Re: [slim] Legality question... boo... hiss......
brjoon1021 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] so if you know something I don't know about how I can get lossless music from my squeezebox without having to buy CD after CD for the few good songs on them, please shed some light. I bought a squeezebox for FLAC not bad sounding downloads. I can't understand the thinking that says that losing some of the sound is OK. Can't comprehend that at all. First, losing some of the sound is okay if you can't hear the difference. True enough, 128K MP3s are awful, but there probably are higher quality downloads available. All downloads are not MP3, and even all MP3 is not crap, especially when it reaches the point where audiophiles can't tell the difference in a blind ABX test. I myself do not purchase lossy-compressed music, but I do use lossy compression when appropriate for a device, and when done properly, it is indistinguishable from the original. I do agree that for commercial track/album purchase via download, there is a dearth of high-quality sources, which is one reason I don't go that route, but I do think that situation is improving. Second, I would suggest that you get a BitTorrent client, such as Azureus, and start looking for bootlegs. I am not talking about the illegal sites that feature rips of commercial CDs alongside warez, warez, WAREZ!!!, but sites like dimeadozen, thetradersden, or artist-specific sites like rustradio.org. These sites offer unreleased live (often soundboards) and studio/compilations, in FLAC and SHN. Quality varies but it is not hard to find good stuff, especially in the comps and soundboards. Anything that is commercially available from a real label is not allowed. Also, look at Live Music Archive - there used to be a Squeezebox plugin for it, not sure if it is still available. Ed ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Legality question... boo... hiss......
brjoon1021 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] As for why would I rip trash, well, it is standard practice and always has been in the recording industry to put a couple of hits on a crappy record to sell the whole thing. So, if there are two great songs that you like on a CD, you can buy the whole thing for $16 US, waste a lot of time trying to find it in used CD stores which ends up being more A couple more thoughts...first, there was a time when the album was important, and many many CDs exist with more than 2 good songs on them...so it depends what your tastes are. Not to be snide, but I guess what I'm saying is, listen to better artists :-) Also...try CDbaby.com. Join YourMusic.com. Buy used from Amazon. Try deepdiscountcd.com. Try comparison engines, like pricegrabber.com. There is simply no reason in this day and age to be paying $16 for a CD, there are too many lower-priced alternatives. Ed ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: Serious SB3 problems.
snarlydwarf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Just a general FYI, with 802.11 devices, 'Strength' is sort of a meaningless number. It's slightly useful in if it's very low that is a problem, but the real number that matters (which most devices won't really record) is 'signal quality'. Microwaves, cordless phones, wireless alarm systems, neighbors on close channels, all contribute to noise, lowering the quality of the signal, but not the strength. I not only concur, but I will add that there's a bunch of other things that can cause problems. For example, metal surfaces nearby causing reflection or refraction, or the ever popular multipath. I pretty much did everything for a certificate in wireless networking (CWNA) except take the test, and notwithstanding that, I gave up and wired my Squeezebox because of dropouts. Didn't have them bad at first, but got worse over time, to the point where I just couldn't take it anymore. And like the OP, I had good signal strength, and my wireless bridge that the SB was connected to was a foot or two from the ceiling of the 1st floor, and almost directly above it, 3-4 feet off the carpet on the 2nd floor sits my wireless router/AP. I would definitely suggest changing channels, as it may be a strong signal from one of your neighbors. In the U.S., much equipment defaults to channel 6. Try Channel 1 or Channel 11, as those have the least overlap with 6 (they are the farthest away, so to speak). Try moving antennas around, and bear in mind that the signal radiates outward from the long side; i.e., in theory, antennae that are parallel to each other should talk better than ones whose ends are pointed at each other. Avoid large flat pieces of metal (amp cabinets, maybe?) nearby if at all possible. Of course, it may indeed be a problem with the Squeezebox itself. I have a SB1 not a 3 at the moment, but IIRC the 3's have the dual antenna? Perhaps check that both are enabled... Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: Serious SB3 problems.
fmayhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Listen, I don't need to walk through all the basics since I've already done that. Unlike many who may post to boards like this, I'm a software engineer with literally years of experience dealing with networks, including wireless networks. I know what I'm doing and I didn't post until I was positive that it wasn't the wireless network itself, having exhausted all potential problems (and their solutions) there. It has to be either in the SB3 itself, a distinct possiblity, or in something to do with the interaction of the server and the SB3. Not necessarily. Your laptop is in a different spot, doing differnet things with different hardware than the Squeezebox. Again, your experience mirrors my own; I had no problems with my laptop 12 feet away from the bridge. But the laptop was using a different wireless card, was 12 feet away from potential sources of interference and reflection/refraction/multipath (again, metal enclosures?) and ping is not the same thing as streaming audio. It may well be the SB3; as suggested elsewhere, a loose card or antenna connection or a downright flaky card; but it also may be interference. It is almost certainly not the protocol stack. And as a software engineer myself with years of experience with networks, wireless networks, and networking protocols, including implementing, troubleshooting, and downright beating on protocol stacks, I humbly suggest that software engineer and RF engineer are two different animals. You are getting good advice in this thread. Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: SB3/6.1.1 and DTS issues
smst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] machinehead Wrote: I did try one of my DTS CD's, ripped to FLAC, but can't get it working on my Squeezebox 1. Not entirely sure why, there shouldn't be any bit-mangling, but I can't find any reference to DTS working on anything less than a SB2. SB1 doesn't pass the bits through quite correctly -- I asked the other day and was told, IIRC, that the sign of each 16-bit word is inverted (or something along those lines). In theory one could modify the underlying WAV to compensate for this... Now that you mention that, I think I remember reading that a looonng time ago. Thanks, that would have driven me nuts. Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: SB3/6.1.1 and DTS issues
kkitts [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] After setting the volume at full everyting worked perfectly. BTW, the Glad to hear you got it working, BTW. I did try one of my DTS CD's, ripped to FLAC, but can't get it working on my Squeezebox 1. Not entirely sure why, there shouldn't be any bit-mangling, but I can't find any reference to DTS working on anything less than a SB2. Ed ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB3/6.1.1 and DTS issues
Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm not entirely sure it's possible, and I keep meaning to check with one of my own DTS CDs and I keep forgetting. The problem is that, as far as I know, the Squeezebox cannot handle 96khz/24 bit, which is the format for most DTS music that I know of. Just to update, I've seen other threads that allude to 48kHz DTS files, which should be do-able. Another thing is that I think you will need to keep the Squeezebox volume control at full volume, or disable it via SlimServer. It is a digital volume control, so anything less than full volume is changing the actual bitstream, IIRC. Ed [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] OT: dumb US dates
Pat Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 08:30 -0700, Patrick Dixon wrote: I think it's actually 'only' 3 months on! Since Slim are American they insist on using arse-about-face dates on their forum ;) It isn't just Slim, it is nearly all American dates. It is arse-ackwards. As is using inches and feet and yards. I think when our ancestors threw off the yoke of the British Empire, they just wanted to change a few things for spite. So they screwed around with the dates, used commas in large numbers (e.g. one thousand is 1,000.00 in the US and 1.000,00 elsewhere), and also they made ' mean feet and mean inches, instead of vice versa, much to the chagrin of Spinal Tap's stagehands. Not adopting the metric system is just us being lazy and stubborn. Gotta have some fun when you're a superpower. ;-) Ed ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Re: 48 kHz/1536 kbps wav files
Patrick Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm also surprised that you find wav files to sound so much better than flac and I wonder if you are inadvertently streaming as mp3? Check that Player Settings-Audio-Bit Rate Limiting is set to 'No Limit' for your Player and that the Server Settings-File Types FLACFLAC box is checked. If you haven't already, you could also check if streaming 48KHz flac files as wav solves you problem (uncheck FLACFLAC and FLACMP3, and check FLACWAV in Server Settings-File Types). Agreed, there shouldn't be a difference, as the output of the FLAC decoder should be identical to the WAV. There of course is no difference on a SB1, since the decoding is done at the server, but there shouldn't be - and I don't recall any others noticing - a difference on the SB2, either. Ed ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] printable pdf catalog for 6.x ?
thnmnt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] has anyone started work on a (pdf) catalog maker using the new sql backend yet? as virtual as my world has become i'd actually like something for my coffee table that's not a PDA :) Seconded. I did some playing around with the previous cache2pdf, just to make it print the band name at the top of the page. It worked, though very inefficiently - I have like zero Perl kung-fu. :-( Ed ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Calling all Java developers...
PAUL WILLIAMSON [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] The fact that the supported platforms only include one version of one distro and they released an SDK that can't really do any of the Tivo functions (specifically with scheduling or playback), I find it kind of amusing. True, but in their defense, this is the first release, and I beleive that those things will improve. I think it would be better already if the company had ever turned a profit; right now I think they're probably in a position of having limited resources (money, manpower) and getting profitable has to take priority. I also don't think they've named a new CEO yet. And Tivo is what I was referring to as closed. Even the hardware is proprietary. On the other hand, we've got the CEO of Slim posting about how to modify his creation to take advantage of some bizarre i2c geekport request. Well, yes and no. It is Linux, after all. The Series 2.5 boxes are more locked down than the Series 1, but that doesn't stop some people. I got the new box for $200 - $200, and honestly expected I might Ebay it because of unhackability without a PROM mod - but the fact is, all the stuff I hacked my Series 1 to get is available without hacking on the Series 2.5, and then some. And they've always winked at capacity upgrades, and still do - I'm sure they planned on it from the beginning, they just don't want to provide warranty support to people who mess things up doing them. Then there was the backdoors, 30-second skip, etc. I'd say they've been pretty good to their customers with regards to unofficial enhancements. Beyond that, with them adding extraction as a built-in capability, they're walking a fine line between customers and networks (advertisers) and had to grovel to the FCC for approval as it was, so the kernel mods lockdown is at least understandable. I'll take it since, as I said, I can do everything I modded my Series 1 to do without changing anything, and if that changes, well, then it's just soldering time. ;-) One more amusing thing is that I notice something conspicuously absent from the list of prizes - a Tivo. I know you need one to do the contest, but more is usally better. Heh...hadn't looked at the list, that is kind of amusing. Don't know why, it's not like they've never given the hardware away before. Ed ___ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
