Tools for a Good Listen
If you are currently getting your music from a boom box or an mp3 player, I urge you to investigate some higher end gear. I am not what you would call an audiophile, but I purchased my first decent gear about 6 months ago and its changed my life.
- Its all done for you, you don’t have to integrate anything.
- The controller gives a superior remote for operating the stereo.
- Since it is based on a digital archive, you have instant categorized access to your entire music collection.
- It integrates Internet radio, and Rhapsody. (free 14-day trial
)
Digital music equipment generally pulls its data from a shared file system on a computer, usually an MS Windows share, which is also usable with MacOSX and Linux using Samba.
Initially I started with sharing the music from my computer, but I eventually bought a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, as it draws less power, so I can keep it on all of the time. I am using a Kuro box, which is basically a Linux computer with a hard drive, in a small box. You have to install the hard drive and the OS on the Kuro yourself so its not really recommended for non-techies.
As a word of warning, I would recommend that you avoid some NAS products that are based on propritary protocols, this will make them inoperable with Sonos and probably everything except an MS Windows computer. An example of a bad NAS device is the Netgear SC101. You want to look for a claim like “works with Windows, Mac, and Linux”. Or better yet, “Windows Share” or “SMB Share”. This phrase generally means that it uses a Windows share. If in doubt, consult your music hardware vendor.
Another consideration is safety of your music. After ripping a huge number of files, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t lose this archive. Having a copy on your computer and another on a NAS box is a good idea. There are more expensive NAS devices that do what’s called RAID, however, consider that by buying a LinkStation, you are basically mirroring your computer with the LinkStation, so adding RAID on the NAS device isn’t a huge gain.
The last consideration you need to make is data format. There are basically two types of data formats, lossless and lossy. Lossy formats, like mp3, give up some of the sound quality to improve (lower) the file size. Lossless formats, preserve all of the original audio data.
I would recommend using a lossless format, because:
- Disk space is cheap and falling.
- Even if you can’t hear the difference now, you might get a better stereo later.
Which lossless format to use is mostly a question of support. What can your digital music system play, don’t forget your portable player too, its easier not having to re-encode music for mobile use. Also consider using an open source codec, like FLAC, because you can be assurred that a few years down the line, some corporation won’t end-of-life your format. You have to think long term.
I chose FLAC with the maximum compression option, which takes some more cpu to encode, but produces a smaller file. FLAC files are maybe 5-6x that of a 128bit mp3. FLAC is fully supported by the Sonos system, and I can run it on my Ipod nano by converting the OS of the nano to RockBox.
Now that your digital music archive is sorted, you’ll want to consider your stereo. I did some cruising about on the net to figure out what kind of equipment is good. I think I can summarize the main points like so:
- The most important factor that impacts the sound quality is the speaker.
- The second most important factor is the amplifier.
- The third and subsequent factors will probably only be noticed by dogs and super heros.
Sonos produces two zone players, one with and one without an amplifier. The amplifier that they provide is a pretty good one, so the big choice is which speaker to get. This is a pretty personal thing. I would recommend going to different stores and listening to the type of music you like on different speakers at each store.
I ended up buying the Paragigm Studio-20 based solely on how they sounded. However, after some reading, I found that others agree with me that Jazz sounds pretty damn good on these babies. If you buy book shelf sized speakers be sure to get some stands so that the tweeter is up at your ear level. With these speakers and a Sonos player, I was able to easily hear differences in recording quality between my various cd’s, something I had never noticed with my old Sony mini stereo. Some recordings are so life-like its scary, in particular, The Great Summit: The Complete Sessions
Comments: