I remember being able to go to index marks on my lumpy gravy CD on my parents CD changer.
It's time to send a message to the industry!
- Thread starter ArmyOfQuad
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Phisycal media is good, however it's heavy, and if you're one that moves frequently like me, the NAS storage option is a real backbone saver.
The other advantage I find to having it online is that I can FIND what I'm looking for and I wind up playing a lot of stuff that got neglected/forgotten for years. I still buy CDs all the time, but the first step when I get one is sucking it into the server.
I'm also a huge Logitech Squeezebox fan and completely stunned by their decision to semi-discontinue the whole thing. There's nothing out there that can touch that system, and I say it not just as a fan but as someone who desperately wishes for an alternative to be there on the day my hardware dies.
The Squeezebox server currently reports: "6154 albums with 79326 songs by 8063 artists" which I think nicely illustrates what I'm up against with the physical discs. I've recently had to start repackaging several hundred in "Jewel Sleeves" just so I can still keep them more or less alphabetically filed on my shelves. I don't have room for any more shelves, so I have to start making what I've got hold more discs.
I also agree with the other poster's review of the NVT-550. It's temperamental and unstable. I also had issues with channel placement if I didn't tag the files with WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE_CHANNEL_MASK or whatever the heck the tag is.
And the other poster's point about creating MKVs for gapless playback on the Oppo is intriguing...
LizardKing
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Another message should be not to only offer discs/downloads in only specific locations(e.g. the Tubular Bells example). It just invites people to "unofficially" download copies.....
I know that record deals preclude this sometimes - but thats an old world model.
I know that record deals preclude this sometimes - but thats an old world model.
fluid
Active Member
The Industry will not listen to a minority group, Hi Re files or 5.1 files will be limited to a few choice sites like HD tracks, the market is heavily into Mp3, kids want instant tunes and lots of them.
Time is not spent listening to albums by the vast majority of younger people, music has become throwaway, bands make money touring these days not music sales, not suprising when its the norm to download illigal files from numurous sources.
There are people today who have never bought an CD but will have thousands of tracks on their I pad.
Many do buy tracks from ligit sites, but its all about quantity, not quality. this week I heared about the Prog rock group The Tangent folding, partly through illigal downloads of their albums, so they could not continue because of lack of income, I find that so sad and worring.
So I'm afraid the day will never come when a site has a vast catalog of HigH Res albums and surround titles.
Time is not spent listening to albums by the vast majority of younger people, music has become throwaway, bands make money touring these days not music sales, not suprising when its the norm to download illigal files from numurous sources.
There are people today who have never bought an CD but will have thousands of tracks on their I pad.
Many do buy tracks from ligit sites, but its all about quantity, not quality. this week I heared about the Prog rock group The Tangent folding, partly through illigal downloads of their albums, so they could not continue because of lack of income, I find that so sad and worring.
So I'm afraid the day will never come when a site has a vast catalog of HigH Res albums and surround titles.
Just want to further warn people about the netgear box I talked about in this thread. Not only is it a pretty crappy box, but netgear offers pretty crappy support. My history of purchasing netgear products isn't that much, to me they've always seemed to be a cheaper option, which has given me an impression that they offer lower quality products. I'm not sure if that's a fair assessment. I did once own a netgear wireless router, which worked ok, but gave me problems from time to time.
Anyways, when I got my half priced used box off of ebay, I was a bit alarmed when I found no serial number tag on it. I was a bit worried I had purchased a hot item. But, a little investigating led me to find that it's common to purchase no serial number netgear devices, that usually means they are refurbished units. Well, this weekend I went to power on my netgear box, and it wouldn't come up, it would start to start up, then the light would flash orange and my tv would see no device connected.
Ok...well...lets call netgear support and see what they'll do for it. Yes, it's a used box off of ebay, but it's not ancient, this seems to clearly be a defect, they should offer some sort of support. Well, netgear has by far the harshest support policy when it comes to refurbs. If it's a refurbished unit, they don't want to even give you the time of day! The only thing they would offer me is a 1 year support contract for $130.00. I was quite taken aback at their support policy. I understand refurbished units are sold at lesser prices. But, refurb or new, a defect is a defect, and it's just common policy to offer some level of standing behind your product and offering something for defects.
