trypan wrote: > I have a Duet hooked up wirelessly and I've noticed that the audio > quality is somewhat sub-par. Is this to be expected? Internet > streaming (Pandora, for example) sounds particularly bad. 256 bit rate > AAC files playing from my computer sound a little better , but still not > very good. It is very clearly inferior to playing a CD on the same > setup. I don't really know that much about wireless systems, so I have > a bit more info. and some questions. > > 1) I haven't connected the Squeezebox to the A/V receiver with a > digital cable yet, but will that make a huge difference?
It shouldn't make much difference unless you have horrible analog cables, suffering from ground loops or the like. Most people don't have these problem. And if you have connected other items like DVD, CD or VCR players similarly with good results - well that just proves you know how to do connect analog audio cables properly. > 2) I don't have any problems with streaming (it doesn't break up at > all), but is it possible to have partial packet loss that would hurt > the playback quality? The signal from my router to the Duet can be > weak at times. I don't think so. With digital, you usually get the signal or you don't. But, that said, not all source material is the same. Streaming sources may use a slower sampling rate to reduce the likelihood of drop outs. I once put an entire audio book (over a dozen CDs) onto 1 mp3 compressed CD (normally about a 10:1 compression ratio) by reducing the sampling rate (achieving about a 15:1 compression ratio). However, it sounded like the narrator was talking over the phone. > Thanks for any info you can provide. Hum, I thought you were going to ask if connecting the duet w/a 10BaseT cable was going to help. Were you? Well, the answer is probably not. A bad wireless connection manifests it's self as drop outs. The player will generally stop playing or stutter. Not play badly with out interruption. Have you listen to the same files on the computer serving up the music? Hey, wait a minute. You are not playing back mp3s or flac or other commonly used file formats. You are playing back AAC files. Hum, can SBs natively play AAC files? If they can, I wonder if the AAC files you have have been correctly formed. If they can not, I wonder if the transcoding on the server is being done correctly. Regardless, I would test your set up by ripping some audio CDs to either FLAC or, better yet, as you are running wireless, MP3s and trying them on your SB. I bet the results will be more of what you expected. _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
