Thanks all for their suggestions of powered speakers.
Jack Coates wrote:
One thing to think about if you're married, I've been phasing out the tuner thing and got into hot water with the missus for disabling radio in the front room. I now have a "get real FM radio into the Slimserver" project to figure out.
Ah, yes. This gets to the heart of the matter. Just after Xmas, feeling flush, I ordered a Pure Legato DAB system for the room without radio: http://www.puredigital.com/Products/Product.asp?Product=VL-60692
(UKP 280 from Dabs). I also informed my spouse that she would soon be able to rewind the Archers etc (it clashes with daughter's bath time, and she tends to be noisy) - since I know full well that it will be permanently tuned to Radio 4, so we can assume there will always be a full buffer of it. This met with considerable spousal approval.
Then, I came across the SqueezeBox and, still feeling flush (perhaps because I hadn't had to pay for the Legato yet) I ordered first one, and then when Slim dropped the price just before I made a quick trip to the US, a second one - which is now waiting for something to plug it into.
Meanwhile the Legato tide has ebbed and flowed, but never quite managed to cast my unit up on the beach. The last date Dabs gave me is quite soon - but I've had no update, and no reason to think it will be met - and I'm starting to wonder if I couldn't save �150 or so and just get some speakers instead. I clearly have no call for the CD player in the Legato now; but the crucial question is how realistic it will be to listen to Radio 4 on it.
So far the Squeezebox has received a cautious marital welcome; but I've had a couple of flaky moments, and I don't want it get a bad reputation! I was sort of hoping to wait until AlienBBC had settled down and got a simple installation.
So (at last) my questions:
- Taking the long view, assuming that AlienBBC and installation of it (on OS X, for my purposes) can be conquered: how should I expect the sound quality of Radio 4 through broadband->slimserver->squeezebox to compare with it over DABS? And would you expect reliability to be an issue?
- In general (if I only care about BBC stations, rather than FM in general) is it reasonable to think of Squeezebox as a replacement for an FM radio?
Assuming you've got cable/dsl, yeah -- I get pretty decent BBC performance in California, and fabulous AlienBBC performance from California and South America radio stations.
- As mentioned, I'd rather my wife didn't get the impression that the Squeezebox was one of those unreliable, enraging, computer things, best tossed out of the window; so I'm anxious that it be stable until she's lulled into believing that it's an appliance. If I attempt installation of AlienBBC, is it likely that I can destabilise the whole thing; or is the worse case that I fail to get AlienBBC working?
- I haven't seen any recent posts on the lists about installing Alien BBC on OS X - is that because all the pioneers have already tried, and the rest have given up; or because it's now straightforward, and everyone who's tried it recently just got it working without further ado?
I think it's straightforward on OS X, others will be sure to correct me if that's not true :)
- is there any likelihood that a forthcoming release of SlimServer will have AlienBBC ready-rolled in it, as the existing Internet Radio plug-in is? It's not that I'm lazy, so much as cowardly.
AlienBBC is not too tough, IMHO, though I've certainly been known to forestall this sort of thing until my wife's evening out... damn straight I'm scared of her, what's it to ya? :) As far as integration, I don't know. It doesn't look impossible, but there'll always be some extra work to do because Slimserver will never ship with the proprietary codecs for Real and WMA.
-- Jack at Monkeynoodle dot Org: It's a Scientific Venture... Riding the Emergency Third Rail Power Trip since 1996! _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