Anyways, I just wanted to throw a warning out there. Personally, I would never recommend this box, or anything netgear makes. I recommend staying away from it, save your money, and save a bit more for a more expensive piece of equipment that offers 5.1 gapless flac. Hopefully I'll find something better. But....if you decide at your own risk to deal with the major flaws in this unit to have a cheap option for gapless 5.1 flac playback, make sure you pick up a unit with a serial number. Otherwise, you may end up with a brick with no options for any kind of support.
After a bit of playing around and research, I found the reset instructions the tech gave me (after telling a lie about a damaged serial number tag) weren't correct, and so I did another reset that I remembered from back when I had the wireless router, holding in the reset button with it unplugged, plugging it in with the button still held, and then releasing after 15 seconds. I don't know if it was luck of the draw, or if this reset actually worked, but the box is working again, for now.....
Anyways, when I got my half priced used box off of ebay, I was a bit alarmed when I found no serial number tag on it. I was a bit worried I had purchased a hot item. But, a little investigating led me to find that it's common to purchase no serial number netgear devices, that usually means they are refurbished units. Well, this weekend I went to power on my netgear box, and it wouldn't come up, it would start to start up, then the light would flash orange and my tv would see no device connected.
Ok...well...lets call netgear support and see what they'll do for it. Yes, it's a used box off of ebay, but it's not ancient, this seems to clearly be a defect, they should offer some sort of support. Well, netgear has by far the harshest support policy when it comes to refurbs. If it's a refurbished unit, they don't want to even give you the time of day! The only thing they would offer me is a 1 year support contract for $130.00. I was quite taken aback at their support policy. I understand refurbished units are sold at lesser prices. But, refurb or new, a defect is a defect, and it's just common policy to offer some level of standing behind your product and offering something for defects.
Anyways, I just wanted to throw a warning out there. Personally, I would never recommend this box, or anything netgear makes. I recommend staying away from it, save your money, and save a bit more for a more expensive piece of equipment that offers 5.1 gapless flac. Hopefully I'll find something better. But....if you decide at your own risk to deal with the major flaws in this unit to have a cheap option for gapless 5.1 flac playback, make sure you pick up a unit with a serial number. Otherwise, you may end up with a brick with no options for any kind of support.
After a bit of playing around and research, I found the reset instructions the tech gave me (after telling a lie about a damaged serial number tag) weren't correct, and so I did another reset that I remembered from back when I had the wireless router, holding in the reset button with it unplugged, plugging it in with the button still held, and then releasing after 15 seconds. I don't know if it was luck of the draw, or if this reset actually worked, but the box is working again, for now.....
I give up!
The industry never got the memo, and will not provide us the equipment we need to best utilize the technology that is available to us, and everything it can do.
Truly a sad state, but a demonstration of how far up their assess the people running the industry have their heads.
I've found nothing that will adequately playback 5.1 flac gaplessly. The only thing adequate, is a computer.
The oppo....not gapless. Oppo only cares about discs, which are so 2000s. While the oppo is a necessity for having something that will play any disc you can throw at it, between the lack of gapless playback, and trying to rob us of .iso playback after establishing it as a feature, I really don't think too highly of the guys over at oppo.
The netgear box came close. So close. It is the only thing that did everything I wanted, easy navigation of my folder structure to allow me complete organizational control, gapless playback of flac.....but, while it is the only box that does it all exactly as I want it to, it is the most unstable piece of shit. They couldn't even clear it with netflix to impliment that. It constantly crashes, and is problematic, and netgear offers zero support on the box unless you pony up more money. I honestly don't think ponying up the money will result in much of a solution, I think the system is too flawed, that even a replacement would still crash. Waste of time, stay away.
I finally decided, time to upgrade my receiver, I could use more hdmi inputs, and would like something with networking capabilities, and the Denon will still bring in some money on ebay to recoup some of the cost. So I picked up a pioneer. Absolutely a nightmare to navigate. I can't figure out how to make it worthwhile to navigate, it won't just let me browse my organized folder structures, the windows server software only finds 1 sparks album somewhere on a hard drive and completely ignores my full hard drive with the full collection, and using foobar as a server software resulted in surround material not playing in surround. Not sure if it's a foobar setting, or the pioneer doesn't support streaming surround. Either way, the navigation is such a fucking nightmare, it's not worth dealing with even if I could make it work.
