I'm new to the computer audio world and just got my Touch on Monday.
I thought it might be nice to have a place to share our experiences with this player, and to ask questions.
Some of mine might be pretty basic, like this one:
I got two, one TB drives for music storage-
FAT32 or NTFS? I'll be using an ACER laptop we just picked up (Core i3, 17" screen for $550 from Staples)
Thanks already!
http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm
It's an old debate, but dying out as Windows finally starts to grow up. My personal opinion is, if you are gonna use Windows and only windows, always windows, then use NTFS for the speed, storage efficiency (smaller clusters), much better security, and much better tolerance of faults. An external disk is more subject to trouble due to pulling out USB cord, impact, or disconnecting wall wart power or similar. NTFS is more likely to recover from those kinds of accidents than FAT, which is pretty much toast if interrupted during a write.
If you want to plug the drive into combinations of Linux, Mac and Windows machines without any fuss, then FAT32 is the wtg, but be very careful. There are apps to allow mac to write to NTFS but it is not native. Mac can read from NTFS by default.
There aren't as many fancy disk management tools for NTFS. But Windows does have defrag, chkdsk, compression, etc. So it's less of an issue now. Also, you will be writing music files to the drives in a continuous order, so there is not much reason why the drive should become fragmented anyway. If you continually delete records off the drive, then just run defrag a couple times a year. Consider using one to back up the other. 1TB is huge, and a backup copy might be more valuable than more music, at least until you fill it up!! Plug them both into the computer by USB. Then use windows backup to program a weekly or monthly backup of changes only. The backup drive need not be attached all the time.
Have fun Mike!!! Don't forget to check out Pandora.
Rich
I've got two 1tb drives as well and I'm running them as mirrored Raid as eSata drives off my Dell desktop computer. It works great and I don't have to worry about making sure to run any sync or backup procedures.
Have fun with the Touch. I think it's a great product. If you have an Apple iPhone or iTouch, be sure to check out the iPeng or Squeemote apps!
The problem with mirrored RAID is that it is a duplicate copy, not a backup. It will protect you from a hardware failure, but since everything is written to both drives simultaneously it offers no protection from pilot error (if you mistakenly erase something it deletes it from both drives.) It also will not help you if you have any kind of software induced file corruption since again, the bad data will be written to both drives at the same time. If you have an offline backup it will be isolated from file corruption and operator oops. RAID is more about restoration speed in the case of hardware failure (you can just put the second drive on-line and not have to spend time writing the backed up data to the new drive.) It was never intended to be used as an archival storage method. While it is an easy way to keep a second copy of your data it provide you with much less protection than a regular backup routine.
I agree. I do periodically run a full copy of my music and family photos to another drive that I then keep in my office at work. But to be honest, I've had 2 hard drives fail over the years, but have not lost any music due to screw ups or pilot error (well, none that I know of yet ;-). So the raid just let's me worry a little bit less day to day.
But sure, there are several ways to skin a cat and ideally using both provides the best safeguards. Drives are cheap relative to what it would cost to replace my full music collection and the impossibility of replacing the years of family photos.
Okay guys, I am an old guy just trying to keep my head above water keeping computers working. Please tell me if my approach with saving music if flawed. I rip CDs to .flac and store them in a file named "new music" on a 1TB external hard drive. Once ripped I open Explorer and drag the contents of the "New Music Folder" over to a back-up 1TB external drive to a "Music Folder." Once the copying to the 2nd External Drive is complete I then drag the contents of the "New Music Folder" into the "Music Folder" located on the original external Hard Drive. Once these operations are complete I upplug the back-up drive from the computer and instruct Squeezecenter to scan for new music.
If there is a safer (not faster) way for me to accomplish a back-up of my music please share it.
Thanks,
Ken
Ken,
I think you're good. The advantage you have over a RAID is that your backup drive is disconnected from the machine when it is not being used for doing backups. This prevents any problems in the machine from propagating into the backup drive. (Of course the disadvantage is that you have a manual process required to do the file copying as opposed to is being automatically done by the RAID system - nothing for nothing.)
Since you are ripping CDs to the computer backup is not as serious of an issue for you since you have the original CDs and could just re-rip them if something happens. What you are really protecting is the time you would have to invest to rip your library again if something goes wrong. Back up is more crucial to people who purchase their music online from places like itunes or HDTracks and the hard drive contains their original copies.
