Stopped in Currys on the way past today. Well I had no idea there were so many "streamers". I knew of Bose and Sonos, but now Sony, Panasonic and Yamaha are in on the act, as well as some companies I've never heard of.
I'm not professing to be completely clued up on it all, but it must be overwhelming for someone who's not particulary tech savvy.
I did see there were some decent CD players (as such) but then there were some down right awful looking speaker setups. Some looked like they'd been raiding Darth Vader's cloest for design tips.
Saw a cheap and cheerful tablet, but then I noticed it was running W10. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But hey, if they have the apps in the store, then it might be a bargain.
Well to be honest I think I muddled home-streaming and online-streaming together at the start. I now see that there is a separation, and perhaps like all good tech, they offer both options to make it more convieniant.
It just seemed at the very start (when I posted the original question) that you had to use both at the same time - ie., you search for 'Joe Blogs' in your collection and the system blatantly ignores it to find it on Spotty-wotsit.
I now appriciate that for people who do not want large collections of physical media, that's all well and good.
Forgive my ignorace here, so in converting the CD collection to digital would be best in either WAV or FLAC for use on a Sonos, Bose etc.?
Currently what music I have digitally is in Apple Lossless, but I'm assueming that's fine for a ipod but could-do-better for any of these streamers?
Agreed.
Unless I'm crossing wires here, I'm sorry I've not got a 4K telly.
(Again I might've misunderstood).
Thanks for the suggestion though, but I'm going to keep the TV separate from any music system.
As you said though, it does seem that you can spend as little or as much as you want. Which, despite my initial misgivings on this new era of home-entertainment, is a good thing. Sure there are still reasonable costs envolved (espeically if you have to sub to a service), but its not as bad as it could be.
I'm not professing to be completely clued up on it all, but it must be overwhelming for someone who's not particulary tech savvy.
I did see there were some decent CD players (as such) but then there were some down right awful looking speaker setups. Some looked like they'd been raiding Darth Vader's cloest for design tips.
Saw a cheap and cheerful tablet, but then I noticed it was running W10. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But hey, if they have the apps in the store, then it might be a bargain.
Originally Posted by Chris Frost:
“Hopefully you've understood by now that there are enough products out there that can be used just with your own media library (e.g. Cocktailhour, Brennan, Sonos etc), and that online streaming is simply an option where it's your choice whether to dip in or not. ”
“Hopefully you've understood by now that there are enough products out there that can be used just with your own media library (e.g. Cocktailhour, Brennan, Sonos etc), and that online streaming is simply an option where it's your choice whether to dip in or not. ”
Well to be honest I think I muddled home-streaming and online-streaming together at the start. I now see that there is a separation, and perhaps like all good tech, they offer both options to make it more convieniant.
It just seemed at the very start (when I posted the original question) that you had to use both at the same time - ie., you search for 'Joe Blogs' in your collection and the system blatantly ignores it to find it on Spotty-wotsit.
I now appriciate that for people who do not want large collections of physical media, that's all well and good.
Originally Posted by Chris Frost:
“Unless you want to convert music files in to lots of other formats for use on a tonne of different devices then I can't see a good argument for using WAV when you have the original CDs to hand. Sure, WAV is the closest you'll get to a bit perfect copy of a CD to a file format, but whether you'll hear that benefit compared to FLAC or even some of the lossier compression formats is very debatable. ”
“Unless you want to convert music files in to lots of other formats for use on a tonne of different devices then I can't see a good argument for using WAV when you have the original CDs to hand. Sure, WAV is the closest you'll get to a bit perfect copy of a CD to a file format, but whether you'll hear that benefit compared to FLAC or even some of the lossier compression formats is very debatable. ”
Forgive my ignorace here, so in converting the CD collection to digital would be best in either WAV or FLAC for use on a Sonos, Bose etc.?
Currently what music I have digitally is in Apple Lossless, but I'm assueming that's fine for a ipod but could-do-better for any of these streamers?
Originally Posted by Chris Frost:
“As already mentioned, the convenience market likes streaming, but that doesn't mean that we should all jump in the same boat.”
“As already mentioned, the convenience market likes streaming, but that doesn't mean that we should all jump in the same boat.”
Agreed.

Originally Posted by David_Flett1:
“I think it would help that we knew what the base system was. As per replies to one of my posts controlling streaming seems an obstacle. I mentioned that connecting an Amazon Fire TV to manage media from a NAS such as the WD Cloud was a cheap solution and that a cheap s/hand smat phone could easily control it was a good starting point for a basic set up. In a reply TV 4K and Wi-Fi was mentioned, I only mentioned that the TV was for set up only. ”
“I think it would help that we knew what the base system was. As per replies to one of my posts controlling streaming seems an obstacle. I mentioned that connecting an Amazon Fire TV to manage media from a NAS such as the WD Cloud was a cheap solution and that a cheap s/hand smat phone could easily control it was a good starting point for a basic set up. In a reply TV 4K and Wi-Fi was mentioned, I only mentioned that the TV was for set up only. ”
Unless I'm crossing wires here, I'm sorry I've not got a 4K telly.
(Again I might've misunderstood).Thanks for the suggestion though, but I'm going to keep the TV separate from any music system.
As you said though, it does seem that you can spend as little or as much as you want. Which, despite my initial misgivings on this new era of home-entertainment, is a good thing. Sure there are still reasonable costs envolved (espeically if you have to sub to a service), but its not as bad as it could be.



