Logitech Squeezebox Touch Owners Thread - Page 26

Matty,

I don't mean to be too pedantic, but if you are going to be reading forums here and at Logitech's site regarding streaming and FLACs and CDs, etc., it's helpful to know and use the correct terminology to avoid confusion.

In this instance, I think you mean "ripping" your CD collection to your hard disk. Burning a CD is creating a CD from computer based sound files. What you are doing is reading the contents of the CD and creating sound files in an appropriate digital format on your computer's hard disc drive. That's "ripping."

You "rip" from a CD and "burn" to a CD. Yes, it makes a difference in a discussion.

Have fun with your new SB Touch when it arrives. I'll bet you'll love it.

No, I'm using Apple Lossless. Theoretically, since it's lossless it should the same as FLAC (I'm hoping).

So just to clarify, all these capacitor modifications, custom firmware and power supply upgrades Ive been reading about and seeing around the net to do to the SB Touch, are really more geared towards altering the analog output of the SB Touch right? If im just taking the coax S/PDIF output of my SB Touch and sending it into my own DAC and amp I probably wont benefit too much from these kinds of mods Im guessing.

IMO, all of those mods you've read about are snake oil. The Touch measures very well right out of the box, and I doubt if any of those "upgrades" offer any improvement.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/l...r-measurements

And yes, you bypass the internal DAC when you use coax or optical. However, as I mentioned previously, it's doubtful that an external DAC is any better than the one built into the Touch.

Oh I have no doubt the built in DAC in the SB Touch is good, its actually not that hard to build a good DAC and many of them exist out there in all price ranges. The only reason Id be bypassing the DAC in the SB Touch is because Im taking an S/PDIF out from the SB Touch into a NuForce Icon HDP which has its own DAC and headphone amp to feed my Sennheiser HD-650 cans. So far all the mods I have read about seem like if they did offer any advantages they would only be to the analog output which I would never use anyway.

How can I get my apps to show up on my Squeezebox touch? I installed Pandora on mysqueezebox.com but I can't get it to show up on my Squeezebox Touch. Is there something special I need to do?

Okay, I figured it out! I just received my SBT today and so far it's awesome!

Interesting...have been watching the price of the Touch on amazon, and noticed today that not only has the price come back down to about $250, but if you purchase the Touch (or other qualifying Logitech product), you get $80 in credit for MP3 downloads from amazon. Not hi-rez, I know, but free music is free music...

Yes, it was a welcome surprise to receive that $80 credit email. I've already spent $54.

I added a link to the Amazon deal in the great deals forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post22038586

I'm thinking of getting a SB Touch and have a few questions.
Among other things, I'd like to use a USB 2TB hard drive with mostly flac as well as a few other high-rez formats supported by the SB.
I'd like to use the analog outputs for an outdoor zone that I can control with the the iphone app without turning on my main system.
I'd like to use one of the digital outputs for my main system. I'm using an Anthem MRX300 as a pre/pro, which doesn't support flac. Will the SB output decoded PCM from the digital output that my Anthem can use? Can the analog and digital outputs be active at the same time?
I know the DAC in the SB is supposed to be good, but my Anthem digitizes analog inputs anyway, so it doesn't make sense to do unnecessary D/A, A/D steps.

Thanks

Hi Doc,

Yes. The SBt decodes the FLAC, and the digital-audio output is a standard that contains PCM data. Any device with a digital-audio input would work.


I don't have a SBt, but every other device I have outputs both at the same time, so I suspect the SBt does as well.


I agree. And I'm sure the Anthem's DAC is good as well.

Yes, they can.

Thanks for your help, it sounds like my plan would work and the SBT would solve two problems for me.

I have a Touch and really like it. But if you're thinking of running it stand-alone with a large music library, please research this aspect carefully. The consensus is that the Touch by itself doesn't have enough horsepower. I hoped to run stand-alone, but gave up and use it as a network player with the music on a PC.

What is a "large" library? I only need it to read a hard drive via usab with a couple thousand songs.

^^ I think that would constitute a large library and give your response and performance issues.

Anything below 10K tracks is definitely not a large library.

"Large library" for the full scale server starts around 35.000 tracks (that's where the 7.6 and 7.7 versions with SQLite start losing performance and getting worse than the older 7.5 versions with MySQL).
I know users who have 300.000 to 400.000 songs in their library. On a decent server, of course.

On the Touch "large library" obviously starts earlier but definitely not with a few 1000 songs.

Thanks to all that have shared. It's now on my list to get!

Yes, I've been doing some reading and it sounds like I should hook up the hard drive to an imac and make sure it stays on 24/7. Sounds like the direct hook up uses a weak server version, but for occasional portable use it might come in handy. The imac would have to run on wifi, but the Touch could still hook up right to my router. It sounds like that would still be much better than the alternative.

