Call for Techie-type Answer (HomePod/Sonos/Alexa etc)

[AudubonB]

Our desires:

• Get music back into our home(s).
  • Either OUR music (couple 'a hundred CDs) OR streaming music
    • But both would be best.
    • We're not the sharpest tech-pencils; "organizing" into sub-categories seems a little daunting, but...???
• Asking a Siri-type system "What's the 2029 expected population of Outer Slobbovia?" isn't really important to us
• Nor is finding out what we bought at Costco last March 19th.

But this skinflint isn't hugely enamored of buying music at 1¢ or $1.99/play when we've got PerfectlyGoodMusic in all those jewel cases sitting over there....

Also think the concept of wireless speakers here or there or all over the place also necessary. Our understanding is that wi-fi is superior sound to Bluetooth... is this correct? Discernable?

Although I fear any responses - all of which are welcome! - could be contradictory, we're willing to take that chance....


Thanks in advance

 

[anthonyj]

Couldn’t you rip the CDs onto your computer (iTunes or similar) and stream the mp3 files from the Homepod? Ripping hundreds of CDs would be a pain in the butt tho.

 

[Tslynk67]

Couldn’t you rip the CDs onto your computer (iTunes or similar) and stream the mp3 files from the Homepod? Ripping hundreds of CDs would be a pain in the butt tho.

First-up, never rip to MP3, rip to lossless either FLAC or ALAC, then transcode to MP3, AAC, etc. as needed.

In any case, ripping while collection is a good starting point. Then you need to see how to get it around the house.

Depends a bit if you have any existing eco-system, if you're an Apple user then putting everything in iTunes then using Airplay to get it to various devices works very well. If not then a 3rd party system like Sonos has a great reputation.

Bluetooth comes in three basic quality levels:
- SBC, a bit dated now and used by phone headsets and the like, poor quality
- AAC, similar to high-quality VBR MP3, good
- AptX, near lossless quality, but not supported by Apple

What's a really nice piece of kit is the B&0 A9 - expensive, but will fill a big room and sound great Beoplay A9 is a cool designer speaker - Get one here. | Bang & Olufsen

 

[gtrplyr1]

Ok ... I got you on this one.

Just did this in our newly built home and hopefully I can give you some solid advice.

1) Forget CD's ... unless you have really eccentric music tastes everything is available in streaming format. I'd recommend iTunes music since I'm a hardcore Apple fan. Once you go that route you will never want to put a CD into a player again and you will find yourself listening to more music than you ever did before as almost anything you ever wanted to listen to is available.

2) Home pod from Apple sounds wonderful ... if you don't want to install speakers in your ceiling getting a home pod would work well but it is very expensive for what it does. Then again both of those paired together and and you have on demand music. Yes it's expensive but it's a one shot deal and works with no issues ....

3) Buy Sonos play units which accomplish the same thing for music that Home pod does ... they don't however get info from the internet but you already said you don't care about that. Sonos makes various sizes depending on how big of a room you want to fill and you can link several together to make a system that will play music throughout your house. Now Sonos does not offer content you will have to have some streaming provider ..iTunes, Amazon prime .

4) If you don't mind installing speakers or using bookshelf speakers you could easily get a Sonos Amp which will power 2-4 speakers. A simple Amazon Echo will take your voice commands and control your music or use can just use the Sonos app which works well. Benefit here is you don't have to have those individual boxes around the house, I have in-ceiling speakers installed throughout but we had that done when we built the house and it was easy ... it's a more difficult process after but can be done. It's nice to just have music in the room without having it take up any space ... more for looks than anything else as I feel Home Pod or Sonos boxes actually sound better than most in-ceiling speakers.

My system has speakers all over the house and several Sonos Amp units that power them and stream content .. I can use Alexa or my iPhone to fire up music in several "zones" ....

Hope any of this helps ....

FWIW, if you only have 1 room where you want music I'd just get a Home Pod or a Sonos Play unit and a subscription and be done with it.

 

[tomas]

@AudubonB this may seem like a book... but I've been through similar over last few years and here's my take at it:

I had thousands of CDs, but had gotten sucked into the MP3 vortex via iPods, iPhones, etc.

I have an audiophile friend, and about 5 years ago I was at his house listening to music, and it just sounded so much better... moved me the way it used to. I could hear all of the details, plus the stereo separation and stage spacing of the musicians. All of which had disappeared with years of MP3 and crappy devices.

He was playing all CD quality (or better) music through a good DAC (digital to analog converter). He had ripped all of his CDs to FLAC (uncompressed) format. And he was playing through a good stereo with good speakers. You don't have to spend many thousands... just maybe a couple to equip a few rooms and set this up. Or, if you have a good stereo from back in the day, you just need an equally good digital front end.

