Should I upgrade to Squeezecenter 7.1 or not?

[cavediver]

I need some advice on whether to upgrade to Squeezecenter 7.1 or not. I'm currently running Slimserver 6.5.5 - 12852 & SB3 over a wired network and have not had any problems. Everything just works without me having to think about it. I only listen to music from my music collection stored on my server. I do not use any of the radio or online functions.

Would I benefit from upgrading to Squeezecenter 7.1 and what benefits would I see?

[MrSinatra]

i think you should, but many here will say if it ain't broke don't fix it.

but, why not just try it out, and if you don't like it, revert?

also, u may want to uninstall your current ver b4 going to the new one. i would try to do a totally clean install.

[maggior]

I need some advice on whether to upgrade to Squeezecenter 7.1 or not. I'm currently running Slimserver 6.5.5 - 12852 & SB3 over a wired network and have not had any problems. Everything just works without me having to think about it. I only listen to music from my music collection stored on my server. I do not use any of the radio or online functions.

Would I benefit from upgrading to Squeezecenter 7.1 and what benefits would I see?

If your music collection is mp3 encoded with LAME, then you will want to upgrade. LAME mp3s now play *completely* gapless.

[cavediver]

If your music collection is mp3 encoded with LAME, then you will want to upgrade. LAME mp3s now play *completely* gapless.

My music collection is 80% wav and 20% flac.

[Nonreality]

My music collection is 80% wav and 20% flac.

If you're not going to take advantage of any of the new stuff then I probably wouldn't in your case. But things like Pandora and lastfm are very good and you might find that you really like having that choice.

[cavediver]

If you're not going to take advantage of any of the new stuff then I probably wouldn't in your case. But things like Pandora and lastfm are very good and you might find that you really like having that choice.

What are Pandora and lastfm?

[amey01]

FF/REW that works is a reason to upgrade.

Is that in the 7.1 release, or one of the nightlies?

[dazbarber]

I upgraded from 7.0.1 earlier today having also downloaded the latest weatherdatetime screensaver (as I knew that the old version was incompatible).
However, many of my other regularly-used plugins were incompatible so I've downgraded again - for the first time ever.
I think I'll be staying on 7.0.1 unless a future OS change forces me to upgrade.

[amey01]

OK - the time has come. I'm going to do it!

Now, I'm currently on 6.5.4. What is the best way to ensure I can go back if I need to? I mean, same plugins, same database, same everything!

How do I ensure I can get it back exactly - I don't have any disk imaging software.

[Nonreality]

What are Pandora and lastfm?

Well Pandora is a service that you pick your artist that you want or song and that becomes a seed that determines how it picks others artists and songs. It becomes a radio station that you pick how you want it to go. I did one that had Josh Ritter and Neil Young and a couple of more like artists. Then all you do is hit play and you have a radio station that plays some music that you like. It's great fun and lets you hear some music that you probably never would have know about. It blends the artist that you pick plus new ones that fit the genre. It's great when you really don't want to sit and pick stuff to play and just want to hit play and go on with life. Last fm works a it like it but whatever you play get's submitted to the site and you can see your playing tendencies. Then you can play back your own library from their site and add other artists that they recommend. It's fun because you get to see a lot of stats on what you listen to and then get some new artists to listen to. Both are a lot of fun. I've probably not done justice to them but trust me, you will probably get hooked if you try them.

Also you get so many internet radio stations that sound very good. I thought from my experience on the computer that they would sound crappy and didn't even try them for a while. Once I did my opinion changed and actually it's not bad at all. Radio stations from all over the world.

[Nonreality]

My music collection is 80% wav and 20% flac.

One more thing as I'm on a roll. You really need to give up on the wav thing and get dbpoweramp and go with flac only. Much better tags and you'll save a half your space. The tags are the important thing. No reason at all for wav on a computer. You can convert them all in one conversion with dbpoweramp and then as you rip you can get real accurate tags that will work great without much work on your part. Much better in the long run.

[Nonreality]

I upgraded from 7.0.1 earlier today having also downloaded the latest weatherdatetime screensaver (as I knew that the old version was incompatible).
However, many of my other regularly-used plugins were incompatible so I've downgraded again - for the first time ever.
I think I'll be staying on 7.0.1 unless a future OS change forces me to upgrade.

Did you try to just change the install.xml to max version 7.1+ ? That fixes many of the plugins.

[cavediver]

Well Pandora is a service that you pick your artist that you want or song and that becomes a seed that determines how it picks others artists and songs. It becomes a radio station that you pick how you want it to go. I did one that had Josh Ritter and Neil Young and a couple of more like artists. Then all you do is hit play and you have a radio station that plays some music that you like. It's great fun and lets you hear some music that you probably never would have know about. It blends the artist that you pick plus new ones that fit the genre. It's great when you really don't want to sit and pick stuff to play and just want to hit play and go on with life. Last fm works a it like it but whatever you play get's submitted to the site and you can see your playing tendencies. Then you can play back your own library from their site and add other artists that they recommend. It's fun because you get to see a lot of stats on what you listen to and then get some new artists to listen to. Both are a lot of fun. I've probably not done justice to them but trust me, you will probably get hooked if you try them.

Also you get so many internet radio stations that sound very good. I thought from my experience on the computer that they would sound crappy and didn't even try them for a while. Once I did my opinion changed and actually it's not bad at all. Radio stations from all over the world.

Ok. This sounds interesting. Where does it pull the music from? And is it streaming mp3s or flacs or what?

[cavediver]

One more thing as I'm on a roll. You really need to give up on the wav thing and get dbpoweramp and go with flac only. Much better tags and you'll save a half your space. The tags are the important thing. No reason at all for wav on a computer. You can convert them all in one conversion with dbpoweramp and then as you rip you can get real accurate tags that will work great without much work on your part. Much better in the long run.

I chose wav for my archive format because I don't care about storage space as I have a lot and can add as much more when I need it. Storage is not expensive. And with wav files, I can convert them to any format I want or need at the time.

Ok, the tags thing. I've never really understood the tags issue. What is a tag and what does it do for me? With my Squeezebox setup I have now, I don't see any difference with the wav files or the flac files. They both look and play the same.

[MrSinatra]

i think wavs have very limited tagging abilities compared to other formats, but i may be wrong. i'm also not sure what apps support tagging wavs.

tags are just data in a special "padded" section of the audio file that identify many things about it, ie. artist, title, album, genre, year, etc...

one other consideration about wav isn't just data storage size, but bw use. wavs require a lot of bw compared to other formats.