SqueezeMySQL shows as stopping, but never actually stops. There is no blue link as with the usual service (start/stop/restart) so no way to force it to either stop or start manually. Nor is there a running process in task manager I can kill. And to add to the confusion, when I force a manual start with squeezetray.exe, services still show SqueezeMySQL as stopping, not running...Arg!!! -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45985 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Where are my SC7 preferences?
Added all but localip, which varies each time on my LAN, there are now 8 separate SC entries in my exclusions list for Firefox cookies, most variations on 127.0.0.1, none of them are effective. Surely I can't be the only user who sees cookies as intrusive and unwelcome entities. Before I slammed the door on them I had over 200 cookies on my PC, most of the adtracking variety, internet sewage sludge. Can I directly and permanently edit my preferernces via \app data\squeezecenter\prefs?? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44831 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Any Way to Save Album View Preferences?
That is the problem. Like many folks I hate cookies, unasked for corporate intrusion and a security accident waiting to happen. I can set prefs in firefox to allow cookies for this service as an exception, and will try setting an exception for http://127.0.0.1:9000/, but I'm not sure if that will work. Please consider giving us an actual preference option to set in gui, cookies are a cop out. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44676 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Any Way to Save Album View Preferences?
Basic display prefs could just be an additional page on the settings/advanced tab, one more entry in the drop down box of options. Or just add a box or two on the existing Music Library tab. Cookies may be a way of life on the web, but so is identity theft and cyberstalking - doesn't make them acceptable because they are universal. Also they are not always benign, I have had some serious problems with cookies installed by those whose motives are not as pure as the SC elves. So after a couple of near disastrous pc attacks, my boxes are set to trash every cookie, cache entry or other unasked for entries on my hard drive whenever I close the browser. But setting my options to trust SC should be an easy workaround. Setting frefox to allow cookies from http://127.0.0.1:9000/ however, did not seem to do the trick. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean somebody isn't following you. (Alfred E. Neuman) -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44676 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Any Way to Save Album View Preferences?
Now that I've got most of the kinks out, I like to use the album view on SC 7 home page (Firefox/XP). But it always defaults to linear listing by album title. I reset it to large artwork, sort by artist/album, all is copacetic. But next time I start SC, it's back to the title/tiny art default. Any way to save my preferences? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44676 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Softsqueeze Version
I've also had problems with Softsqueeze 3.4 after my SC 7.0 upgrade. It always works perfectly when playing from my music folder (flacs or mp3s), but is intermittent when playing internet radio favorites (any station). The station connects, buffers, the VU meter starts dancing up and down but no audio...Sometimes it kicks in several minutes later, generally not. Or it might work as usual for a day or two, then the audio will vanish mysteriously, and just as mysteriously return... It's hit and miss - yesterday it was working on my office pc, today only one brief period of audible internet radio, but flacs are streaming perfectly. Not PC specific, I have the same problem at home and work (same versions of xp, sc, and softsqueeze on both boxes). My Squeezebox will always play stations when softsqueeze drops out, so not an SN problem I think...Most peculiar... -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44244 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Java Eats my CPU in SC 7.0
Some slow performance issues since staring to use SC 7.0, loading playlists may hang etc., album display is glacial compared to Moose or Itunes, sometimes SC is very responsive, sometimes not...But on several occasions I have heard my PC fan kick into major overdrive - which usually only occurs when playing Call of Duty 4 with all the graphics maxed - accompanied by a major slowdown of all running programs. Checking in Task Manager each time showed javaw.exe gobbling over 95% of my CPU. Killing softsqueeze (ver. 3.4) closes the bloated Java process and returns the system to normal. I'm running xp SP2 with all updates, GHz pentium 4, 1 Gig of RAM, latest Java 1.60. I wonder if this is also behind my intermittent audio problems with softsquueze radio streaming... McAffee is set to ignore any files in my music folder. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44561 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
Scanner.log on its way. After copying the log I deleted the Artwork folder from the cache, did another complete rescan, but still no art. To further muddy the waters, I'm also using SC 7.0 on my office PC, where the exact same files and directories do show the art as advertised (looks pretty good, too...). -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
That did the trick! I found the same error message in my log, I told McAffee to ignore MYI file extension, rescanned - there's the art! I noticed that it had not been getting past the merge artists scan mode, so it never actually even got to album art scan or database optimize mode. It only recognized the art in the now playing/playlist pane but not in the album display pane. Curious... From the VirusScan Console - All Processes/Detection/Exclusions/Add Thanks!! -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
OK, did that - where is the log file located? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