If you are still a bit paranoid the only other thing I could suggest to keep your data safe is to buy a third external drive and keep it off site except for when you are actually copying files to it. this will protect you from data loss due to catastrophic events. When you think about it, if you have a fire or a flood in your house the backup drive won't be much use to you if it is sitting on a shelf right next to your main drive. Off site storage is usually used by businesses for critical data and IMO may be overkill just for a music collection, but hard drives are cheap these days and if you don't mind the extra work of copying the files yet again and it helps you sleep night, by all means do an off-site back up as well.
Tom
I use RAID too, in a permanent array in a NAS. But Mike is using his new laptop for slimserver, so hanging two USB drives off it all the time for RAID isn't practical, plus I don't know how to make a RAID array in windows? Oh yeah, I guess you would use disk manager?
Ken, you are fully backed up! (Try some ExLax.) So do you have 3 external drives? Or are you ripping to drive 1, copying to drive 2, then copying back to drive 1 again? I would just rip to the drive you play from, then program windows backup to write an incremental backup to the other drive - a 1x/month manual job if you want to keep the backup drive in a safe place. If Vera stores data on that drive during the week then do a weekly or even daily automatic job, but then it must remain attached all the time. If it is just music then you are only backing up for convenience to prevent losing the small number of CDs you have ripped since the last backup, not so critical because you could redo the lost work without too much pain. Not like your taxes or latest novel are on there. Find Windows Backup application in Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Backup. Fart around with it or read the help file. It is pretty easy to use, but powerful. You could reduce your operation down to monthly 2-3 clicks, unattended.
Edit: I see Tom has already stated some of my better points. :thumb:
Ken,
There are certainly lots of tools that will help keep you from fat-fingering the copy and backup processes but sounds like you've got the basics down just fine. I suspect how you handle it will ultimately expand and improve as your library grows.
I use EAC to rip directly to my RAID and it places and names it exactly how I want (this can be done in the EAC setup). Once done, I use MediaMonkey to update the tags and insert album art. Once that's done, I scan into Squeezebox Server. There are tools that can combine the functions of both EAC and MediaMonkey (dbPoweramp for one), but I really depend on EAC and it's never let me down.
So apparently the audio quality is all over the place for internet radio. The voices on NPR had that horrible compressed quality (as my old car pool buddy would say "Hey, its the Tin Man" when we listened to talking on XM in the car)
But now I'm listening to the WQXR classical feed and the sound isn't too bad.
My wife has been searching the new-agey zen-ey stuff and a bunch of that was listenable too.
Must explore more...
-Mike
Pandora is all 128kbps, or 192 if you subscribe. The metallic sound is rarely annoying, but occasionally it's there.
I have a question for all of you Logictech Touch/Squeezebox guys.
It seems like an awful lot of work to setup and load these systems.
Are you doing it because you get better sound quality (as opposed to just playing the CDs directly) or is it just an ease of use and/or organization type of thing?
Primarily for convenience to me, but I have read there is sonic improvement too, although I can't remember why. Something about ripped tracks don't have error codes and live CD tracks do. Even if there are theoretical benefits to streaming from HDD, these devices are usually cheap consumer toys so the digital outputs and analog outputs aren't any better quality than a cheap CDP. Logitech Transporter is designed as a high end component, so it should have better reliability and performance than the SB/Duet/Touch/Sonos/Soundbridge type products. But the TP stock analog output is clean but dull.
Access to entire library in palm of hand is the primary draw, but in time I have realized that access to internet radio is probably even more valuable to me. Thanks to John Cook for finally convincing me to check out Pandora music service. The Sonos with Pandora has changed the way my family consumes music, and enhanced the experience.
Ripping the entire collection of CDs to a hard drive is a pita. You can't play a CD in it, you have to rip it first. Networking issues, software bugs and reliability have been issues in the past with these devices. But things are getting better now. Setting up is piece of cake.
I use a Mac, maybe Im the only Mac guy? I have my music on an esata drive. I want to get a small raid system soon, since 24/96 takes up a lot of space. :) In the past it has been very simple to setup. There were some issues with Mac which are resolved. 24/96 sounds phenomenal. My first experience with it! The Touches digital output is much better than the sb3. Much more clarity. Love having 16000 songs at the touch of a button!
Does Touch play 24/96 files??? I know you're using digital out, is the BDA showing link to 24/96? That's great if it does. Shane brought a bunch of hirez files to our last g2g. They sounded awesome on the Gemme Katanas.
