Squeezebox Touch

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by metalbob, Sep 28, 2009.

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  1. Kitlope

    Kitlope Forum Resident

    Doug I'm glad I'm not alone in putting together a mobile music pc! Mine though is a lot different than yours. Last winter I picked up a Cowon Q5 Personal Media Player for the FLAC support. With the unit running Windows CE I was able to hook up an external HD. Everything works, lots of wires though and a lot of music at my fingertips. However, I quit using it because of the dangers of the touchscreen (and the damn tiny font), I like to switch songs a lot and found it too dangerous to drive and use it.

    I reverted back to using my Rockboxed (for FLAC support) iRiver ihp-120 that I've had for 5+ years now. Its a much better sounding player than the Cowon and not nearly as dangerous to navigate through the music. Only a 20 GB HD but with some modding can be upped to a 120 GB. Sounds great through the JL Audio car stereo :)
     
  2. metalbob

    metalbob Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Jersey
    So as far as dropouts go, is it brief, or does it never catch up? I don't see myself FF/RW all that often - in fact, rarely ever - so I'm not sure if this is a massive problem for me. Any other obstacles in using this set up? I have an Apple Airport Extreme, so I have a USB 2.0 slot available to me on my router, but I would think that might be a bit slower of an option.

    This new Touch appears to allow its own HD to be attached to it, which could be a good thing, but I have a large collection that after ripping could easily top a TB in lossless format. I recently found a new Seagate USB drive that is 1TB, but I'd like to be able to keep a back up of all of it and prefer not to have cables everywhere from an AC-powered unit. Plus the NAS opens up more opportunities to set up other units around the house.

    Sorry for the dumb questions, but as adept as I am at computers and music, this could be a small investment (and a lot of time moving files around) and I don't want to go down one road and find out I should have tried something else.
     
  3. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    The more questions the better. Doing this takes time, quite a bit of know-how and some willingness to troubleshoot.

    It catches up. Let's say you select a different track than what you're listening to. That track will play for 1 second, then dropout and resume 1 second later. Totally annoyed the hell out of me.

    I think it has to do with the processing power of the NAS not being able to fill its buffer well enough. I am speaking only of the NetGear ReadyNAS NV. I don't know if newer units from different manufacturers now have enough CPU to overcome such things.

    If I was starting from scratch, I'd look into something like this:

    http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/kirkwood/SheevaPlug-002_WEB.pdf
     
  4. Shakey

    Shakey New Member

    Location:
    Chicago, Illinois
    I experience the same thing with my Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS NV+.
    How much RAM do you have intalled?
    I originally had 1gig, but when they replaced it, they sent it back with 256mb, I have yet to re-install the 1gig chip. Does extra memory help?

    If not I may consider a desktop mini or ??? to run the software.
     
  5. Doug Sclar

    Doug Sclar Forum Legend

    Location:
    The OC
    I upgraded my NAS box to 1gb and it didn't seem to make any difference.

    I should add that much of the time I don't notice the speed issue, but at other times it drives me crazy. I have no idea why it is so inconsistent.
     
  6. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    I only have 256Mb, but I have read experiences like Doug's, it doesn't make much of a difference.

    I got real annoyed by the lack of consistancy and dropouts when I was running SC via the NAS. Once I started running SC on a desktop, everything worked more consistently.

    I have a Transporter and a SB Classic, I suppose the more devices you run, the greater the strain on the host devices running SC.
     
  7. Doug Sclar

    Doug Sclar Forum Legend

    Location:
    The OC
    I do have 5 players here, but they're not always running at the same time. I haven't yet found any reason that sometimes things run fast and other times they don't. I figure it has to do with how much traffic is going through the NAS box but I can't say for sure.

    I get the same dropouts Sam mentions where it will play the first second of a song and then stop for a few seconds before restarting, but even more annoying is when it just hangs and nothing works for a while. I mean even the volume control doesn't work. Of course I try to push the buttons so hard on the remote that I'm afraid I'll break them, but that provides no help. :D

    I recently upgraded the OS to 7.4 and though it was horrible while the SC was rescanning my collection (4 days) it seems to be much better now. That said, I fully expect the sluggish performance to return. Like Sam, I have multiple occurances of SC on various computer's in my LAN, each one with a duplicate of the music files.

    Since I have so many backups of my data that is not a problem at all. Generally when the SC on the NAS box gets sluggish I can switch to another server. Of course even that is a bit of a hassel when the whole server is virtually hung. I often have to hold the left arrow down and do a complete resetup. When things are not so bad it's fairly easy to change the music source.

    I've been trouble free for over a week now using the NAS box with my Transporter. My fingers are crossed that things continue to run smoothly. Meanwhile, I've never enjoyed listening music more, despite the few issues I've had.
     
  8. Fatman

    Fatman Senior Member

    Location:
    Salt Lake City
    Dumb question: Will it be possible to plug a large external HDD directly into this? Thus eliminating the need to do the wired/wireless routing from another computer/HDD?
     
  9. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    NTFS is better than FAT32 in pretty much every way for SSDs and HDDs. It is not used for USB flash drives though because they have a limited number of writes (much more so than SSDs) and NTFS causes more writes than FAT32 or exFAT.

    FAT32 also has the major limitation of 4GB for a single file, which is useless when using NAS for HD video.
     
