MarkBennett wrote: > I understand and appreciate your point. I've still got 10 year-old SB1's > working (apart from the "rubber" paint having gone sticky) fine, so I'm > relatively confident about the hardware lifetime. If I buy a couple of > spares then I'm probably fine for 10 years or so. Also in a couple of > years time I'll probably be able to pick up a spare touch or two > relatively cheaply on EBay as others swap out their systems.
That's true. > Switching to Sonos here doesn't necessarily help. They're a one-trick > pony, although admittedly a good one. Who's to say that I'll still be > able to buy a Sonos box in 5 years time? Seems an awfully big > assumption. I'm not very familiar with them, but is the assumption really that big? My current high end audio hardware store is completely infatuated with them (for them it's a perfect system - no computer knowledge required to sell it) and I see them in regular electronics stores as well. > There is a reason why Sonos dealers can't tell you where the server is - > there isn't one. Each player is effectively its own server, with a > clever system for replicating the music database and playlists along > with a mesh radio system for communication between players. Take any one > player out and the others will carry on and they don't need an internet > connection for local music playback. Ah, so the server inside each player obtains a SMB connection to a computer serving the database. Smart. But you still need a computer and a Samba server is still a server. The complexity of the music streaming and playback functionality is just contained, relocated as it were, and then hidden from view such that people who don't know about it will wonder how it works. Like me! :P I wonder how I feel about that. Personally I like clarity. Simplicity of design also makes for a cheaper system. The Sonos may be able to retrieve from any PC that shares a folder with the network, but the downside is that every 'thick' client needs additional hardware and software. A thin client is not a possibility. Various avenues for 3rd party playback or control are closed. Devices like a simple radio or simple streamer become impossible or out of place. > Not an option. I want to be able to stream different stuff to different > locations. Fruity systems can't do that as far as I understand. They're > also as proprietary as Sonos, but without any of the advantages of > either Sonos or Squeezebox. The only real thing in their favour is that > the company isn't going away any time soon and you can be pretty certain > their products will continue to be supported for many years. Not good > enough in my opinion. I was not actually proposing it as a solution ;-). Apple is as "not an option" for me as anything. Their entire system basically consists of one device, together with touch screen controllers that people already own. Very logical from their standpoint, but it's not a beautiful system in any sense of the word. Anybody could create it, but for some reason nobody has - perhaps for legal issues. You can stream stuff to different locations but I believe you need a different controller device for every stream, or different instances of the same Apple app which is probably impossible or unworkable, since the controller is in fact the player. DLNA/UPnP is also completely out of the question. I truly wonder why it was created. It is a step in the right direction, but wasn't designed to truly function well. Very feature-poor, not even supporting gapless playback. Gapless playback in DLNA is supported through an optional function that nobody implements. It requires the controller to set the next AV stream, and the renderer to pre-fetch that stream/file before it is needed, then to gaplessly transit to that next stream and update the controller with the "now playing" message (or the controller must continuously monitor the currently-playing-track). But in fact to have proper controller functionality you have to be able to store the playlist on the renderer and then be able to manipulate it on the controller - also impossible. I believe the only way to send a playlist is to set the AV stream to a .m3u or .pls file, but not much more. A cooperative failure and any proprietary system would easily outshine it. > There are multiple amplifies on the market supporting 9.1/2+ modes and > they also have 2-3 rooms set-up capabilities. You will have just 3-4 > amplifiers in the list instead of 12. And this would be the same for > touches you would need to have 3-4 instead of 12 in each room. I would > go for solution comparison with all pros and cons including the cost > factor. This really sounds like a controller nightmare. Even if all devices are the same, and the device's app supports naming and controlling 12 different zones distributed over 4 receivers at once with complete transparancy... Lol I see the fun of changing the music in the room you are not in ;-). Decentralisation definitely adds to flexibility... and the pleasure of seeing and controlling an amplifier. It gives you complete control over your current room; it is more fun. Do you really want to have a music system where all you have is 2 loudspeakers and a tablet in your hand? Like MarkBenett said, you won't be able to connect anything else, be it an iPod, or an Xbox, or a bluray player. And if you go and decentralize some but not others, the benefit is pretty much lost because you need some controllers in some rooms (ie. Touches) while remembering that your app must control both the receiver and the Touches in the central cabinet in the other rooms. So the transparancy is gone. Also; if you have this 12-zone-app for the Squeezeboxes you will also need a 12-zone-app for the receivers unless they can gaplessly stream music from a DLNA server, which is rare, but possible. It will not be a nice experience to have to remember which rooms are connected, which receiver to set to which mode, if it is not transparent. Decentralisation also adds the benefit of being able to swap out part of the controller/player devices as long as the central music store can remain centralized. You *could* introduce a Sonos or two; they would be able to obtain from the same server. Decentralisation by definition allows for diversity. Think of it as biological life: all organic matter behaves the same; biochemical processes are pretty much universal across species, and yet; all species can be very much very different from one another. In the old world, all human tribes had their own identity and their own culture, while obeying the same tribal laws. In the computer world, as long as different systems can communicate with one another (use the same data from the same server device) they can be as different as they want to, because they are still fundamentally the same. But one thing they have to have in common is their level of decentralisation; their level of diversity. A centralized system does not permit the existence of other, decentralized components. In its search for efficiency it will obliterate them. Which is why all native tribes are slowly dying off; they are not part of the global economy, they refuse to become part of the hierarchy where the WTO decides how you should live and how you should spend your money and where every country in existence must obey the rules set by the dominant culture or else. And those that do become part of it, stop being what they are, what they were - they detach from the natural system and obtain the rules laid out by humans. Ironically, decentralized systems depend on common ground for being able to play along. This common ground is found everywhere: quantumphysics, chemistry, biology. Humanity. It is pretty safe to assume that all digital systems everywhere in the universe use the binary format as their foundation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Xenthar's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=57935 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96188
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