[KeithA]

All of my files are 1411kbps, 16 bit, 44khz PCM stereo. No compression at all.

The trouble I find with WAV is that they can't be tagged like the other lossless formats. The tagging makes them very convenient I find.

brucek

What do you mean by that?

My library is tagged by artist. So, for example, if I use my Duet to look up 'Alison Krauss', under her would be all of her albums. So are all of the other artists. What is the premise of the 'convenience tagging' that the lossless formats has that pure PCM doesn't?

Keith

[JDUBS]

All of my files are 1411kbps, 16 bit, 44khz PCM stereo. No compression at all.

The trouble I find with WAV is that they can't be tagged like the other lossless formats. The tagging makes them very convenient I find.

brucek

What do you mean by that?

My library is tagged by artist. So, for example, if I use my Duet to look up 'Alison Krauss', under her would be all of her albums. So are all of the other artists. What is the premise of the 'convenience tagging' that the lossless formats has that pure PCM doesn't?

Keith

Can you tag .wav's with album title, genre, date of release, publisher, comments, etc.?  I didn't think it was possible...that's why I went with .flac.

-Jim

[KeithA]

Whatever is native to Windows Media player is there. So, year of relaese, genre, publisher, etc is there. However, I'm only concerned with 'Composer', "Artist" and 'Album" as these are what drives the way my info is sorted on Squeezecenter.

I use Windows Media Player to 'modify' the 'Composer' section so that contributing artists are removed and only the album artist is listed as composer. This makes it really clean for library purposes under Squeezecentre.

Keith

[brucek]

brucek says:

The trouble I find with WAV is that they can't be tagged like the other lossless formats. The tagging makes them very convenient I find.

KeithA says:

What do you mean by that?

Maybe things have changed, but my understanding has always been that you can't embed the metadata tag (Id3, APE, etc) into the wave file when it's ripped.

Certainly (as you describe) you can edit a player such as Windows Media to show information about the wave file, but that information is only valid inside the player. You can't take the wave file from the computer and load it into your car and see who the artist is, or the name of the song (as with tagging).

With a taggable type lossless format such as WMA-Lossless (which is bit for bit the same as the wave file once reconstituted) will have an ID3 metadata tag embedded in the songs data at the beginning of the file, that any player can read.

brucek

[KeithA]

brucek says:

The trouble I find with WAV is that they can't be tagged like the other lossless formats. The tagging makes them very convenient I find.

KeithA says:

What do you mean by that?

Maybe things have changed, but my understanding has always been that you can't embed the metadata tag (Id3, APE, etc) into the wave file when it's ripped.

Certainly (as you describe) you can edit a player such as Windows Media to show information about the wave file, but that information is only valid inside the player. You can't take the wave file from the computer and load it into your car and see who the artist is, or the name of the song (as with tagging).

With a taggable type lossless format such as WMA-Lossless (which is bit for bit the same as the wave file once reconstituted) will have an ID3 metadata tag embedded in the songs data at the beginning of the file, that any player can read.

brucek

OK, now I see where you are coming from. I'm not sure about in the car, but all off the music I have ripped for use on my Duet have all of the relevant info there to be used by Squeezecentre, so all of the info shows up on my Duet...album art and all.

Keith

[NewBuyer]

...My library is tagged by artist. So, for example, if I use my Duet to look up 'Alison Krauss', under her would be all of her albums. So are all of the other artists. What is the premise of the 'convenience tagging' that the lossless formats has that pure PCM doesn't?

... I'm not sure about in the car, but all off the music I have ripped for use on my Duet have all of the relevant info there to be used by Squeezecentre, so all of the info shows up on my Duet...album art and all.

Keith

Same here - all my music is full-CD-ripped into .wav like you are doing. I use EAC for the rips and it generates the .cue file to accompany the .wav file. I think SqueezeCenter reads all the relevant information from the .cue file. The .cue files can be edited as well, if/when needed. All the artist info is sorted by SqueezeCenter by any category I choose, and is appropriately displayed and selectable through the SB3. I personally tend to use the Artist category the most, for sorting and selecting. Very easy to use.

