Squeezebox and flac

[Polkitup2]

I was wondering if anyone had tried using a squeezebox with flac files? If so, what tool do you use to copy your CD's to flac files on your harddrive? Any comments on the sound quality of a squeezebox playing flac files would be appreciated. Just wondering whether this was worth pursuing for a high quality music server.

[heiney9]

I was wondering if anyone had tried using a squeezebox with flac files? If so, what tool do you use to copy your CD's to flac files on your harddrive? Any comments on the sound quality of a squeezebox playing flac files would be appreciated. Just wondering whether this was worth pursuing for a high quality music server.

Flac Frontend. The squeeze box has very mediocre (Wolfson) dac. It's alright but an outboard unit is suggested if you want great fidelity. Other than that the Squeezebox is a nifty little unit. The fact that it can play FLAC's is BIG bonus and the rest is great (except IMO the dac), but you could do worse. Very worthwhile to use as a music server.

I've posted before, but my bro has a seperate computer server with 1 terabyte of storage space and the hard drives are in raid aaray so one drive is a parity drive if anything goes down he can recover all the data. He has almost all his 3500 cds ripped as FLAC files and uses this server to feed 3 squeeze boxes (wireless) through out his house all systems having a seperate dac instead of using the built in one form the squeezebox.

Here's a link to the FLAC program

http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

H9

[Gaara]

I personally just started recently using a squeezebox and found it an amazing value. I use exact audio copy to rip music and all my research seemed to point to it as being one of the best programs to rip music. You can download a plugin that automatically converts the ripped wav files to FLAC.

Jared

[heiney9]

I personally just started recently using a squeezebox and found it an amazing value. I use exact audio copy to rip music and all my research seemed to point to it as being one of the best programs to rip music. You can download a plugin that automatically converts the ripped wav files to FLAC.

Jared


EAC is the BEST period! for ripping cd tracks. I also didn't know they had a plug in to rip straight to FLAC, that will save me some time, good to know :) .

[Polkitup2]

Thanks for the input guys. I currently use a denon 3910 and listen to a lot of SACD CDs and don't really want to give up much in fidelity. So maybe an external DAC would be the way to go.

[scottdwagner]

This has everything you need:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?EACBeginners

I used apple lossless given that I don't want to have to transcode to use our ipods and using itunes is much easier to get the correct file hieararchy and tags. Not natively supported by squeezebox, but it works just fine transcoding on the fly. Good choice...I love my squeezebox.

[heiney9]

So maybe an external DAC would be the way to go.

No harm in listening to the built in dac in the Squeezbox first but I think an outboard dac is the way to go, especially if are used to the sound of the 3910.

[scottdwagner]

I have found the DAC in the squeezebox to be not bad at all. If you're going to use an external DAC, why not spring for the transporter?

[Polkitup2]

Something to look at for sure. I think it costs $1999

[mldennison]

boulder cable company also does some modifications to the squeezebox:
http://www.boldercables.com/servlet/Search?category=MODIFICATIONS
these are more economical than the transporter and seem to get very good reviews.

[Gaara]

polkitup2,

I compared my Pioneer Elite 47Ai to a Squeezebox with a Lite Audio DAC-AH and preferred the SB3 + DAC over the elite. Not sure how close they would match bit the Elite is supposed to be on par/better for cd playback then the 2900. If I remember correctly the 3910 was the replacement for the 2900.

There are plenty of cheap DACs that you could go for which should be equal or better then your 3910 for CD playback, and cost less then the transporter. A few that come to mind would be Lite Audio, DIY Paradise, Scott Nixon, MHDT Labs, and Ack.

Jared

[wingnut4772]

Does anyone know how I can successfully do this with my Mac?

[heiney9]

Does anyone know how I can successfully do this with my Mac?


Ha,,,,,HA,,,,ROLFLMAO.......
























Ok now that the tears have stopped.

Look here:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Not sure but since it's Apple and it's not "their" proprietary system I bet they will make it difficult.

H9

P.s. If no one else chimes in I'll check with my brother he will know for sure what you need to do and I'll post the info.

[bigaudiofanatic]

For a mac save yourself some trouble get a apple tv make it a whole lot easier on yourself. There is a program that allows you to play any type of format on the apple tv I will have to look it up but its very easy to use. Just forgot the name of it.

[jmwest1970]

I use MAX, Macintosh Audio for OSX to rip my CDs. Also, If you want to play flac files in Itunes, I use Fluke to import them. I still use SqueezeCenter to serve the files to my Squeezebox.