  10. metalbob

    metalbob Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I am trying to get some more insight on this from the Squeezebox Forums, but you can plug a drive right into this thing and it would need to be FAT32 formatted from what I am reading. I am trying to figure out if I can use a network-connected DRIVE, and not an actual server, and accomplish the same thing. But I am not sure that I can.

    The only issue with FAT32 is I guess there are issues with data integrity if you unplug the drive prematurely. Is it true that you can lose data?
     
  11. Nobby

    Nobby Senior Member

    Location:
    France
    I did peruse the Squeezebox forums a few weeks ago and it was my understanding that when the Touch is officially released there will be a firmware update that will allow an NTFS formatted drive to be connected directly.
     
  12. DragonQ

    DragonQ Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Moon
    It does not surprise me that NTFS is not yet supported - hell, the Xbox 360 (made by MS) still can't even read NTFS drives (a file system created by MS 16 years ago).
     
  13. fathom

    fathom Senior Member

    Location:
    Florida
    From hints given by previous Slim Devices CEO Sean Adans, I believe the Touch will sound better than any of the earlier SBs (the Transporter is being discontinued). Veteran SB owners like myself might have to upgrade just for the sound-quality improvements. If it sounds significantly better, I will buy a Touch for my main system.
     
  14. Fatman

    Fatman Senior Member

    Location:
    Salt Lake City
    I'm guessing all this NTFS/FAT32 discussion may have some relation to my question, but what does it all mean to a guy who simply buys a external HD from costco and dumps a bunch of FLACs on it? :D
     
  15. Fatman

    Fatman Senior Member

    Location:
    Salt Lake City
    Better than the Transporter?
     
  16. Nobby

    Nobby Senior Member

    Location:
    France


    The "Touch" has built in squeezecenter software (TinySC), so it will recognise the music on an attached USB drive.
     
  17. Fatman

    Fatman Senior Member

    Location:
    Salt Lake City
    Again (and I'm sorry to be such a computer retard), but is a 500 gb or 1 tb external hard drive the same thing as a USB drive? When I read USB drive I think of a 2 or 4 GB flash drive that you put on a keychain.
     
  18. metalbob

    metalbob Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    New Jersey
    My question is how do you actually "manage" the music on this system? I am in the process of ripping my entire collection to lossless and 320 kbps AAC (for iTunes/iPod use) and would like to prep it before the Touch comes out. I am currently running a Mac and installed the Squeezebox software and it appears to attach itself directly to my iTunes library by default.
     
  19. cakeordeath

    cakeordeath Forum Resident

    I don't have my system in front of me but IIRC you can go into the settings and uncheck the option to scan the itunes directory. Then you can do a rescan.
     
  20. Peter314

    Peter314 Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Yep, they're just bigger than flash drives. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/

    I used to use a 500 GB Seagate USB drive with my music server before switching to an internal 1 TB drive in a new PC. I still backup data onto external USB drives.
     
  21. Pericles

    Pericles Forum Resident

    Location:
    Edmonton
    I'm looking forward to getting one of these and finally having a decent digital playback component in my main system. I especially like being able to simply plug a USB external directly to it (I don't have a wireless router and can't be bothered to learn how to set one up). I'll likely insert a DAC between the Touch and my preamp at some point in the future.
     
  22. Mike B

    Mike B Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    USB is the type of connection- that flat slot on your computer you plug devices into. Universal Serial Bus. So a USB mouse is a mouse that plugs into a USB port, there are USB keyboards, USB printers, etc. Nowadays, USB and Firewire are the two most common means of connecting computer accessories.

    So an external hard drive will almost always use USB, regardless of it being a keychain "flash drive" or a big ol' hard drive.

    A flash drive uses flash memory (no moving parts), while the bigger ones are the classic spinning discs.


    So it looks like the Touch will have a USB port where you can hook up a hard drive and will be running the Squeezecenter software as well as a fancy graphical interface. I find this set of features confusing.

    Surely most of us enjoy using remote controls for our a/v equipment. So what is the advantage of having a fancy touchscreen interface on the player itself? The only reason I situation I can think of is if this isn't one's "main" big stereo system- a kitchen, a bedroom, a patio, etc, where it's hooked up to a mini-system or "boombox" type playback device.

    However, it also looks like it has an improved DAC and you don't even need to use a computer, just a hard drive if you want. These two features seem useful in a "main" system.

    My guess is that the Touch will be acting as an intermediate, "testing the waters" device. Perhaps, going forward, all of their players will have the ability to read from hard drives directly and the new DAC.

    Come to think of it, I think the perfect environment for the Touch is one's office. Hard drive full of tunes + Touch + good 'phones.
     
  23. DaveN

    DaveN Music Glutton

    Location:
    Apex, NC
    I was originally going to buy one for my daughter's room. The album covers and the touchscreen interface would be perfect. There is no need for a remote at all. The option to run the system directly from a USB hard drive makes it even more attractive as then I don't have to deal with network problems. (Although, no network means no internet radio. Must think about that one...)

    But with all of the talk about an improved DAC, I may have to splurge and get one for the main system too. I've been in the market for a DAC to put behind my SB2 as it is. But a Touch will probably cost the same or less than the Dac Magic that I was looking at and will not involve adding yet another bit of hardware to the system!
     
  24. Shakey

    Shakey New Member

    Location:
    Chicago, Illinois
    We will see or hear. I doubt it, but I bet they'll be close
     
  25. Fatman

    Fatman Senior Member

    Location:
    Salt Lake City
    Good point!
     
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