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As I mentioned previously in my blog, I purchased two network home music players: a Roku SoundBridge M2000 and a Sonos Digital Music System Bundle. I used both for a couple of weeks with the objective being a winner-take-all comparison where one is kept and the other is returned. A brief summary of the detailed results is posted below: Setup: Sonos wins by a moderate margin; neither was excessively difficult but the Sonos was less confusing. Music Format Support: Roku wins by a small margin because of WMA DRM support. Search: Roku wins by a large margin. The Roku is that it gives detailed songRead More →

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I’m in the midst of figuring out how to get music from my computer to my house and my car. There are so many formats, codecs, and DRM systems that it has been difficult for me to pick the best format. I started with 128kbps fixed bit rate mp3, then went to ~220kbps Variable Bit Rate mp3, and then tried DRM-protected WMA files downloaded from MusicMatch, and finally WMA Lossless. Of these, the VBR mp3 seems to be the most universal and offers great sound, though it is a lossy format. Looking at the devices I will probably be using, FLAC (free lossless audio codec)Read More →

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I’ve been using MusicMatch Jukebox as my main media player for at least 5 years now and I purchased a lifetime upgrade long ago. Today, I’ve decided to abandon it for several reasons. First of all, I found a bug that can delete music files when using the supertagging feature. I lost half of two different albums and music management software should never do that. Secondly, I’ve purchased about 100 DRM-protected songs from them. Many of these song are mis-tagged and there is no way for me to edit the tags. For example, some are “Norah Jones” and some are “Jones, Norah” and want themRead More →

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Let the music player testing begin. I’ve decided it’s time to get the music off of my PC and into the rest of the house where it can be enjoyed. I’m having a tough time deciding which player to buy; I’d narrowed it down to the Roku SoundBridge M2000 and the Sonos ZonePlayer but couldn’t decide based on features alone, so I ordered both. The winner will stay and the looser will be returned. I also considered the SlimDevices SqueezeBox2 but it is basically the same as the Roku without any support for WMA DRM-protected files that I purchased, so I marked it off myRead More →

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I’ve been buying music online from Musicmatch for the past year and a half. I like the fact that they have fairly high bit rates (168K) and that Musicmatch Jukebox is so easy to use. Now that However, now that I’ve started listening to music on multiple PC around the house, I’ve become very frustrated with the DRM and the fact that I requires that I jump through so many hoops. I have to play every single song in Musicmatch Jukebox on every PC so it can first download the decryption keys. As I download more music, I have to repeat the process. It’s myRead More →

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This project just keeps going on and the blog was pretty boring, so I stopped updating the work log. In other news, I tried to log on to the Sveasoft forum and noticted that my username was suspended. Maybe it’s because I’m not a paying subscriber or maybe it’s because I made one post about them here. Not sure, but it’s weird that I can’t get into the non-subscriber section. I dont’ really care, linksysinfo.org seems to be better anyway.Read More →

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New years eve. Klye started the finished coats for the drywall while I frantically tried to get my computer working to play music for our new years eve party that night. He worked alone. I worked alone. Not very fun. Until the party. Started to get close to the end of the drywall. Things will start moving more quickly.Read More →