Squeezebox Duet

[tony]

completely missed this thread during the summer must be the squeezebox title. Some really neat ideas there Tom and your woodworking skills dont look to bad to me.

[Rocker]

As alluded to above, I ended up using the Stereovox XV11 digital cable from the Squeezebox to the digital input of my Opus 21 CD player. The following evening after fitting the XV11 cable, I noticed that the bass seemed a bit overblown and indistinct, whereas the day before all had been fine. The 'correct' balance was restored by removing the RockerShockMount from under the Squeezebox and supporting the Squeezebox on three Cereballs. I can't believe that I have written this or that I even tried them but the Cereballs did the business. Quite why I do not know. Musically the system now sings and the tonal balance has remained unaltered in the months since. The world of hi-fi has many fixes to problems that simply defy logic and common sense, this is another one. I did not expend much time trying to understand what had happened or trying to replicate the solution in a controlled way. Life is too short for that kind of behaviour and my hair is thin enough as it is without me ending up pulling out more.......

[tony]

To be fair Tom one must admire your bravery admitting to using ceraballs that probably cost twice as much as the squeezebox as a means to improving its sound.You should forward on your suggestion to logitech they might include them for free in new model launches.

[meep]

Really interested in your journey with the squeezebox. I also have 4x virtual squeezeboxes in a PC with an m-audio delta 410 soundcard. This drives 4x 'zones' around the house.

Peter,

Could you please enlighten me on what this means. A web link might suffice...

Thanks.

Hi Rocker

I'll admit that first and foremost I'm a moving pictures man so my pursuit of sonic nirvana is firmly grounded in 8 channels. I'm also a bit of a geek and still firmly believe that the path to unification lies in PC architecture.

That being the case, I'm interested in building whole-house audio as cost-effectively as possible. Given that you need a PC to run Logitech Media Center* anyway, if you pop a multi-channel sound card in there, you can use a neat software utility called squeezeslave to emulate a squeezebox. In fact, you can set up multiple instances of squeezeslave and push stereo out to as many channels as your sound card supports.

I have an M-audio Delta 410 which gives me 4x analog stereo pairs and one SPDIF. I also have onboard audio outs on the PC.

So essentially, I can have 5 or 6 virtual squeezeboxes in the PC which also runs LMS and stores all the music. Add some external amplification, some kind of controller and you have a fairly decent setup.

I've got a blog running on my mediaserver experiments and have the first part of a how-to on this written;

http://mediaserver8.blogspot.ie/2012/04 ... tep-1.html

I'll write more there soon, promise!




*not really, it will run on a variety of NAS devices but bear with me

[tony]

Peter I have a sb that gets very little use. When I have it is mainly for radio. You seem to be really exploiting the versatility of this device fair play to you.
I have found the SB to be a bit frustating a times. Wireless connectivity would drop or signal would rebuffer even though the modem was in the same room as the pc and the sb so I couldnt see how it would work ok over any distance. I may be wrong but I believe you have to have the pc on all the time to be able to connect to the server. Often there would be problems connecting to the server.

Just wondering with your implementation is there not even more issues with loss of signal etc?

[meep]

Hi Tony

I would always favor a wired connection over wireless - I find wireless can be flakey at best, especially my Vodafone router. Having said that, I currently have a Radio in my Sons room a good 25M from the router and on a different floor and signal is excellent.

I do have my server on all the time as it does a lot of work including hosting all media files, automated downloading content, hosting the virtual squeezeboxes referenced here and (soon) working as TV server. As such, there's a bit more stability with the server side so the squeezeboxes tend to have a better chance of finding something when they switch on.

Maybe the new UE Radio would suit you better as you don't need a local server?

Peter

[tony]

Hi Tony

I would always favor a wired connection over wireless - I find wireless can be flakey at best, especially my Vodafone router. Having said that, I currently have a Radio in my Sons room a good 25M from the router and on a different floor and signal is excellent.

Maybe the new UE Radio would suit you better as you don't need a local server?

Peter

Thats good to hear that it is not just me. I remember having a problem trying to get the sb working over cable obvioiusly just missed some obvious setting. Must get back to that at some stage when I have more time.

Re UE radio will investigate that thanks