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Music Collection home/cloud sharing Qs

S

splat_ed

Member
I've got a reasonable collection of music which I've bought (and then ripped) over the years. Approx 10,000 songs, 45Gb, mostly in mp3 192kbps with a few higher/lower.

In my home is currently an iPhone 4S, iPad2, main PC, HTPC (+storage), TV with DLNA, internet radio with DLNA, Playstation 3, fiancee's laptop...

I'd like to get access across as much as possible, but primarily iDevices + PCs (all of which have iTunes on)

1) What would be the best method to allow this, even while travelling (for mobile)? I've looked at iTunes Match, Amazon MP3, and Audiogalaxy.

2) Also, is it worth either upgrading (via iTunes/Amazon) or re-ripping? All the CDs are in cd wallets and easy to get to.

3) If re-ripping, what recommended format? I'm not an audiophile, but storage space is not an issue - currently got 8TB of HDD space on HTPC, soon to be upped to 12 or even 16TB as my movie collection is headed that way...

Currently all music is on main PC and I just sync with iDevices when needed but I always end up going "why did I forget to add xxx!"

Sorry if this is the wrong area... if so, mods please move it.

Thanks
Michael
 
Plugers said:
I use sub sonic on my server. There is a iPhone/iPod/iPad app and it has a Web GUI you can access anywhere with Web access.

Subsonic also transcodes on the fly, no need to re rip.

http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
Click to expand...

I'd probably have to re-rip anyway to up the quality to lossless of some type (as I mentioned, it's mostly in 192kbps MP3 format. But the ability to not re-rip/store two+ copies does sound nice. I'll have a look later.
 
sdifox said:
icloud?
Click to expand...

That's what I was looking at with iTunes Match. I have read that it can "downgrade" your songs from explicit to clean or from full-length to radio edit. Also, I'd prefer not to have to be stuck using iTunes/iDevices only if possible (but that's not a deal-breaker...)
 
You have to remember your upload speed is not ideal. So serving directly from your house is a challenge, unless you got 1 mbps upload speed.
 
sdifox said:
You have to remember your upload speed is not ideal. So serving directly from your house is a challenge, unless you got 1 mbps upload speed.
Click to expand...

FLAC streams fine for me on my laptops 4g card.

I do set the app on my phone for 128k though so I don't buffer in weak 3G areas.
 
I'm in Japan with fibre to the house... speedtest gives me 71.90Mbps down, 29.20 Mbps up (PC is connected via wireless) so not too worried about this end of things
 
splat_ed said:
I'm in Japan with fibre to the house... speedtest gives me 71.90Mbps down, 29.20 Mbps up (PC is connected via wireless) so not too worried about this end of things
Click to expand...


well, yeah if you got fibre that would not be an issue.

I don't think Canadian ISPs even know what FTTH means...
 
Well, upon reading, it looks like I'm going to try out Subsonic. Next step is to re-rip all cds into FLAC... this might take some time!
 
Let us know how it goes. I have been thinking of taking on this type of project for quite some time, and it always seemed too massive to organize my music. This might motivate me to do the same.
 
http://www.mymovies.dk/products.aspx

I use iTunes to rip all of my cds into Apple Lossless, but store everything on a WHS box (Acer Easystore H340).

Seems like you can automate process and encode to FLAC if you buy or build WHS box and add that plug-in and an optical drive to WHS box.
 
mshan said:
http://www.mymovies.dk/products.aspx

I use iTunes to rip all of my cds into Apple Lossless, but store everything on a WHS box (Acer Easystore H340).

Seems like you can automate process and encode to FLAC if you buy or build WHS box and add that plug-in and an optical drive to WHS box.
Click to expand...

My HTPC/NAS box is currently windows 7. Eventually it will be split out into two standalone boxes once I move house. I actually use mymovies for the film side of things. I'll probably use mediamonkey to rip into FLAC. I also need to find a way to be able to listen to FLAC over windows media centre. IIRC it doesn't have built in FLAC ability.

I did think about Apple Lossless instead, as I do have several iDevices. I'd better have another look into the pros and cons of the file formats.
 
I don't have too much to offer in advice here on the cloud front, but as for reripping:

If you don't want to go balls out and use FLAC for everything, grab EAC and use LAME's latest encoder.

Insane Quality Preset or 320 kpbs VBR with Joint Stereo.

It's complicated, but Joint Stereo offers benefits over regular Stereo in the MP3 format.

With my entry level HTPC equipment, I can hear difference in Joint Stereo Vs Stereo (The soundstage is narrower when encoding Stereo and now half my collection has been ruined), but I cannot hear the difference 320 kpbs MP3 Joint Stereo vs FLAC.

I REALLY recommend doing ABX testing to figure out whether you can hear the difference between FLAC and Insane Quality MP3's. You can save magnitudes of space and the aural difference may not even present itself if you don't have thousands of dollars worth of speakers.

These are just my finds, and if you find evidence to support otherwise, please share because I'd like to know them myself.

I used this as a basis for my own testing:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/431522/abx-test-of-320kbps-vs-flac-results
 
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AFAIK you cannot stream with mymovies. I use mymovies on my HTC also and the mobile apps are just for catalog viewing and updating.

You could then use remote potato or an equivalent to stream, but it wouldn't transcode audio files. It does transcode video for your recordings, movies and live TV now iirc.

For me Subsonic just works better for away from home for audio, the good thing though is that you can set up both and point them at the same folders and try out both.
 
I believe Plex MS will stream music to devices. You'll need to have the Plex client/app installed though. It works great for movies, haven't tried it for music though so I'm not sure what format you'd need to have your files set at.
 
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