So, I've upgraded my home theater computer to have an hdmi video card, which also works for sound and supports surround. I don't know why I got so hung up on home theater network playback without a computer, to me it seemed like it should be possible. But, the industry just doesn't have the brains to provide it. So....it seems surround network playback will remain a thing of techies and geeks for now, since the industry is overrun by idiots that just don't have a fucking clue how to build a damn device that will utilize today's technology to it's fullest potential. A half decent PC with hdmi video card and a wireless mouse and keyboard for the coffee table is the perfect solution. Sure, it isn't elegant, or seamless. But....it's just so damn useful, browse the net, stream shows online (cut the cable), master your quad conversions, playback your flac rips, or your .mkv video files with high resolution surround soundtrack (Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii never looked/sounded better), right from your couch with your wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table.
It's sad the simple solution never arrived, but I suppose it's just time to throw in the towel, and accept the fact that.....we're just ahead of the industry.
The industry never got the memo, and will not provide us the equipment we need to best utilize the technology that is available to us, and everything it can do.
Truly a sad state, but a demonstration of how far up their assess the people running the industry have their heads.
I've found nothing that will adequately playback 5.1 flac gaplessly. The only thing adequate, is a computer.
The oppo....not gapless. Oppo only cares about discs, which are so 2000s. While the oppo is a necessity for having something that will play any disc you can throw at it, between the lack of gapless playback, and trying to rob us of .iso playback after establishing it as a feature, I really don't think too highly of the guys over at oppo.
The netgear box came close. So close. It is the only thing that did everything I wanted, easy navigation of my folder structure to allow me complete organizational control, gapless playback of flac.....but, while it is the only box that does it all exactly as I want it to, it is the most unstable piece of shit. They couldn't even clear it with netflix to impliment that. It constantly crashes, and is problematic, and netgear offers zero support on the box unless you pony up more money. I honestly don't think ponying up the money will result in much of a solution, I think the system is too flawed, that even a replacement would still crash. Waste of time, stay away.
I finally decided, time to upgrade my receiver, I could use more hdmi inputs, and would like something with networking capabilities, and the Denon will still bring in some money on ebay to recoup some of the cost. So I picked up a pioneer. Absolutely a nightmare to navigate. I can't figure out how to make it worthwhile to navigate, it won't just let me browse my organized folder structures, the windows server software only finds 1 sparks album somewhere on a hard drive and completely ignores my full hard drive with the full collection, and using foobar as a server software resulted in surround material not playing in surround. Not sure if it's a foobar setting, or the pioneer doesn't support streaming surround. Either way, the navigation is such a fucking nightmare, it's not worth dealing with even if I could make it work.
So, I've upgraded my home theater computer to have an hdmi video card, which also works for sound and supports surround. I don't know why I got so hung up on home theater network playback without a computer, to me it seemed like it should be possible. But, the industry just doesn't have the brains to provide it. So....it seems surround network playback will remain a thing of techies and geeks for now, since the industry is overrun by idiots that just don't have a fucking clue how to build a damn device that will utilize today's technology to it's fullest potential. A half decent PC with hdmi video card and a wireless mouse and keyboard for the coffee table is the perfect solution. Sure, it isn't elegant, or seamless. But....it's just so damn useful, browse the net, stream shows online (cut the cable), master your quad conversions, playback your flac rips, or your .mkv video files with high resolution surround soundtrack (Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii never looked/sounded better), right from your couch with your wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table.
It's sad the simple solution never arrived, but I suppose it's just time to throw in the towel, and accept the fact that.....we're just ahead of the industry.
you can go wireless hdmi from the computer to the receiver (it will do everything including 3D video) and with a wireless keyboard and mouse, you will end up doing what you've been trying to do...
What I've been trying to do is 5.1 network playback without a computer.
And I find even that spotty, at least in the Windows world. What worked the last time I tried is not working properly now. Foobar2000 is choking on 5.1 FLACs and XBMC, which at least will play, no longer wants to advance to the next track.
Almost nothing is. To be fair, gapless playback is a fairly new technology that only goes back to about 1948 or so. Give them time.
Oppo made it pretty clear that the MPAA or one of the other hate groups threatened their Blu-ray license if ISO friendliness wasn't removed.
Your experience matches mine. It was the shit excreted by the bacteria that eat the shit excreted by the flies that eat shit.
