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A/V corner

NurseDave

NurseDave

“Stefan’s Glitterbomb King”
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Hey guys, I thought maybe there would be some of you that are into audio equipment and tech.

Situation is, some time ago we thinned out our CD collection, only keeping a fraction of what we had due to space issues. And those CDs are in the garage. I've also slowly been working on changing a little area into a sitting/wine area and would like to eventually have nice quality audio there. I have some nice speakers and an extra integrated amp. Normally I'd just get a high quality CD player and that would be that. But, like I said, we have no space to store CDs in the house and I'd like to be able to access more than just a few without going out and digging through a box.

I thought about just loading them all in a CD changer, but those are huge and out of fashion. I know people make music servers with an extra computer and just hook that into their stereo, but the asthetics of another computer/monitor hanging around isn't great, nor is there space for it. I found this dude http://a.co/3NjfuDU , which sounds almost perfect, but $500 seems a little much just for something that rips and plays back CDs. Any other suggestions out there?
 
why not, if you have itunes, rip them into that on your home computer, set up home sharing and a nice ipad that does not take up hardly any space just a thought
 
Following. I'm considering digitizing my CD collection. Looking for options as well.
 
Xenostr8shaver said:
why not, if you have itunes, rip them into that on your home computer, set up home sharing and a nice ipad that does not take up hardly any space just a thought
Click to expand...
You mean streaming from the computer to the iPad which is then routed into the amp?
 
Honestly, I have various versions of Amazon prodicts that produce really nice sound. Amazon Music has just about everything. If you are a Prime member then you get it in your membership already. You can run this through your system at home and as mentioned above, just use a tablet or phone. Or just use the Alexa App to voice activate it .

If you do have iTunes, what Dave said above makes sense. Rip the CDs to iTunes. I used to do this with my stuff .
 
I'm looking for being able to listen on demand as well as higher quality than you get with streaming. I do use Pandora at work, the shower and through Alexa. I do know you can, or at least used to be able to rip in a lossless format through iTunes. But I'm also wondering about controlling the music from the iPad. I assume if you do home sharing, iTunes on the iPad is linked to the computer and just streams whatever you have on the hard drive there? One bonus would be I pay for cloud file back-up. All those rippings could be backed-up there and not lost if the device dies.
 
The Wi-Fi suggestion is the way to go. If you don't have a digital song/artist library, that's where I would start. Then, you can get a very low profile speaker system for your nook that will pump out plenty of sound for what you want, and should be able to pick and choose which artists you want to listen to from your phone. I had a 500GB drive on my computer and, using about 300gb of it, was able to fit about 300 artists entire discology's on it. If you're selective about which albums you want from artists, you can fit even more.
 
Dagwoodz said:
The Wi-Fi suggestion is the way to go. If you don't have a digital song/artist library, that's where I would start. Then, you can get a very low profile speaker system for your nook that will pump out plenty of sound for what you want, and should be able to pick and choose which artists you want to listen to from your phone. I had a 500GB drive on my computer and, using about 300gb of it, was able to fit about 300 artists entire discology's on it. If you're selective about which albums you want from artists, you can fit even more.
Click to expand...
It's making sense to have the data on the computer if I can get it to the amp without degradation in quality. So that's what I need to see about iTunes I guess, is if I can still rip in a loseless format and then stream to an iPad which can then have RCA cables out to an amp. Even if that's possible, I'm a little hesitant about the audio quality that will be coming out of the iPad.

Speakers I have. You can even catch them in a season or two of Friends in Joey's apartment. They are on their bookshelf and look like little snowmen. In the show they have blue ones, but I have black.
 
If you do rip all the songs to the computer spend the $100 and get a 1TB back up external drive, back up all the music and you will be good if the puter dies. The external hard drive takes the space as a cell phone. You plug it in back up or download what you want on it and disconnect and store away. I have my entire computer backed up, and have a separate file for all my music and all my videos, past radio shows etc, and still have plenty of room for more


 
I totally agree on back-up. I do have an external, that I don't copy to enough. But also pay for Carbonite cloud back-up. Right now I only use it for pictures, but would also use it for music. One of the tech guys I used to listen to like to say, a back-up in the same physical location as your computer isn't a back-up. Meaning a fire or something would destroy both.
 
You should be able to find a converter that operates on a Wi-Fi network, and has a controller app you can put on your phone. That way you can access the music, and control everything from there.

AirPlay from Apple (if you have an iPhone or iPad where you store your music) is a great way to hook up a classic HiFi system to the wireless world...you use your iPad or iPhone to control what is played, and it only uses a 3.5mm adapter.

For Android, the YunListen Wireless Wifi Audio Receiver would allow you to stream your music utilizing your Wi-Fi network. If your phone has access to the audio files on your computer through the same WiFi network, you should be able to control it from there.
 
I'll have to play around with iTunes when I get home. We have a PC, but iPhones and iPads. The quick search I did talks about streaming from the PC to a AirPlay speaker, not iPads. But it seems like it's something it should be able to do.
 
The iPhones and iPads should be able to download a control app for whichever WiFi receiver you end up having hooked up to your actual stereo receiver....as long as they can access the music you have on your PC, (I believe you would need to have iTunes on your PC to do this), that should be all you need.
 
Just a little update. I had been sold on the iTunes solution and somehow streaming from the computer to an amp. Well, I decided I hate iTunes so much, it will be worth paying a little more to not have to deal with it.

Did some more research and went to a nice audio store this afternoon and got to geek out on the stuff a bit. I’m going back tomorrow to audition the Bowers and Wilkin M1 speakers. He had them in the back so is setting them up for me. He also discussed streaming as an option and sold me on the streaming service Tidal. They have a huge catalog and with the upgraded service you can stream in CD quality or higher.

To minimalize things in the wine room I’ll also be taking to him about using the Bluesound Powernode 2. Which combines an amp and a streaming component that can be hardwired to the network. Getting excited and my wife is getting hesitant seeing how excited I’m getting.
 
Sounds like fun! I hope you find a suitable set up. Pics when you can!

About all we do these days is shuffle our albums of choice on our iPhones through a Bluetooth speaker. A while back we had considered buying a high quality Bluetooth speaker that was shaped like an old gramophone but could find one that had mostly positive reviews on sound quality and build quality.
 
Wow! Things have really changed a lot in the years! Sounds like a great adventure! I agree with you on one thing...I hate ITunes. Learned this a while back and decided never to vow to use them again. It's a shame though...because I have a ton of music from the days they protected it and haven't seem to find the time to rip them to a non protected format. I'll get there someday though!
 
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