AVS Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

A few questions

797 views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  brutusyoun 
#1 ·
I'm currently running a bank of CD changers controlled by the WinTrax software from CD Control . This software is great in many ways, but requires a lot of work. Once you've got the data into the database and downloaded cover art, you have a lovely jukebox interface that will play songs of your choice and display the album cover art on your monitor. But I'm going to be moving soon and I'm installing a Crestron system in my new house. WinTrax isn't really compatible with Crestron and I'd like to get something more modern because cd changers are just too clunky.


I've looked at MP3 servers from Audio Request, Arrakis and Lansonic, and I think that I'm leaning towards the ARQ because it seems to interface the best with the Crestron(though if anyone has any thoughts about the other systems, I'd love to hear them). But I have a few questions.


(1) Lansonic have a lossless compression option. Is there any chance that Audio Request will have this feature at any time. If yes, could it be retrofitted to existing players?


(2) One problem I had with WinTrax was that it worked like a true jukebox. Thus if you selected all of the tracks on an album it would not just play the CD but instead select each individual track. Thus if a CD has a segue where one track runs directly into another, there would be a pause between the two songs while the player selected a new song. This is a big problem with classical music where a single piece may be broken up into many individual tracks. I realize that with MP3s the gap would be shorter, but I'm told that the ARQ does insert a short space between tracks. Is this true? How does the ARQ handle tracks with segues? One thing I've done to solve this problem with WinTrax is to burn custom CDs where the segued tracks are combined into a single track. Is there a way to force this with the ARQ's compressed files (other than ripping them from one of my custom CDs)?


(3) Is there a way to get the ARQ to display the album cover art related to each individual track?


(4) Currently, I have 900 CDs online in WinTrax. What is the maximum disk capacity of the ARQ? Can it be augmented with an external disk array? Are there any plans for increasing disk capacity in the future?
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Very good questions. These are exactly the kind of issues the we'd like to hear and are working on. But to answer your questions individually:


1.) We are looking for a good lossless compression scheme to use with the ARQ, but in the short term we are developing a way to play and encode pure uncompressed WAV files in our system. AT this time however, the ARQ does not support lossless compression.


2.) Unfortunately right now our MP3 player forces song gaps between songs. We realize this is a big issue and have known about it for some time. We are working on removing the gaps but it is not a simple task as it is something inherent in the way the files are accessed. Possibly using the WAV format will make this easier to overcome.


3.) At this time, no we do not have a way of displaying album art, but it is a possibility in a future software update. There are websites that carry album art for free download, so we should have the capability to do this with our current hardware.


4.) We usually don't talk about storage on the ARQ in terms of CD capacity as is it is less precise than hours. Our maximum storage capacity of 60GB right now holds about 1050 hours at 128kbps encoding rate (about 1000 CD's), but is limited by a 12,000 song database(that's 12 songs per hour w/ about 5 mins per song average). However, at the highest quality setting (and default setting) our storage is at about 420 hours. We are planning on releasing units with larger drives soon and will be releasing a version w/ a removeable drive so upgrading will be simple.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top