I'm almost satisfied with my Squeezebox Touch 'workflow'. I've found some tricks to overcome the small barriers I've experienced. I don't want to use the SB Touch to stream music from my computer. I want the Touch to be a standalone music server.
I found some tricks that perhaps might help others to get to this point. - All (but one of) my computers are now able to access the USB harddisk connected to the Touch. The WD 640 USB harddisk goes to sleep mode after 5 minutes, and the Touch is fine with that. So in idle mode, there hardly is any energy consumption. The drive isn't spinning all day and night. Great! - One problem is that the SB Touch Samba server crashes every now and then. I wrote a small batch file to restart the Samba server automatically from a computer on my network. If the Samba server has crashed, my girlfriend can restart it by clicking a link on her computer and then access the files on the USB drive connected to the Squeezebox. If you're interested in creating such a batch file, let me know. - With Foobar2000, you can easily load all the MP3 and FLAC files from the SB and play them with your computer. This way, I can play my library on other computers. Nice. :D - I was able to record some old records to 96kH/24b files and upload these to the Touch. WAV files cannot be found in my library as there are no ID-tags (you have to access the music folder manually). I converted the WAVs to lossless .FLAC files with equal sample/bitrate using flac-1.2.1b.exe. The ID-tags I added are found in the library and sound quality is *magnificent*. So now I'm actually quite happy with my setup. Using the Touch is so easy. One thing is lacking though. Essential for PLAYBACK is making PLAYlists. I found that making playlists on the Touch is worksome and non-intuitive. Adding files to an already existing playlist is annoying. Logitech: it'd be so nice if you were able to improve this (I have some suggestions). I tried using Foobar2000 and adding files to a playlist is much quicker, but the playlists are saved in a format not recognized by the Touch: \\SBNAME\media-sda1\Muziek\mp3 barbara iTunes\Billie Holliday\Billie Holliday and her Orchestra\01-Cheek to Cheek.mp3 \\SBNAME\media-sda1\Muziek\mp3 barbara iTunes\Billie Holliday\Billie Holliday and her Orchestra\04-Comes love.mp3 While SB playlists look like this: #CURTRACK 2 #EXTM3U #EXTINF:193,That Lindy Hop /media/sda1/Muziek/My eMusic/Wally Rose & His Band/Cakewalk To Lindy Hop/Wally Rose & His Band_Cakewalk To Lindy Hop_11_That Lindy Hop.mp3 #EXTINF:267,Bag's Groove (Jackson) - The Red Holloway Quintet Feat. O.C. /media/sda1/Muziek/My eMusic/Various Artists/For Dancers Only! (A Lindy Hop Compilation)/Various Artists_For Dancers Only! (A Lindy Hop Compilation)_09_Bag's Groove (Jackson).mp3 #EXTINF:232,I Ain't Got Nobody (Graham-Peyton-Williams) - Ruby Braff & R /media/sda1/Muziek/My eMusic/Various Artists/For Dancers Only! (A Lindy Hop Compilation)/Various Artists_For Dancers Only! (A Lindy Hop Compilation)_11_I Ain't Got Nobody (Graham-Peyton-Williams).mp3 #EXTINF:233,You Don't Love Me The links from Foobar aren't correct (they're network links to another device) but the SB playlist format is also very different. So my question is: how do you create playlists? Did you find a way to manage these playlists on your computer? I have the feeling I missed something, as creating playlists on the Touch seems so laborious: compare this to making a playlist in for instance iTunes. Any tips? -- sendermen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ sendermen's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=40887 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82825 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
