Laptop -> stereo speakers, what parts should I consider

[dullard]

My wife has a ballroom dance studio. Currently she is using a ~15 year old small home stereo for playing the music from CDs. The setup is a bit awkward as she has hundreds of CDs and they each take time to load between songs. The whole setup (stereo + tons of CDs) are not portable for dance lessons outside her studio. Her dad is giving her some old (but high-quality) speakers that he doesn't need anymore. She would like to have a setup that she could have in her speakers in her studio or to easilly take the setup to another location (speakers provided at the other locations).

I want suggestions on the best way to get quality music with easy song selection of tousands of songs. I figured a laptop with all the CDs copied onto it would be the answer. Ideally we need software which can be quickly and easilly be configured to randomly and sequentially play songs in dozens of pre-set categories (fir example to play only the slow foxtrots or the best cha-chas) or to randomly choose songs from all categories. But what components, software, etc are best? Price is a major concern.

CliffNotes:
Need: (1) laptop, (2) portable hardware to connect to speakers, and (3) software recommendations.

 

[imported_miahallen]

You really don't need much of a laptop for good music playback. Encode your CDs to MP3 with Lame. Then you can use you choice of Media Players, I personally like Windows Media Player for music. The playlists are completely customizable, and it's an easy to use interface. Pickup an used laptop for $500 with a PIII800 or so minimum, then you only have to worry about power for the speakers...unless they're powered already? "High-quality" usually means "need lots of power", so get a $250 Yamaha receiver with around 65 watts per channel (they rate their amps with true RMS wattage, much better that a $100 Sony with 100 watts per channel or something).

 

[Jeff7]

Winamp might be able to fit the bill for selecting music, though I've heard that Foobar is better. Winamp works for me though, so I haven't had reason to switch.

And I'll submit a plug for FLAC - free lossless audio compression. The files are larger than MP3, but you also lose no data whatsoever, so it sounds exactly the same as the original. It also features ReplayGain, so that all music is played at close to the same volume.

CDex can be used to extract the CDs, though it needs to be set to use an external codec. I use this commandline:
-8 %1 -V --replay-gain -T Artist="%a" -T Album="%b" -T Title="%t" -T Date="%y" -T Genre="%g" -T Tracknumber="%tn" -o "%2"

🙂
Took some time to get right; CDex uses %g or %b, etc, to pass certain variables to the commandline of an external encoder, FLAC in this case. All the switches themselves (- T Date, -V --replay-gain) are FLAC natives.

 

[dullard]

Is there any advantage in getting special sound cards? There are internal options on all laptops, but many also offer external cards.

 

[imported_miahallen]

Not for you, a dance studio probably doesn't have very good acoustic qualities...if fact, they probably SUCK! Any money spent on improving sound should be done to the room's acoustics. My $.02

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: miahallen
Not for you, a dance studio probably doesn't have very good acoustic qualities...if fact, they probably SUCK! Any money spent on improving sound should be done to the room's acoustics. My $.02

Thanks. So you recommend the cheapest laptop and a good receiver instead. Of course discussion about that should be put in Off Topic. I posted this in the wrong forum. 😱

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: miahallen
Not for you, a dance studio probably doesn't have very good acoustic qualities...if fact, they probably SUCK! Any money spent on improving sound should be done to the room's acoustics. My $.02

Thanks. So you recommend the cheapest laptop and a good receiver instead. Of course discussion about that should be put in Off Topic. I posted this in the wrong forum. 😱

If you're just going to have a single source and only have stereo speakers, you can get away with an integrated amplifier instead of a receiver will a lot of inputs/outputs you're not going to need.

You can get a nice powerful vintage unit off ebay for a reasonable price. Ribbon13 likes picking out those for people if you want to give him a pm.

Do you know what kind of speakers you're getting? Are you trying to keep everything portable or are the speakers/power source staying in one place?

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Do you know what kind of speakers you're getting? Are you trying to keep everything portable or are the speakers/power source staying in one place?

Speakers will be staying in place (most places she goes have speakers and we have some smaller ones if not). Everything else will go.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Do you know what kind of speakers you're getting? Are you trying to keep everything portable or are the speakers/power source staying in one place?

Speakers will be staying in place (most places she goes have speakers and we have some smaller ones if not). Everything else will go.

If you're looking in the best portability you can get, a sonic t-amp is about as portable as you can get. If you have very efficient speakers it might be something worth considering. Fidelity on the amp is incredible. The only drawback is its 15watt rating.

If you need something more powerful, I highly suggest getting something used. You can get a nice stereo receiver for under $100

You can get a nicer one too naturally, but if you're hooking it up to a laptop as the source the output on the laptop would probably be the limiting factor for quality.

 

[ribbon13]

For a dance studio, I'd highly reccomend a PA/DJ amp and a set of mini/prosound monitors. The Unshielded BR-1s would be good here too as they have a wide soundstage. Though if you're on a budget Gem Sound has a couple premade models if you don't have time to construct a kit.
10" 2-way 75Wrms
15" 2-way 100Wrms