Found the scanner.log - good old hidden files and folders, ya gotta love Microsoft...How do I upload it to you? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
Same issue on SC 7 - regardless of menu toggle, all I get is a musical note icon (or a bigger note icon). All flacs/mp3's have art stored in as folder.jpg and tagged to each tune as well. SC correctly displays the album art in the playlist pane (I like the pop-up artwork on hover...h). The playlist even shows tinier album covers near each song, but nada in the album display pane on the left. Rescanned, no dice, my directory for album art is set to the same as the tunes. -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Album art not showing in Squeezecenter
Yes, complete rescan did not help. And yes, if I select an album, add it to the playlist then go back to album view, I now see the art for that album (only) - strange... -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44283 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Microwave oven causes dropouts
Same basic problem, after a few days of OK connection, my SB3 started to drop out, frequent reconnects, black screen etc. Power cycling the cable gateway would solve the problem for a brief time, then more lost connections. The network test would show 90-100% connection, even at the highest throughput, at the tip top it might drop to 85% or so. The buffer settings were all maxed out, netstumbler showed nobody on my channel nearby (isolated house). In theory, all should have been copacetic, so maybe it was the IP or an intermittent squeezenetwork problems? I put softsqueeze on my office PC, a different IP running from a university mainframe with bandwidth to spare. The connection was rock solid, only stuttering or dropping the signal once or twice when the mainframe was having a bad hair day. To make matters worse, I couldn't stream flacs at all on my SB3 at home. My first flac files buffered for a half a minute, then stuttered horribly until I put them out of their misery. But the same files played OK in a flac player on the PC. My home network linksys WCG200 and Linksys range extender were just not up to the challenge, even with dual high gain antennas on the gateway. Sending the signal to the front of my very long house turned out to be a perilous journey. Every time the heat or AC kicked in, or the microwave started up, or the cat farted, the signal would vanish. SB3 refused to rebuffer half the time. I've seen the same symptoms described in a dozen different threads. It got so bad I could not even listen to a single song on the radio without the agony of rebuffering. What to do? After much research, I decided to give the homeplug option a try, and picked up a Netgear XE104 base unit for the router, and an XE103 for the SB3. Don't buy the older versions that only do 10-14 mbs on a good day. The pricier 85 mbs models are the way to go, though 85 mbs is science fiction - but I'm getting 50-60 mbs over about 100 foot distance, which is more than adequate. Anything to do with networking is generally as bad a setup/install experience as you are likely to have. But these little adapters were literally plug and play, and how often have you had that experience with a PC product? I didn't have to install interface software (though it later proved useful to monitor the signal). Just stuck them in the wall, popped in the ethernet patch cords, reset the SB3 from wireless to wired, and that was that. Over the past week I have had only two blackouts, both due to the wireless connection from slimserver on my PC to my now hybrid wireless/homeplug LAN. No more dropouts, no more endless rebuffering. Just an uninterrupted flow of beautiful music. And my flac files load almost instantly and stream flawlessly (and sound FANTASTIC). There are some problems with homeplug technology. Old or bad wiring could limit your success. My home is newly wired, with a single breaker panel, so not an issue for me. The biggest drawback is losing my protection from power surges. Homeplug adapters have to be plugged directly into the wall, power strips with surge protection just won't work. My speed went from 65 to 10 MBS when plugged it into a top end Monster Cable strip, and SB3 could no longer find the server. Almost every surge protector on the market now includes line filtering, which is great for quiet stereo listening or high end LCD TV's, but it treats the homeplug signal as noise and trashes it. Belkin makes a power strip with one plug designed for homeplug equipment, but that seems to be it for the market, and I really don't want to shell out major bucks for a 9 outlet strip with only one homeplug compatible outlet. The cheapest strips have no filtering, but are nearly useless in terms of surge protection capacity. If anyone knows of a surge protector (for a standard plug or for just ethernet cable) that is homeplug compatible please let me know. Meanwhile, I can let the music play all day, just in time for Mardi Gras. Laissez les bons temps roulez! -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32529 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: Slimserver won't start automatically
Looks like I got it to work, by unchecking automatically run at system startup, and checking automatically run at login. No clue why this should work, but it did the trick for me... -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31162 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: Slimserver won't start automatically
Just found this thread after trying in vain for 2-3 weeks to get slimserver to run at startup on XP SP2. Not a ZoneAlarm problem, and it's all set to run in services as automatic. Every time I have to manually start the service, I reset the tray icon context menu to auto startup - still no joy...I can start it from the tray icon every time (though despite two reinstalls it never finds the url interface, and I have to load the page as a browser shortcut...). What gives?? -- Fleury Fleury's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9783 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31162 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
