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What Do I Need?

Late to the party, but my FLAC rips, set to max compression, are typically around ~350MB for a full-length (60-70min) CD.
 
Zing said:
Having to have a PC running isn't a deal-breaker, I just would've preferred to keep things separate.

My HT is on the 1st floor. I have an office on the 2nd floor and my PC in the office is on more than it's off. I suppose I could just connect this external HDD to my office computer, setup the Squeezebox downstairs in the HT and let WiFi do its thing.

I have a laptop that I keep downstairs. Truthfully, I wouldn't even mind using that as a controller (it's extremely small and light - think small Netbook). I'm sure I'd be quite content to fire that up, connect a USB cable to the external HDD and browse and play my music that way. But the Sqeezebox Duet system - with its wireless handheld wand - is not without appeal.

This SlimServer software - is it something I have to buy separately?
Click to expand...


Very late to the party as usual. I had all sorts of older computers sitting around collecting dust but they were old and loud. In the end I got a refurbed Netbook and a 1 terabyte external harddrive in a Vantec case. It sits in the basement next to my gear rack hooked up via USB to the harddrive (no Esata on netbook) and via ethernet to a switch going to my router upstairs. It is silent and I can only assume sucks a lot less power than one of my old towers. The Netbook is slow as molasses in January but it's sole purpose in life is to run Squeezecenter or whatever they are calling it these days. I can also second the iPeng for your iPod touch. I use it when I am outside to control my deck speakers. I have 3 classics and no duet controller so it was necessary for the wifi capability. Like everyone else here I am in love with my little Squeezebox(es)!!
Happy ripping!!
Mike
Mike
 
I haven't bought a Sqeezebox yet but I've been messing around with accessing the music on my upstairs PC from my laptop downstairs. I just connect an HDMI cable between the laptop and the stereo and then use WMP. I don't mind doing it this way (for now anyway) but I am having an issue.

When I first fire everything up, I can see my entire library and all my playlists. I turn on Shuffle and click play. It does just what it should do for about 5 or 6 songs and when the 6th song ends, it quits playing. When I check the laptop to see what's up, it shows me the current playlist and only the 6 songs that it's already played. Nothing more. I have to close the program and start over but then the same thing happens. I thought it may be a power management issue but that's not it. So I gave up on it and I bought an external drive to use exclusively with the laptop.

I assume that when I start to rip a disc, it will want to put the data in the Music Folder. What do I need to do to put it on the new drive instead?

Once the music is on the new drive, how will WMP (or WMC) know to look there instead of the internal drive?
 
If WMC or WMP don't automatically find your new folder you can add that folder to the Music library. Then WMP and WMC will automatically check that folder for updates.
 
Not only do they not find the new drive, I can't even force the change of location. In fact, I can't seem to make any rip setting changes. I keep getting a non-specific error message. It tells me that I can't do something but it doesn't say why or how to fix it. :angry-banghead:
 
Sounds like a problem with the software. It may be time to uninstall/reinstall WMP.
 
After a few hours of web searching and trial & error, I'm in business.

What I need to do was "manage my libraries". Because I had previously used my laptop to access the music on my office PC upstairs, it naturally wouldn't let me make any changes to that library from that computer. Once I added a new library and - more importantly - removed the other, I was golden. :dance:
 
Zing said:
After a few hours of web searching and trial & error, I'm in business.

What I need to do was "manage my libraries". Because I had previously used my laptop to access the music on my office PC upstairs, it naturally wouldn't let me make any changes to that library from that computer. Once I added a new library and - more importantly - removed the other, I was golden. :dance:
Click to expand...

Good deal.

I knew how to fix it but thought it would build character if you worked it out yourself. :happy-smileygiantred:
 
See... If we ignore you long enough you'll solve your own problems.
 
This ripping to WMA Lossless is excruciating! The only ripping I've done previously was with iTunes and Apple Lossless, which ripped a disc in about 2 minutes. WMP is taking between 6 and 8 minutes from insert to eject. :angry-cussingblack:
 
I recently ripped about 200 discs to WMA lossless using WMP. No disc took more than 3 minutes.



***edit***
Wait... there were a couple (maybe three) discs that were extremly slow. There were another two or three that wouldn't rip at all without errors.
 
When I did my huge conversion from CD to WMA, I used three CD-ROMs at the same time. My PC came with two (one reader and one burner) and I added a USB drive to the mix. WMP can see all three at the same time, and I was able to rip three at a time. It saved my butt as I was ripping nearly 2,000 CDs over a one month period.
 
Towen7 said:
No disc took more than 3 minutes.
Click to expand...
It seems to take about 35-40 seconds per song. So a 12 song disc take about 8 minutes to complete. I've looked everywhere for a setting to change to speed things up but I can't find one (unless it's the error correction option that's slowing down the process).
 
it could be your PC. How fast is it? Try running Task manager and look at the CPU performance - if one thread is maxing out your CPU, then there's your bottleneck.
 
While ripping (and FTP'ing some files to my server), my CPU usage fluctuates between 11% and 21%.

I started out on this journey last night using my laptop and the Free Agent drive. This morning, I decided to see what my office PC with USB 3.0 could do. It's really no better.
 
Okay, I just ripped Sifjan Stevens "The Age of Adz". It is 74 minutes of music and I ripped it in 2 min, 20 sec.

My drive is a 40x CD-ROM (with DVD-ROM).
 
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