I think you'll be happy with this approach. (My PC is wired to the router and my Touch uses WiFi.) When I first bought the Touch I used SD cards and I didn't have a computer and a reliable internet connection nearby. It worked, but with some glitches. For instance, without a connection, its clock was useless (and the clock is very nice when in standby or "off"). I've also found the web interface to be very handy for setting up longer playlists versus only using the Touch's screen.

And MOG!

Hi folks,
This AVS forum rocks. After 2 weeks of research & reading this whole thread, I decided to dive deep into the SBT. I first started down the path of the marantz na-7004, but after research felt the SBT was what I've been missing in my setup & less pricey than the 7004. Ordered the SBT from amazon yesterday to get the 80$ mp3 deal & should be arriving in 2 days. Took off work today to recast my former home recording studio pc as my new LMS. I have @25k mp3's ranging from 128kbps to 320kbps, with most in upper ranges e.g. 192/256/320kbps. Following advice from this thread, i downloaded dbpoweramp for flac lossless ripping going forward. Also, snagged iPeng for iPad for SBT remote. Plan is to hardwire the SBT via Ethernet & connect RCA analog out to my HK7550HD AVR. Also plan to hook up digital coax & optical SDP/IF outs from SBT to the HK to do some a/b/c comparison (just case thats fun for me). The HK's DAC is good & so is the SBT's from what I've read. Clearly, though, my content is not hi-res, but direction going forward is flac. Looking forward to exploring inet radio & other online services (currently i subscribe to pandora which is run through Samsung tv via optical to to HK.. sound is decent, but not great- would like to see 192khz from pandora). Mog & Rhapsody sound interesting. Long rant here, but excited about my new SBT project & freeing up my music... Finally, found a forum where knowledgeable folks are talking about cool stuff; tried to explain to the wife but she didn't get it. ;-). Will post back a review once operational. Peace!

^^

Great. I'm looking forward to your DAC comparison.

You're going to love using dbpoweramp. I ripped all of my CDs to both flac and MP3 (highest bitrate) for home and mobile use, a great feature of dbpoweramp is that you can do both in the same pass.

I've owned a squeezebox since the early days of the original and love mine - its been great for my music collection rediscovery, and now that I've gotten Spotify working on it my player sees daily use.

Have fun!

Can you set the digital output to fixed and analog output to variable and control the volume of the analog output with ipeng?
Thanks

SBT arrived today & about 15 min. later I was streaming a playlist of mp3 content ranging from 192/256 & 320kbps through the HK 7550hd AVR. Sweetness. Of course, I've been obsessed the last 3 days re-organizing my mp3 library (big task ahead cleaning up the artwork for existing content, not to mention ripping cd collection to flac).
Connected both RCA analog & digital coax outs from SBT to the HK. Using monster cable for both connections (only mentioned cause they're expensive & certainly look & feel high quality). Did some "un-broken-in", initial a/b listening with mp3's of each bit rate to test the sound using the SBT DAC (analog out) vs. the Cirrus 24/192 DAC in the HK (coax). Surprisingly, using the SBT DAC & analog out sounds fantastic in my setup. The analog connection sounds dare I say "warm" pumping concrete blonde through my polk Rti7's. The coax connection is crystal clear, almost too clear, bringing out the small subtleties the lossy mp3's. I'll need to feed the HK DAC hi-res lossless content, otherwise it will bring out all subtle imperfections in the source media. On the other hand, using the SBT analog out for my lossy mp3's sounds really good, no harsh edges, almost "warm". Very pleased. Awesome product, lots more to play with, haven't even gotten to flac, Mog, pandora yet!

EDIT: Started ripping CD's to FLAC with dbPowerAmp this evening. <-This is a fantastic software application, which I'll surely be licensing after the trial period. Also listened to lossless FLAC through the SBT for the first time & must say wow, what a difference! I switched over to using my HK's DAC (using SBTcoax out) & the lossless files sound amazing. You guys were right, lossless is the way to go.. gonna need more disk space at some point. Bad A$$!
Edited by ospreyportals - 6/8/12 at 9:13pm

IPeng is great, however only able to set the volume to fixed for all outputs (digital & analog). I'm brand new at this whole setup, though.

No, that's not possible, the Squeezebox internally only uses a single volume setting so there is no way to set them separately.

OK, thanks. I guess my idea will still work if I use the volume knob already setup to control the outside speakers.

Just wondering about library size and the STB's internal server.

Is it too much to realistically ask it to have a 25k library? I'm sort of guessing I need a full server, but still hoping it's reasonable as it would be such a clean solution.