The purpose of RAID is safety, not size. Although a RAID array can have many drives in it and be very huge. RAID sacrifices one of the drives to gain redundancy against a drive failure. Any drive can fail and can be replaced with a new drive and the others will rebuild the new one with no data lost. If you lose two at once you're fucked. Maybe there is a RAID config that allows for 2 redundants? I dunno. Anyway RAID needs a controller to run the storage scheme. Maybe OS-X has it built in for local drives, or you can use a hardware controller PCI card, or a software app. Or buy a multi drive NAS that uses RAID and hang it on your network. The Netgear ReadyNas products are well designed. The newer ones have worked out the problems of the first models. It uses a proprietary RAID system that is easy and idiot proof. Basically you just stick the disks in and it figures everything out. Hot swap on failure, email notification of failure, print server, file server, runs slim server natively (slowly,) webserver, etc. Optimized for media streaming, like audio video playback, etc. I/O speed is pissa but it's not cheap. There are other brands making products like this too. D-Link has a small 2 drive RAID fileserver that's cheap. 2 2TB drives would give you redundant 2 TB in RAID1. DNS323. There are others out there, big and small.
It does! I dont have any reference recordings, but listening to Grateful Dead soundboards, Charlie Miller Mastered are incredible. So much more info spatially and airwise. Things are more real. Sweet!
Yeah you def want a hardware controller. Probably something in the neighborhood of 4 TB. Each 24/96 album takes up a DVD in size. Not that there are that many out there.
M
That's awesome. I might need to get one to play hirez too.
OSX does have RAID software built in. That would be the fastest performance, all local drives. But you don't need that much speed just for music, even hirez is nothing like video. If you have room inside the box. Maybe it can control a bunch of USB drives as Raid, idunno
I have an SB3, Duet & Touch and what I love about the Squeezebox products is the absolute simplicity and convenience of use. While I will say that there have been software "challenges" along the way, the lastest version seems rock solid. The ability to access via iPeng or SqueeMote on my iPhone is near perfect. I might need to get an iPad for just that purpose.
I've also discovered a very nice side benefit: when we go on vacation, I take my SB3, a pair of AudioEngine A2s and my computer and I'm golden!
The sound quality is amazingly good and, yes, like the Transporter, the new Touch can play 24/96 natively. (the Duet and Sb3 can do 24/48). The Squeezebox also supports a much broader set of Internet apps now than it did before and Pandora is certainly one of them. Personally, I really like Last.FM as well.
Yes, ripping all your music can be a pain, but then, it is a great way to actually catalog all your music - no more trying to find a CD that you "know" you own but damn if you can find it - in the car? kitchen? Damn, where'd I put it?"
And while it is totally illegal and something I'd never do :roll:, the ability to have music from family & friends, or the occasional Torrent "experimental" download is a great way to hear music you might not ever get exposed to. Personally, I think I've bought more music since I began ripping than I ever did before. I find something new I like and jump on it.
The only downside I can see is that it still does require a bit of technical expertise to know how to use the tools to rip music and to have a home network available to optimally use these products.
OK this might be a dumb question but I can't find how to make dbpoweramp record directly to my 1TB external drive :duh
Or is it not possible or desirable to rip from an external USB DVD writer directly to a big external USB hard drive?
Thanks
-Mike
It should work Mike. I rip to hard drives on my LAN, that's farther away than your local USB drive.
You can't type directly into the Path field. You have to press the little "Set" button at the right side of the Path field in order to edit the value. When you do that, a nice little popup appears to let you find all available locations. Your USB drive should appear as a logical drive (drive letter) under My Computer.
:thumb: :thumb: :thumb: :thumb:
yay! Now you're shittin in high cotton
I compared WAV files ripped using EAC and dBpoweramp and thought that the dB version sounded significantly better (I self-blinded by not knowing which was which, and anyway I certainly did not want to hear a differencve...). There was a three-dimensionality present that was truncated w/ EAC. dB had better delineation of the outlines of images both left and right, as well as front to back. EAc sounded flat and boring by comparison. I have not done any file comparisons to see if the rips were identical.
Has anyone else done a head to head of these programs? I'm glad I did 'cause I'd have really bummed to hear all of this after ripping my collection w/ EAC!
So, my drives come formatted w/ FAT32 so I reformat each one, which takes ~12 hours. Then a little slip of parep falls out of the drive box that says, Oops, we told you it was FAT32 but really, it's formatted with NTFS!! Oh well, no biggie.
So I ripped ~ 50 GB of WAV this weekend. I think I'll stick w/ WAV for now - The Touch seems to find it just fine and I can always compress later.
Thanks for all the help, guys!
