Standalone FLAC player to connect to HiFi

[dcbullet]

Yeah, that's probably true. But I'm still using a 15 year old receiver so....

Decisions decisions.

[dcbullet]

The Logitech Revue looks cool but no flac support right now. :-/

[saltman]

This one is pretty cool.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921666261253

120 bucks. but also no flac support.

This player looks good

http://dune-hd.com/hd_players/curren...-smart-b1.html

[dcbullet]

Originally Posted by dcbullet

I don't like the form factor of that. The qwerty remote is awesome.

I think I'm starting to realize that unless I want to wait 3-5 years for the "perfect" version of these devices, I just need to pick one and realize that it will have it's faults. I think I need to use it before I know what I like and what I don't like.

Despite not liking the form factor, I just ordered this. I probably would have gone with the Logitech Revue if it supported flac. I actually am primarily interested in this to stream my official recordings. I like the whole album cover thing. My guess is that organizing the live recordings will be tough.

I've never really liked firing up my PS3 to stream my local content. I suspect this will be full of bugs and not perfect but I'm willing to be a first adopter for $200.

[saltman]

I like the way it looks.

Others are saying it works really well on everything. Please post your thoughts after you've used it for a while for others here. I've also considered picking one up.

[dcbullet]

Originally Posted by saltman

I like the way it looks.

I should clarify. I like the way it looks too. However, I am in a constant battle with keeping things uncluttered and I would rather put it in my "stack." Now, it has to be out in the open. Given that it will be out in the open, at least it has a good design.

[Five]

Originally Posted by direwolf-pgh

do the wdm drivers actually work correctly now?

I mean to say will recording using wdm drivers in windows 7 now give the same performance I can get using asio drivers with xp.

thx for the great posts !

oh yeah and more on topic I'm using either computer with a decent soundcard > HK amp or my rockbox'ed iPod > $70 apple cable > HK amp

I heard the 'clock' in a computer is kind of shit for audio but would really like to do an a-b test with all the shit right in front of me...

[dcbullet]

Originally Posted by saltman

I like the way it looks.

Others are saying it works really well on everything. Please post your thoughts after you've used it for a while for others here. I've also considered picking one up.

I've had Boxee Box for a couple of weeks now and will give some of my impressions. First, I think the Boxee Box is currently targeted towards video, and more specifically, online streaming of video. Evidently, they changed the user interface on the Boxee Box version as compared to the PC version of Boxee, which was more local content focused. There have been a lot of complaints in the forums and so they are going to release a revision to the UI to give you the option to focus the UI on online vs. local content.

Things that Boxee Box does fairly well:

1. Play online TV shows from various networks that provide streams of their shows.
2. Play online TV shows that are 'net shows, like Revision3 content.
3. Revo App
4. Youtube App - but you can't log into your youtube account and watch your favorited videos or subscribed channels.
5. Pandora

I haven't explored streaming local video content yet so I won't comment on that.

With regard to streaming local audio, I don't think I could recommend this as a great device yet.

The good:

1. Plays FLAC gaplessly between gapless tracks.

The bad:

1. The player is the most basic player you can imagine. There is no fast forward, no rewind. When an album is done playing, it stops. You can't queue up multiple albums.
2. You can't play random from your whole music collection.
3. You can't make a playlist in Boxee Box, although evidently you can make a playlist on your PC then point your Boxee Box to that file but that's stupid.
4. Album covers are scraped off the internet rather than using a folder.jpg. This is bad for a couple of reasons - 1) Many of the album covers are wrong or look terrible, 2) It looks them up every time so you have to wait for the album covers to scrape (this takes several seconds if you have a lot of albums for an artist).
5. Once you have navigated away from the play screen, you lose the ability to skip a track. That is, you have to go back to the album screen and select the track you want (unless you want it to go to the next track rather than skipping a track).
6. You organize only by tags. I think this will be a problem for most of these players, not just Boxee Box. The issue there is that it makes it hard when you have a lot of live music for an artist. So you would need to name the artist "Live Artist" for example, unless you wanted to go into that artist and there would be 300 live shows in front of your official releases. In some ways I think a directory structure organization would be better.
7. The visualization during music playing sucks! It looks like Windows 95 graphics. PS3's visualizations are awesome in comparison.

Well, that's it for now, I'll post more if I think of more. Supposedly audio is pretty low on the Boxee Box team's priority but they plan to make it better in the future.

[dcbullet]

Boxee box also has a propensity to freeze. Especially if you launch something, then push the back button before it has loaded whatever you have launched. Reboot time.

[dcbullet]

Here's another device:

http://www.netgear.com/products/home...rs/NTV550.aspx

It says it has analog stereo out but for the life of me I can't see where on the back that output is.

Good read. Anybody have any more thoughts?

[GRC]

FWIW, I ended up with a Logitech Sqeezebox Touch.

Plays back wirelessly from my FLAC folder on the network, receives Internet Radio, and can be configured to play from USB HDD or SD card