See, what's happened to us over the last 15 years is we all moved to MP3, which is highly compressed, crap audio. For a good reason: we needed to fit it on our devices (iPod) and storage was expensive. Well, guess what? Storage is no longer expensive! So there is no excuse to listen to compressed music!

So... I went down this path. Ripped all of my CDs to FLAC files. Put it on USB drives... one for each Tesla, one for each house. Got decent DACs, which is critical for good quality digital playback. (I have a couple of very good used ones I could send you). That was stage 1.

Then I wanted more music! Option was to keep buying CDs, ripping them to FLAC, synching across all of my USB drives. OR, maybe I could join a streaming service. Problem is, most of the popular streaming services (Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, Pandora, Amazon) stream at a low bit rate, meaning the music ends up compressed and just as bad as MP3. I found Tidal, which has option to stream CD quality AND also option to stream what they call Masters, which is unbelievable... better than CD quality! I don't use it much in the car, since I'd have to bluetooth from my phone and that would degrade the sound. But, at home I bought a Bluesound Node 2 (which is s $500 streaming device with a great DAC built in which integrates with Tidal).

So, I can now play high quality, uncompressed music from my own library, or just about anything else out there.

The problem with all of this is that one weak link degrades the sound quality, and you either need a coach or a lot of trial and error to get it right. For example, I used to use Tidal on my Mac to stream very high quality audio, then I used Airplay to send it to an Airport Express, which plugged into my stereo. Unfortunately, Airplay was the weak link, and degraded the bitrate. I fixed this with the Bluesound... would have saved me time and $ to know this in advance.

I'd be happy to coach you in putting together a setup for your needs. Just PM me if you want to discuss.

PS, just read @gtrplyr1 's response... no disrespect intended (as I'm also a guitar player), but that's a low fidelity setup. It's a nice wireless one, and Sonos is a great way to get audio into every room for reasonable price. BUT, nothing you listen to will be CD quality, because Apple Music isn't and Sonos isn't. Which is fine for many people, so maybe go listen to a sonos/apple music setup and if it is for you... ignore me!

 

[wipster]

If you want to go cheap, but still fairly good quality, check out Chromecast Audio... you can stream to individual rooms or groups (multiple) and it's only $19 per unit. I use Tidal from my phone or my home theater CPU and can stream simultaneously to the whole house including deck and garage or any combination thereof. Actually most of the time I listen to my favorite radio station KPIG from Monterrey CA (americana, no commercials, and live DJ's who graduated from the college of musical knowledge).

The sound quality is as good as whatever system you have in each location. Hell of a lot cheaper and easier to use than Sonos...

 

[mblakele]

Sonos. If you get at least one unit with line-in you can keep playing your CDs, and stream that music to units in the rest of your house.

Sonos Support

 

[neroden]

Rip everything to FLAC, and sort into folders. For your computer, buy a high-quality audio card (doesn't need to be studio quality, just good) with line out. (Even many tablets have decent-quality DACs; but you need the line out cable.)

Buy a decent pre-amp and a set of speakers. Or, you may already have an old high-quality stereo system; it'll work fine.) Run the cable from "line out" on the computer to "line in" on the pre-amp. Play through a computer music player which supports gapless playback and folders, like Audacious, or PowerAMP if you want to go with a tablet.

Many "fancier" computer speaker systems, particularly the "5.1 surround sound" types, incorporate a decent pre-amp and will do fine.

I don't know how large your house is; mine's small enough I just... do that. One computer's enough to play in the entire house. You can also use computer file-sharing techniques if you've got a computer in every room (as so many people I know do, because they're computer programmers).

I, like many people, have a large, exotic collection of interesting CDs which are absolutely not available streaming.

 

[neroden]

1) Forget CD's ... unless you have really eccentric music tastes everything is available in streaming format.

This is flat out false. If your tastes are totally mainstream you can get your stuff streaming. If your tastes are even slightly unusual, you can't. You can get newer stuff from niche artists as direct downloaded FLAC tracks, usually, but not streaming.

This affects pretty much every audiophile I know. I actually have *truly* eccentric tastes, but my friends who just happen to prefer 90s West African Pop, baroque music on original instruments, bootleg cast recordings of musicals, etc. have problems too.

P.S.... tomas sounds like he knows what he's doing too.

 

[AudubonB]

Some great line-ininput so far; thank you everyone. Jenny's first response is "Tell them there's a toddler in the house and NO ONE HAS TIME to "rip a couple of hundred CDs and sort them...." (and me - I have to play Classroom Monitor to you knuckleheads all daynight long....).

Anyhow, we'll take all this into consideration and all other ideas, too. Thank you again - keep 'em coming. I rather think others also could learn from this thread.