[rob80b]

Here I’m lying on the floor listening to headphones while my son who’s off sick from school is watching TV and a thought occurred to me while staring up at a stacks of LPs and shelves of CD’s.
So I was curious, how long did it take those of you who have a few thousand CD’s, to transfer everything to the hard drive?
Those of us still listening to vinyl, I guess burning all our music to a hard drive would be a formidable task, possible, as I have transferred some LP’s to CD with my HHB 830, but would probably take a few years and if you improved your vinyl rig you’d want to do it all again.

Robert

[Mag]

I think I spent something like 2 solid weeks transferring stuff. This was  the second time after my first hard drive quit. Let me tell you I cried when that happened as there were songs on there that I couldn't find afterwards.
 I don't have nearly the # albums some claim. Let me tell you it gets quit tedious and as usual doesn't always run smoothly.
I transferred several records as well which is even more time consuming. You have to queue up each song and run it through a wave editor to clean it up.
Initially there was the problem of which codec to use. I started with WMA and decided to switch to mp3. Wanting to play cd's in the car and transfer them quickly and conveniently was the reason. Converting all that was a PIA.
If I go back to using computer base I will get mega storage and keep everything in wav. Less hassle that way me thinks.

[alexone]

 
...so what we need is a (external) Bryston hard disk, hey?!

 what about it, james?


 alex.

[James Tanner]

...so what we need is a (external) Bryston hard disk, hey?!

 what about it, james?


 alex.

HI Alex,

We gave it some thought but then felt that a laptop/ipod/squeezbox/etc. with the new External DAC was a better approach?

james

[mr_bill]

I think you're right James.
Bill

[alexone]

 
 thats ok, james! just a wishdream... probably most of the Bryston fans would like to see all kind of Bryston stuff:

 Bryston ipod, Bryston squeezebox, Bryston tuner, Bryston turntable, Bryston portable cdp, and so on... .


 alex.

[James Tanner]

Hi All,

I recieved this comment from a very computer savy customer who recently bought a BDA-1.  I find his comments interesting as it pertains to keeping the DAC independent.

"As a professional "Über" techie with computers (i.e. 30 years experience dealing with multi million dollar installations), I have played around with all types of computer based audio.
 
The #1 rule for me is the decoding of  the HDisk stream must not contain the hard drives themselves for four reasons: audio performance, data capacity, data protection and pricing.
 
By sticking the drives into the same cabinet with the decoder you limit how much data protection and capacity you can include and you also place the drives too close to the audio circuits. And you also open yourself up to pricing abuse where some high end vendors will charge you signicant amounts of $ for not much storage. In my opinion the Slim Devices Transporter is the best solution (a better one would be a Transporter without the DAC) .
 
As far as the PC hosting the hard drives, the best solution is a cheap laptop (even a second hand one) plus an external USB  RAID cabinet. The setup of the USB  RAID cabinet is simple:  you just select the level of protection you need (raid 1 is best, raid 5 is ok) and it will initialize it for you. Plug it into the laptop, set up the Slim software and away you go. When you need more capacity, just buy another USB  RAID cabinet and thats it. No getting screwed by the vendor with a proprietary product cost.
 
Let the decoder just decode and leverage the increasing mass market hard drive technology available today and in the future.
 
Regards,
Peter"

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi James - The days of canned music servers that contain everything in one box are numbered. Products like the McIntosh MS750 just don't make sense for many reasons. But products like the Sooloos are a little different and I do see a market for them.  Audio manufactures such as Bryston are doing the right thing by concentrating on the audio component piece and letting computer manufacturers take care of everything else.

[pardales]

Hi James - The days of canned music servers that contain everything in one box are numbered. Products like the McIntosh MS750 just don't make sense for many reasons. But products like the Sooloos are a little different and I do see a market for them.  Audio manufactures such as Bryston are doing the right thing by concentrating on the audio component piece and letting computer manufacturers take care of everything else.

