New Squeezebox -- any tips?

[rabid]

Hello

I just ordered my squeezebox and a nokia 770 and I am awaiting their arrival. I have been browsing here for a while trying not to pull the trigger, but the temptaion was too strong. I considered the sonos player as well, but I chose the squeezebox due to the high level of user control/plugins. I just finished building a new house with speakers in the ceilings in 6 different rooms. Each room has a volume control in the wall. I will use my squeezebox with this sytem. I currently use my Yamaha Home Theater receiver to power all the speakers, but I am considering the purchase of a seperate amp for whole house audio to keep my HT seperate. The downside is that I lose the ability to play squeezebox through my home theater speakers, but there are also speakers in the ceiling in that room.

Anyone have any tips or suggestions of things to do in preperation or upon arrival?

Charles

[JJZolx]

Anyone have any tips or suggestions of things to do in preperation or upon arrival?

Load SlimServer on the computer that will serve as your server. Put Softsqueeze on that or another computer and play around with the remote interface. Also play around in the web interface. You'll soon start to see how critical proper tagging is to the logical operation of SlimServer and you'll start sorting through tags and retagging your library. It can take some time until you've figured out exactly what's necessary and then tag the library accordingly.

Of course, if you haven't yet ripped your CD collection, you've got that somewhat daunting task ahead of you.

[Mark Lanctot]

Have you downloaded SlimServer yet?

Also you should take a look at your music tags.

[Skunk]

Anyone have any tips or suggestions of things to do in preperation or upon arrival?

Get all your chores done before it comes, as SB can become addictive.

You can hook two amps up to SB, eg. run the digital/optical out into your HT receiver, and the analog outs to your whole-house amp.

[Paul_B]

I agree with the tagging comments and I use MP3Tag as it is incredibly flexible once you have learnt what it can do and checked out the forums. For example you really don't want all your compilation albums appearing as various for each track. The random mix based on genre has rejuvanted my music listening. Seriously I no longer watch rubbish on TV I turn on the Squeezebox and queue up my favs. Plus adding a few songs for the wife.

If you haven't already ripped your CD collection you MUST go for a lossless format such as FLAC you always transcode or downgrade to MP3.

But believe me you will love Squeezebox and Slimserver. I am now saving for a Squeezebox for kitchen and dining room

[rabid]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have nearly 600 albums in my collection. The majority has been ripped to some format or another. Over the years I have experimented with different formats. About 25% is in FLAC or Apple Lossless. I am considering re-ripping the remainder, but I may just play it by ear and rip a few every now and then until I get back through the entire collection.

Something went wrong with my nokia 770 order and I canceleld it. I have to find another place to order it. I would highly reccomend not ordering directly from nokia. They may have the best price, but it isn't worth all the hoops you have to jump through for them to process your order.

[Pale Blue Ego]

If you already have the majority of your favorite music ripped to high-quality mp3, you can probably take your time upgrading to lossless. If you start noticing artifacts playing mp3s on a big stereo, then that will compel you to re-rip to FLAC. Or you may be quite happy with the sound quality of the mp3s.

Taking your time doing the re-rips, making sure the tagging is done correctly, you'll gradually add value to your collection and your whole squeezebox experience. The SB3 is great right out of the box and just gets better with time, as new features are added and as your collection grows and matures.