PS: Is there a smooth way to rip lots of CDs?

 

[wipster]

Some great line-ininput so far; thank you everyone. Jenny's first response is "Tell them there's a toddler in the house and NO ONE HAS TIME to "rip a couple of hundred CDs and sort them...." (and me - I have to play Classroom Monitor to you knuckleheads all daynight long....).

Anyhow, we'll take all this into consideration and all other ideas, too. Thank you again - keep 'em coming. I rather think others also could learn from this thread.

PS: Is there a smooth way to rip lots of CDs?

Hire a trusted kid?

 

[mongo]

Some great line-ininput so far; thank you everyone. Jenny's first response is "Tell them there's a toddler in the house and NO ONE HAS TIME to "rip a couple of hundred CDs and sort them...." (and me - I have to play Classroom Monitor to you knuckleheads all daynight long....).

Anyhow, we'll take all this into consideration and all other ideas, too. Thank you again - keep 'em coming. I rather think others also could learn from this thread.

PS: Is there a smooth way to rip lots of CDs?

Last of the high count CD players:
No remote/ used:
Sony DVP-CX777ES 400 Disc DVD CD Player

New:
Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD Player | eBay

Then SPDIF to USB:
The Well-Tempered Computer

Then you would need to split and tag each one from the master audio file...

Or there are products like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluesound-Vault-High-Res-Network-Streamer/dp/B014HK17H8

 

[mongo]

Some great line-ininput so far; thank you everyone. Jenny's first response is "Tell them there's a toddler in the house and NO ONE HAS TIME to "rip a couple of hundred CDs and sort them...." (and me - I have to play Classroom Monitor to you knuckleheads all daynight long....).

Anyhow, we'll take all this into consideration and all other ideas, too. Thank you again - keep 'em coming. I rather think others also could learn from this thread.

PS: Is there a smooth way to rip lots of CDs?

Also, there are services that do it
$0.69 a CD, free shipping on CD counts> 400:
MusicShifter—CD Ripping Service, CD Conversion Service

 

[Jrzapata]

I used to collect CDs, now with Apple music and/or Spotify I just stream it all

at home I have speakers in the ceiling so I use an apple tv, in the PC headphones with itunes (Apple music) and the car I stream over bluetooth. All my music everywhere I go.
I am deep into the Apple woods, you can accomplish all the same with chromecast devices and either spotify or google music.

PS. I sold most of my CDs just because they were taking space in my home library. some music that I could not find in apple music I ripped it to AAC and added it to my library, Apple gives you space to add your own tracks that are not in their library. I can't remember how much storage it is but it was rather large, in the thousands of tracks.

 

[tomas]

Some great line-ininput so far; thank you everyone. Jenny's first response is "Tell them there's a toddler in the house and NO ONE HAS TIME to "rip a couple of hundred CDs and sort them...." (and me - I have to play Classroom Monitor to you knuckleheads all daynight long....).

Anyhow, we'll take all this into consideration and all other ideas, too. Thank you again - keep 'em coming. I rather think others also could learn from this thread.

PS: Is there a smooth way to rip lots of CDs?

Pay someone to do it for you. MusicShifter—CD Ripping Service, CD Conversion Service

Oops someone beat me to it

 

[mongo]

Pay someone to do it for you. MusicShifter—CD Ripping Service, CD Conversion Service

I like the way you think!

 

[RichardL]

Or there are products like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluesound-Vault-High-Res-Network-Streamer/dp/B014HK17H8

I use the Bluesound Node 2. I already had a WD MyCloud network storage device I use to store pictures, music and backups etc. The Node 2 can play music stored there and the quality (feeds into my regular amplifier etc.) is excellent.

As suggested, rip the CD to FLAC, using a tool like dbpoweramp CDRipper. Once set up, you basically put the cd in the drive and hit go. That takes a while obviously but worthwhile in the end.

The Node 2 will also stream from most of the well known sources including Tidal. You control it from a very simple iPad or phone app.

 

[AudubonB]

I see MusicShifter offers, inter alia, "AAC" but I don't see FLAC. Any suggestions for which format to request?

 

[mongo]

I see MusicShifter offers, inter alia, "AAC" but I don't see FLAC. Any suggestions for which format to request?

They have FLAC
you want flac
I give you flac

 

[tomas]

I see MusicShifter offers, inter alia, "AAC" but I don't see FLAC. Any suggestions for which format to request?

I’d go FLAC. Once it is digitized, there is freeware that will translate from one format to another. With a few button pushes. So you can have a lossless FLAC version and others as well. You want to initially rip to lossless though, because software can compress FLAC down to MP3 but not vice versa.

Also suggest you rip anything really rare yourself. Just in case.