-Mike (the rippin' fool)
Lookin good! 8)
You can use Microsoft File Compare to compare the EAC and dbPoweramp WAV files. File compare comes with all windows since 3.0. Go to command line, type "fc /?" to learn how to use it. It can handle binaries like WAV. It has human readable output. Likely it will only tell you a percentage of difference, not details about air or tonal warmth. haha But you never know!!
I could hear a difference between flac and WAV played back on SB3. Decode was on SB3, I think.
I find flac to be "good enough" so I rip to flac and covert to mp3 or ALAC as needed. dbPoweramp makes these file conversions very easy, even bulk conversions of directories is possible. I don't know if EAC can do that. Be sure to set your dbPoweramp settings to secure rip. Mine was set to Burst mode by default. AccurateRip is a nice feature, allowing a fast unsecure rip when the CD is in the Accurate Rip database, you know it is perfect, even on fastest rip. Notice the Settings button on the Secure setting. There's more in there to fiddle with. Better to know about these settings before starting your process.
When i used EAC it was unable to rip insecurely, so if a track was hosed, it would not output anything. dbPoweramp has the burstmode to avoid switching to a consumer media player to rip the bum track.
Rich
My ALACs sound wonderfully wonderful. Im on a Mac & will take the hit for lossless compression, if there actually is any. My head exploded twice listening to 24/96 ALAC so it cant be all that bad.
M
For the discs that won't rip well w/ dB (too many sectors to re-read) I bring them to EAC. EAC can often slog through these faster than dB, I think, and still give you good rips.
For the discs that would still take too long on EAC, I'll try dB w/ burst mode, but I haven't done any like this yet.
-Mike
My db usually can't fight its way through a bad track. Even if it rerips the bad sectors it still fails insecure at the end. But the track still plays. If I can hear any dropouts I try to fix them in Soundforge audio editor. Usually this only happens on very scratched disks that I buy used.
If EAC and dbPowerAmp both complete clean rips without error and with AccurateRip confirmation, then you should have totally identical WAV files. There is only ONE clean rip. Anything else is not a lossless, clean rip. So, if you have two identical WAV files - one from EAC and one from dbPoweramp, I cannot fathom how they could sound different. Not saying they don't, just can't see how. And if they two files are not identical, at least one of the two rips was not clean (my money is on EAC, but admittedly, getting it configured correctly can be a bit of a bear).
I've played with lots of different ripping software and there is no question that some do better than others but, IMHO, EAC and dbPoweramp are the best. In my experience, a clean CD will provide a perfect rip with EAC or dbPowerAmp as along as they're configured correctly.
I want to say your mileage may vary - but it shouldn't ;-)
Yep, I agree, they should sound the same, but they didn't, to me.
Kinda like burning CDRs - I believe that the data is identical yet the MAM-A Gold CDRs sound much better than the Taiyo Yudins (which are a well regarded brand) and wierdly enough, better than the original itself.
Or USB or digital cables making a difference (haven't tried myself, yet)
This may be due to jitter, which I wouldn't expect to be an issue for the ripping software.
Got me on this one.
-Mike
Dammit, it probably does make a difference. Hopefully not a huge one. I just dont want to suck up so much space... though I did just buy a 6 Terrabyte Raid server. Will be doing Raid 5 on a 4 Bay esata setup. Chip is Oxford 963, a goodie. So actual space will be 4.5 TB since its about 1 drive less.
I just love that, when something says 6TB you expect that the formatting and such will maximize the usable space. Then you look closer and see you only have 4.5TB of usable space. I know storage is cheap but that's a lot of lost space due to partitioning/configuration issues and such.
Anyway, I use EAC always and the resulting rips and subsequent burns to CD do often sound slightly better than the original. I've found that a little bit of Macguires auto polishing compound on a soft cotton cloth helps to polish the original source CD quite nicely and definitely improves the quality of the rip. It's been a rare instance that this little trick couldn't get rid of a scratch and make the rip perfect.
Bob... improves the quality of the rip? That should only be the case on a marginal disk that might not rip correctly without being cleaned. But I have experienced that cleaning a CD allows for a quicker rip because of fewer rereads when errors are encountered.
Well... I didnt explain myself very well.. lol as usual.
The Raid 5 setup is 4 drives (1.5TB) and if one drive goes dead, the other 3 can rebuild the 4th drive. For safety! So you sacrifice the space of 1 drive with rebuild ability. You also get fast writes/reads because the info is written across 4 drives instead of goin go just one drive. Raid 10 is faster than 5 but you lose 2 drives spacewise.
