Naxos Music Library

[swasivious]

Naxox makes 8700 CDs available online for a fee ($250/year for "CD Quality" less for Near-CD and even less for FM quality. One must input subscriber name and password. Does anyone know how to configure Slim to access this source and stream it wirelessly to Squeezebox?

Thanks

[radish]

You'd need a specific naxos plugin (and I don't know of one). Looks expensive for what you get, 128kbps WMA is hardly "CD Quality" - I would have thought a classical label would know better.

[MrStan]

Actually access to 8700 CD's 24/7 at a quality which is OK for general listening isn't that bad. It isn't intended for general access but designed for music stidents or libraries and somewhere the joining rules actually state this although they have been happy enough to offer personal access so far.

The problem with accessing Naxos via SlimServer is actually only one of authenticating your user name and password. The actual stream is only standard WMA and can therefore be handled by MPlayer and AlienBBC.

Normally the Naxos HTTP page authenticates the user / password and track selection and then passes the track URL over to Mediaplayer. If the user / password are not authenticated then it sets up a 15 minute timeout.

The same thing goes for their Radio stream which is much better value at 20 Euros a year even though the quality falls to 64KBit. Problem with the radio stream is it cuts off the connection at the end of each track and MediaPlayer does an automatic reconnect. I haven't been able to get MPlayer to do this so far.

The only easy way I can think of playing these streams so far is to play them on the server using the Naxos interface and relay them to SlimServer via something like IceCast.

[radish]

Sure the stream is standard, but the problem as I see it is browsing. Copy & pasting the URL from a browser into slimserver for each individual track isn't particularly convenient. Hence my suggestion for a plugin - to parse the webpage and build a menu of available music, ala AlienBBC.

[swasivious]

Naxos

One does not have to do a track at a time but can select an album (e.g., an hour of music)at the computer. This would be OK. Once the stream is started, is it possible to direct it to Squeezebox?

[MrStan]

It is possible to make an album selection and replay it on a PC which could be your server and redirect this to Slimserver and your Squeezebox. I am redirecting Naxos Radio like this at the moment.

You would need to have something like an IceCast Server runing on the PC together with a source client which will redirect a feed from your soundcard into IceCast. You then need to feed the URL of your IceCast feed into the Internet radio tune selection of your Squeezebox and possible save it as a playlist for later.

So how do you feed your sound card feed back into IceCast. Well if your PC is Unix then you use a product called Ices2, if it is Windows then the easiest way is to use Winamp with the latest Oddcast plugin. This will allow you to direct the Wav/Mp3 feed from your soundcast mixer into your IceCast Server and onto your Squeezebox.

There are other products but I am assuming you want to do this for free! The good news is you can try this all out now with SoftSqueeze before you buy to make sure it suits your needs. The Naxos Music Library will allow you about a 15 minute trial period and this period is renewed each time you reload your browser so it is possible to try this out on a recording with multiple tracks although the trial version will only give you a 64KB rate.

It should be possible to write a plugin ala AlienBBC for SlimServer to do the authenticating and even browse the library but this is not very practical since browsing an 8700 CD library could take you weeks to find the item you need. The Naxos Library actual includes some other labels which have decided that they wish to make their entire output available on the Internet so it is probably bigger than you think. The excellent BIS classical catalogue is available for instance. You will soon find out that the only way to use Naxos Library is to use the search facility to find your CD and then it becomes easy but how you write a Plugin to interface to the search facility is beyond me at the moment.

Give it a try and have fun.