Sunday, September 04, 2011

Why Can't I Just Have What I Want?

I'm looking to set up a wireless music connection to the stereo at home, a bridge receiver, or media bridge, I think it would be called. Something that connects wirelessly to the home network, and has audio output for the stereo, so we can stream music wirelessly from our computers -- my Ubuntu machine as well as Anne's Mac, plus Emmi's or Ben's, or any visitor's, laptop. Sounds simple, right?

(This is actually what we have right now via a Bluetooth receiver, which shows up as headphones on your Bluetooth-enabled laptop or smartphone:  You have your music program send the audio signal to the "headphones" instead of the normal speakers and it comes out the stereo. Very simple and easy to use, and music quality is OK, but the Bluetooth range is so short it's almost useless -- I usually just use my phone's music, and lay the phone on the stereo while things are playing, so I might as well have connected the phone to the stereo by headphone jack. The range issue is why I'm thinking of going with wifi.)
 
Some parts of my wishlist make this less than simple, though: I would prefer that no additional software needs to be installed on any computer, and I would also like the music to be played (ie, the file decoded and turned into an audio signal), or at least controlled, by the music program on the laptop, and the system must be usable with Linux, Mac and Windows systems.

In other words:

1. Data enters the hypothetical device via wifi, and leaves via some audio jack.
2. The device can be accessed by any computer connected to our home network, and can play any music stored on those same computers, without having to modify those computers (ie add new software:,I would prefer if the device were controlled by the standard music player on each computer).
3. The device either simply pumps an audio signal from the network into the stereo, or can handle audio encoding formats besides the standard MP3 -- I'm thinking specifically of FLACC and Ogg Vorbis.

The biggest problem I've found so far is Apple. ITunes is ubiquitous, but the Mac stuff has a lot of DRM in the way, and Macs work best -- or at all? -- only with the Mac-approved products. My Linux laptop can handle the reverse engineered Apple protocol (DAAP), at least earlier versions before Apple re-crippled it, as well as the more common DLNA/UPnP, which actually seems more like what I want anyway.

My solution: It's not a perfect match to my needs, but I just bought a Logitech Squeezebox Touch. It needs special software to run, but that software is available for Mac, Windows and Linux, and the interface is via web browser. (There are also Squeezebox controller apps available for smartphones, so our iPhones and Droids can be used as remotes.) I don't know what the story is yet about oddball file formats, but I guess if it comes down to it I can do some kind of on-the-fly transcoding.

The main thing is that it receives the music via wifi -- the only other serious choice, the Sonos ZonePlayer 90, does not use wifi but its own wireless network, so at least one component of your system has to be physically attached (by Ethernet cable) to your router, and what that means is that if the router and stereo are not near each other, you either have to run Ethernet cable between them or buy a second Sonos device for a non-wifi wireless connection.

Anyway, we should be up and running by next weekend.

1 comment:

HMK said...

It's Greek to me.
I don't want to think that hard anymore.