M
Is there a list of bitrates for the stations on Internet radio?
I don't know how common the 256K channels are but I found one "AVRO Baroque Around the Clock" that sounds quite good.
-Mike
I think there is a way to check the sample rate of the stream you're listening to within the interface. At least there was on SB3, iirc. Most were 96 or lower a few years ago.
Nice find on AVRO, thanks.
http://www.avro.nl/web/webradio/
I see how to check the bit rates, but I'd love to have a list of higher bit-rate stations to put at the top of my check-this-out list
Yeah, I think Ive seen some 256K stations, a 24/96 radio station would be cool :drool:
OK silly question time, maybe-
With plugging in/ unplugging my external burner, primary HD and backup HD, the drives sometimes get recognized a different letters than they were before, so if dBPoweramp or Squeezesoft is told to use the "E" drive, sometimes that drive is being called "F" by the computer.
Is there a way to permanently affix a letter to a drive (is this "Drive mapping" ?) or do I need to use the same turn-on / drive install procedure each time?
Thanks guys
-Mike
This might help, Mike...
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=631&tag=content;leftCol
Instructions:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-12843-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=256171&messageID=2464160
Some of the user comments may be helpful too.
Quote from: mdconnelly on April 15, 2010, 05:07:08 AM
I agree. I do periodically run a full copy of my music and family photos to another drive that I then keep in my office at work. But to be honest, I've had 2 hard drives fail over the years, but have not lost any music due to screw ups or pilot error (well, none that I know of yet ;-). So the raid just let's me worry a little bit less day to day.
But sure, there are several ways to skin a cat and ideally using both provides the best safeguards. Drives are cheap relative to what it would cost to replace my full music collection and the impossibility of replacing the years of family photos.
I have a Cyberpower PC running Win7Pro, GigaByte GA-X58A-UD7 mobo (SATA-III RAID, USB 3.0 -
great for overclocking :beer:), with 1TB Raid 0+1 (four 500MB drives), and 1TB External backup via USB 3.0 (Rosewill external enclosure RX-358-U3B). I like the redundancy plus speed of RAID 0+1, as well as the security and speed of full external backups using USB 3.0. I hate losing any data or spending unnecessary time trying to recreate it, so I go the redundant route and have far less worries for it. YMMV.
Quote from: mdconnelly on April 20, 2010, 12:53:33 PM
If EAC and dbPowerAmp both complete clean rips without error and with AccurateRip confirmation, then you should have totally identical WAV files. There is only ONE clean rip. Anything else is not a lossless, clean rip. So, if you have two identical WAV files - one from EAC and one from dbPoweramp, I cannot fathom how they could sound different. Not saying they don't, just can't see how. And if they two files are not identical, at least one of the two rips was not clean (my money is on EAC, but admittedly, getting it configured correctly can be a bit of a bear).
I've played with lots of different ripping software and there is no question that some do better than others but, IMHO, EAC and dbPoweramp are the best. In my experience, a clean CD will provide a perfect rip with EAC or dbPowerAmp as along as they're configured correctly.
I want to say your mileage may vary - but it shouldn't ;-)
I'm wondering about this, too. Only thing that comes to mind is that EAC has the read-write head offset feature, but if that is properly set, then I think there should be no problem. For me, EAC has produced superior results. It's also made me marvel at its ability to resuscitate the info from badly handled (scratched) cds.
Sometimes when I start listening to the Touch (analog out) the right channel is out. Usually I just turn it off and on again and all's well. Today this didn't work so I checked another input on my pre (CD player) and the system worked fine. Switch back to Touch input, still no R channel.
So I decide to swap interconnects L for R on the Touch to see if the working channel also moves, and both channels play no prob. Switch them back and they both play just fine. Weird. Almost like there was some static charge that got relieved by touching the cables.
Anyone else have issues with losing a channel and having to kick it to get it to come back?
Ordered two Jerome power supplies today, one for me and one for Tommy (Digital Amp Co.). The engineer in him is skeptical but it also was when I swapped powercords and the SQ improved dramatically. ("It can't be happening. There's no reason for it to be happening. But it sure is happening" :shock:)
-Mike
One of the most profound improvements I ever made to my system was installing the PE linear power supply on my DUET, "Why..but wait its just a PS.."...whatever the science is or isn't I know my system sounds better because of it. I'm pretty sure the Touch will also benefit from a groovy power supply!!!! :thumb: :thumb: