Over the years we have experimented with different technologies to address our changing audio needs. Basically we were looking for audiophile quality, ease of use,portability and access to playlists from anywhere in the house. This article may help you avoid mistakes we made and save money and time. Here were our basic goals:
– One place to store music that includes all of our 400 CDs
– Multi room control of music selection
– Multi room control of on/off and volume control of audio equipment
– Portability of music library- automobiles and cottage
– Reliably
– Ease of Use
– Backup / Restore capability
Taking a piece meal approach caused us nothing but problems. After trying several pieces of hardware and software we finally came up with a solution that handles most of our needs.
At home, the stereo system distributes the music throughout the house while allowing us to remotely change the volume (and turn on/off the receiver) and select music without having to to different rooms within the house to manually set the individual components.
In the car or at the cottage, iPods are used to provide the digital library and connect to the stereo systems.
Another feature we wanted was to easily load new music, Podcasts and playlists. We have made progress here.
Earlier Attempts: As you may have gathered, we are Apple fans. Part of this is due to our experience with Microsoft integration issues. We initially used an HP Media Vault and Windows Media Player (WMP). I also tried a variety of software Media Players such as Twonky (see my notes below for issues). I was very disappointed with the lack of ongoing support HP provided with the HP Media Server and ran into several space limitations with the OS. Not long after I bought the HP Media Vault, HP dropped support for it in favour of a new model. HP really let us down with quality issues, lack of support and that combined with the limited functionality of Windows Media Player (WMP) caused us to go with an Apple solution. Overall we have been much happier with Apple (I won't even go into our Vista issues). Then there is the iTunes store for new purchases and the rest is history.
Here is our hardware design - it could be adapted to suit other many needs and all of the Apple computers could be replaced with Windows products. Part of the design is based on the physical layout of our house - its has three levels and was wired for high speed Gigabit Ethernet using 5E LAN cable during construction. A simplified diagram of the auto system and network:
We use a Denon Audio Video Receiver AVR-4308CI that resides in a basement home theatre connected to several speakers using different 'zones' within the house. Each zone allows for independent on/off and volume settings via the Denon.
Notes on Denon: although its great at processing audio and video, been reliable and has great sound quality, the Denon interface to the WMP was overly simplistic and requires you stand in front of the system to select the music. Who wants to do that in a multi story house? There was no method of viewing the album cover without turning on the TV - and with so many CDs, viewing the covers was a requirement to help find what we wanted. I also purchased a Denon iPod dock - however could only use it when I was in the same room as the Dock, so it never got used much. Often the iPod was left in the car - so it was never handy. One other caution, Apple keeps changing the iPod docking interface - they become obsolete quickly - eventually it would not play Video and then would not charge the later products.
To bad Denon does not include an iTunes client natively within the AVR-4308CI but then when Apple changes the software I would suspect there could be issues. That's where the Airport Express comes in.
The Airport Express resides in the basement home theatre about 3 ft from the Denon. It receives music from a Mac Mini which hosts iTunes. The purpose of the Airport Express is to act as a client (receive the music) from iTunes since Denon does not offer a iTunes client for our receiver. Since Airport Express is supported by Apple, it has stayed in sync with the various iTunes changes over time - a key factor in reliability.
The Airport Express is wired to the Mini via ethernet. I could have also use wireless (Wi-Fi) but I prefer to leave our wireless bandwidth for other uses. An Optical Digital cable is used to connect the Airport Express to the Denon. Regular RCA type mini jacks could also work, but by using optical we maintain digital signals throughout the entire system resulting in perfect signal quality. (The Airport Express is really just acting as a client for the iTunes software - it does not manipulate or convert the signals.)
Media Server: The actual iTunes library resides on a very small computer (Mac Mini - I purchased a refurb for $400) with a external hard disk wired to it via Firewire 800 (see disk space below). Really any Window/Apple computer with enough space, say 70 - 100MB per CD would offer sufficient space. We decided to use a generic file server rather than a dedicated media server such as AppleTV. I did experiment with 'streaming media servers' (Twonky for example that resides on a PC and streams music to the Denon directly) however found them to difficult to control remotely. One other issue I had was that these products typically have to catalogue or copy the iTunes music library, so often new music would simply not appear. There were also many reliability issues since Apple would change the format of the iTunes Library. Leaving everything in Apples hands to coordinate made it much easier rather then mixing vendors.
Software: Before loading the music, you will need to determine which type of player and software you want to use. There are many choices. The basic building blocks however consist of two major contenders: Windows Media Player (WMP) and iTunes. At the time we were using Vista and both products ran on that.
After experimenting with Windows Media Player and iTunes, iTunes won out because of its ease of use in remotely selecting music and the integrated iTunes store. One major drawback of using WMP was the poor interface at selecting music using the Denon - which actually has a WMP client built into it. The only way to select music using the Denon interface was very clunky - either by scrolling manually on a 2 line display or turning on the TV to view an only marginally better interface. It simply was not a viable solution and offered no remote interface. Combine that with purchasing new music on the iTunes store and all of the headaches I had with Vista; iTunes won hands down. For a while we ran iTunes on Windows XP. There were too many fixes being download, virus updates and other distractions, so basically we gave up on Microsoft.