I agree with this sentiment. The audio boxes like MAC's simply do not make sense when you can use an old laptop and an external hard-drive. I also think that USB (direct to I2S) should now be a standard input on all stand alone DAC's produced  in 2008 (by any company). I won't even consider a DAC that does not have USB input as I do not want an extra cable and conversion box in the chain if I do not need it.

[zybar]

Hi All,

I recieved this comment from a very computer savy customer who recently bought a BDA-1.  I find his comments interesting as it pertains to keeping the DAC independent.

"As a professional "Über" techie with computers (i.e. 30 years experience dealing with multi million dollar installations), I have played around with all types of computer based audio.
 
The #1 rule for me is the decoding of  the HDisk stream must not contain the hard drives themselves for four reasons: audio performance, data capacity, data protection and pricing.
 
By sticking the drives into the same cabinet with the decoder you limit how much data protection and capacity you can include and you also place the drives too close to the audio circuits. And you also open yourself up to pricing abuse where some high end vendors will charge you signicant amounts of $ for not much storage. In my opinion the Slim Devices Transporter is the best solution (a better one would be a Transporter without the DAC) .
 
As far as the PC hosting the hard drives, the best solution is a cheap laptop (even a second hand one) plus an external USB  RAID cabinet. The setup of the USB  RAID cabinet is simple:  you just select the level of protection you need (raid 1 is best, raid 5 is ok) and it will initialize it for you. Plug it into the laptop, set up the Slim software and away you go. When you need more capacity, just buy another USB  RAID cabinet and thats it. No getting screwed by the vendor with a proprietary product cost.
 
Let the decoder just decode and leverage the increasing mass market hard drive technology available today and in the future.
 
Regards,
Peter"

Great advice!   

George

[Philistine]

The Slimdevices products feeding the BDA-1 is a great way to go, but you do need to be computer savvy.  An excellent solution for those who don't want to be bothered with setting up the Slimdevices is the Sonos Music System - I installed one of these last year for a friend, and was very impressed with the design, interface and product support. 

[James Tanner]

The Slimdevices products feeding the BDA-1 is a great way to go, but you do need to be computer savvy.  An excellent solution for those who don't want to be bothered with setting up the Slimdevices is the Sonos Music System - I installed one of these last year for a friend, and was very impressed with the design, interface and product support. 

Hi All,

Got this from a customer with the BDA-1 -

"This obviously isnt a true test of the DAC!!!... but getting the PC to talk to it was a 20 sec process.... so that was great!"

james

[alexone]

 hi, brucek!

i think that the logitech's transporter is something Bryston should put an eye on. high quality ins and outs and a wordclock input...everything in one package. i was thinking about buying a bda-1 but i want to wait until the new sp3 hits the shelves. so in my case the bcd-1 as the source, the sp3 as a preamp/processor and a logitech transporter would be a dreamteam. the bda-1 is a great product and Bryston made a significant and important step towards this (digital) direction. but the sp3 will have enough digital inputs so that there will be no need for me to get a bda-1. if Bryston would develop something compareable like the transporter i would have to think it over to 'switch' to another company.
we will see what is going to happen...

 alex.

...so i finally changed my mind. the bda-1 just came in and it is beautiful how it betters the non-Bryston equipment.
 i will post my impressions a bit later. right now i am just enjoying the 'new' sound!!!

al.

[niels]

Like I said earlier, I have been using a Squeezebox fed wirelessly for almost 3 years now.
If some of you want an "easier" player when using Ipods also you can use MediaMonkey, look into it, it transcodes everything on the fly. For instance if you have your music in .flac it transcodes it on the fly to Apple Lossless to your IPod...
Otherwise, if using Itunes you can set up a 2.nd library and transcode/copy whichever albums you want to mp3 or whatever into that library, but using ITunes I guess you already have the music stored in Apple Lossless.
But the days are over when you where forced to use mp3 in the car or on any transportable player, isnt it? Why not use something better?