And I'd be shocked if it was gapless once you did figure it out. This networking stuff is just one of the latest buzzwords. The manufacturers want to stick the words on the box and couldn't begin to care if it actually works in any kind of practical manner. To be fair, those of us with huge collections are a minority. There are probably a lot of people out there with 20 CDs who think it's nifty.
I'd blame the receiver first.
In my case, it's because I've been living in the Logitech Squeezebox universe for years and still find it to be the most excellently well thought-out sytem on the face of the earth. It can do everything and do it well...except play multichannel FLAC.
If 'ArmyofQuad' and 'atrocity' can't do it, it can't be done. Damn shame.
It would be a lot easier if the means were provided by the industry, but it seems they can't hear us with their earbuds installed in their heads.
It would be a lot easier if the means were provided by the industry, but it seems they can't hear us with their earbuds installed in their heads.
My Popcorn Hour A-300 does 5.1 FLAC playback over the network. It also plays pretty much every other kind of video file, MKVs, quicktimes, etc. The gapless playback isn't 100% perfect, but it's close, and there's a possibility that the small hiccup between tracks is due to HDMI handshaking issues with my cheap Denon amp.
I'm sure it can be done. But, it can't be done easily. Or on a budget. I haven't played around with high end network systems. There are also cool devices out there that could probably be made to do something, like raspberry pi, I suspect one could probably program one of those things into a network flac player. But, I guess my goal at the outset of this thread was for the industry to make it easy for the average end user to network their music collection with 5.1 as an option. If people can't do it, they won't, and then the industry just assumes they don't want it, well, because.....no one is buying 5.1 downloads. So, yeah, for now, I give up.....but I'll still be yelling and screaming at the industry to get their act together, and I still encourage everyone to continue with our battle cry for easy gapless 5.1 flac playback in devices....and easy navigation. In addition to our continued demands for more 5.1 music, whether it be dvd-a, bluray, or flac downloads.
There's also the Wandboard, currently very useful as an open source Squeezebox replacement. Someone has created an XBMC build for the Wandboard, but it's definitely not ready for prime time. Ideally, if XBMC could run reliably on the Wandboard, it could serve up multichannel FLAC via HDMI and be controlled via smartphone or tablet app.
The quad-core Wandboard is a mere $125, which makes it a steal. I'm currently using one as a spare Squeezebox player and secondary server.
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a cheap portable laptop instead of a media box (after all the media box is in essence a computer with preloaded software and failing miserably) plug the hard drive into the laptop and transmit via HDMI to the receiver....(but then again will 5.1 flac work..I know stereo flac will)....and raspberry pi works as well (if not better than a squeezebox...but I haven't tried 5.1 on it...but it like squeezebox needs a computer to start with...)
I believe a Raspberry Pi can also function as a server, so you wouldn't need a separate computer.
Having said that, it's not particularly powerful and apparently doesn't transcode well. The price is certainly right, but I'd strongly recommend that anyone just starting out go with a Wandboard instead. It can also be used both as server and player, though the price is higher than a Raspberry Pi.
In my setup, all the music is on self-contained NASes that hook into the network rather than to any specific computer. This makes it very easy to add music using the generally more robust Windows tools for extraction while sending it to the players via the more robust Ubuntu or Fedora (on the Wandboard) servers.
I'd also like to point out that this is almost sort of slightly on-topic as the devices we're talking about work nicely with DTS (including DTS 96/24) and AC-3 in a FLAC wrapper. Someone has even figured out how to wrap stereo DSD in a FLAC file, though I personally have zero experience with that.
The OPPO 103 and 105 do a fine job of FLAC 4.0 and 5.1 playback across the network at a affordable price. And we have new products like the exaSound e28 which offers excellent Multichannel DSD and PCM playback at a higher price.
The good news is that several more Multichannel DACs for DSD and PCM are under development. The next several months will see some very interesting playback options for Surround Sound fans!
The good news is that several more Multichannel DACs for DSD and PCM are under development. The next several months will see some very interesting playback options for Surround Sound fans!
Not gaplessly.
LizardKing
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Can you create a single FLAC with a CUE file and play that? I see that it has cue file support?
yes you're quite right it was late when i posted...and the Beagle server one is good like raspberry too...
The Popcorn Hour A-300 supports cue sheets, ISOs, and 5.1 FLAC playback. It doesn't play SACD or DVD-A, but at $220, it's a fraction of the price of the Oppo products.
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