Importing Music: The first step was to import everything into a media player - iTunes. The following iTunes preference settings are important to achieve a reasonable sound quality (Apple keeps changing the wording of the settings, just ensure that in 'stereo' you import at no less than 256 kbps).
Over the winter of 2009 we imported over 400 classical CDs. The resulting library was 52GB with each CD around 70 - 110 meg although the size of each CD varies quite a bit. We used 4 computers to import the music and had them all importing while doing email and surfing the net. (its actually easy to mix Mac and Windows at that stage). We would do a stack of CDs every day about a foot high and it was not too onerous if the workload was spread out over time.
Album Covers: If the CD was available in the iTunes store, iTunes would obtain the album cover automatically. We had many albums that were not available from the iTunes store, so we had to download the Album Covers manually. Generally it was easy to locate in Google Images - just entering the album name was usually enough. Make sure to select an image over 6k or the resulting cover image may be difficult to read. When importing the cover, select all of the 'songs' for the album, then right click the selection and click 'Get Info'. Drag the album cover to the 'artwork' box. On a Mac I needed to drag the file from Safari to my desktop, then into iTunes to make it work.
Output: Playing music is accomplished by streaming the iTunes player to the Denon. From there, the volume is controlled by the various zone controls within the Denon. We use wireless remotes to turn on / off the Denon (including the living room upstairs from the Denon).
Remotes: To select the music we use iPod Touch or iPhones using Apples' free 'Remote" app. This uses a wireless connection back to iTunes. Music can be selected by Album, Playlist etc. and the Album cover is very visible as in this example:
Denon Remote: We use a Logitech Harmony remote (left image) to adjust the Denon (on/off and volume) from the living room (along with their wireless option to the basement). The reliability of the Logitech has been questionable - hangs, crashes and has physical button problems from time time but may be the most cost effective option. They make cheaper versions.
On The Road: We synchronize iPods using iTunes - no issues. We don't load iPhones with music,instead we use iPod Classics which are over 120 gig each because of the size of our Music Library. iTunes seems to be able to handle different syncing options to each device quite well. Eventually I anticipate the iPhones will support a larger sized library and we will have one less device (iPod) to lug around.
New Music: In our house new purchases originate from different users on different work stations. Since music can legally be shared between 5 users of one household, we share most, but not all music. At first, we set up one common library, but as Podcasts became popular we ended up inadvertently sharing those as well, which really did not work well. So we went back to individual libraries and manually transfer music by dragging it from library "A" to iTunes of library "B". Apple needs to improve this interface - its rather clunky.
Wi-Fi: To allow the iPhone 'Remote' app to connect to iTunes, we use an Apple Airport Extreme base station. Since this is dual band we could configure the iPhones (and iPod touch) to use one band 802.11g while not slowing down high speed internet via the other band (802.11n for MacBooks). The Extreme base station resides on the floor 2 office yet supports Wi-Fi quite well in the basement and living room. (Note - don't attempt to connect the Airport Extreme and Base station together using both Wi-fi and Ethernet - it caused some type of traffic loop. We just use a wired connection, but Wi-fi would work just as well - just not both at the same time.
Backup: After putting so much effort into building the iTunes Library, its important to back it up. Since we are an Apple family we just use one of our MacPros and Timemachine. It ran well right out of the box. The connection between the Mini and MacPro uses cable not Wi-fi to ensure we don't bog down the Wi-fi bandwidth and to ensure reliability.
Disk Space: To store the iTunes Library we decided to purchase an external drive. For $500 we got a 4 TB Western Digital WD - My Book (with 2 WD Green 2TB drives). Since TimeMachine backs changes up every hour - I decided to configure it as Raid 0 - (keep in mind that we use it as a file server with some speed needs) to create one large 4TB drive.
One warning however, the Western Digital green drives 'sleep' and take a while to wake. This causes 20 - 30 second lags when starting to play music if the system has not been used in a while. Not a big problem but causes the remotes to put out a message stating its 'connecting' to the library for a moment and then everything works fine.
The Future: Clearly Apple TV would be another choice if you wanted to handle video as well as audio. Since we wanted a file server as well as a media server, the Mac Mini provided both services in one box. If Apple is able to provide more Video content on the iTunes store, I would reconsider the Apple TV since it easily handles the iTunes Library and would eliminate the need for the Airport Express - it would connect directly to the Denon. An iPad will be on the buy list some time in the future, and installing the free 'Remote' app, it would also control selecting music. It looks like sticking with one vendor is paying off in terms of integration down the road.
To summarize, although I am not specifically promoting Apple per se - sticking with one vendor for the server (iTunes) the client (Airport), the player iPod/iPhone and the remote control has been the most workable solution.
Page Last Updated: March 11, 2010