Sunday, 7 October 2012
Sorting out the Squeezebox
Squeezebox tends place a lot of my albums under 'Various Artists' even when there is quite clearly a single album artist. The reason for this is a miss applied 'Compilation=1' tag apply to the files. Remove this with Mp3tag and a now Squeezebox puts the album in the correct place again.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
We'll every thing is ripped now and I can make a few recommendations:
iTunes was a disaster for classical music. There is nothing wrong with the Apple lossless encoding (I would of preferred flac), but its the way it organises the files on the hard drive. iTunes uses the artist as the directory name within the 'iTunes Music' directory. This is fine for most CDs I imagine, unless like me you have a lot of classical music. The problem here is the inconsistency of the ID tags, especially in the artist tag. Some people use the composers name, some people use the performer. The worst aspect is a classical CD may contain several different performers, this results in your CD been ripped to several different directories making it impossible for the squeezebox to find.
To correct this I had to manually change the ID tags (Kid3 works great on the mac) and then copy them into to correct directory. This is a real pain in the arse.
A better ripper is needed and Vortexbox provides this. Its set up so that any CD placed in the optical drive is automatically ripped to flac. The ID tags may still need editing but at least everything is ripped to one location. The downside is the weedy processor on my Proliant server means it takes about 15 minutes to rip a CD.
Tags are a still problem with classical music. If you want the Squeezebox to find your music you must be consistant which means editing them. I plumped for using the composer as the artist and then the major piece as the album name, with the orchestra and conductor appended to this. I don't need to be so consistant with the album tag because the way I locate the music on the squeezebox is to search by artist.
My advice here would be to rip a few CDs at first to test your method. See how easy it is too locate you music on the Squeezebox. Don't do what I did and rip over a 100 in one go.
iTunes was a disaster for classical music. There is nothing wrong with the Apple lossless encoding (I would of preferred flac), but its the way it organises the files on the hard drive. iTunes uses the artist as the directory name within the 'iTunes Music' directory. This is fine for most CDs I imagine, unless like me you have a lot of classical music. The problem here is the inconsistency of the ID tags, especially in the artist tag. Some people use the composers name, some people use the performer. The worst aspect is a classical CD may contain several different performers, this results in your CD been ripped to several different directories making it impossible for the squeezebox to find.
To correct this I had to manually change the ID tags (Kid3 works great on the mac) and then copy them into to correct directory. This is a real pain in the arse.
A better ripper is needed and Vortexbox provides this. Its set up so that any CD placed in the optical drive is automatically ripped to flac. The ID tags may still need editing but at least everything is ripped to one location. The downside is the weedy processor on my Proliant server means it takes about 15 minutes to rip a CD.
Tags are a still problem with classical music. If you want the Squeezebox to find your music you must be consistant which means editing them. I plumped for using the composer as the artist and then the major piece as the album name, with the orchestra and conductor appended to this. I don't need to be so consistant with the album tag because the way I locate the music on the squeezebox is to search by artist.
My advice here would be to rip a few CDs at first to test your method. See how easy it is too locate you music on the Squeezebox. Don't do what I did and rip over a 100 in one go.
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Vortexbox
Well the ProLiant server has now been set up and running for a few weeks. I was running Ubuntu as the server and I've got to say I really cannot recommend this. It crashed constantly, requiring a hard reboot every day! I've now replaced the Ubuntu with Vortexbox. It's now as solid as a rock.
Two extra 2 TB Fujitsu harddrives provide the storage space.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
End of the CDs
Well it's finally time to start to decorate the living room and there is nowhere for the 300 odd CDs so I'm investigating streaming music. The Squeezebox touch turned up last week, the output was good but not great compared to my NAD C 541 so it's now plug it into a Music Fidelity M1 DAC via a coax. The sound is pretty awesome.
The music server was a problem. I'd rather spend my dosh on hi-fi then more computer bits and I don't want a PC running 24 hours a day. My original Asus EEE PC 701 came to the rescue. It's meagre 4 Gb drive is only really big enough for the OS (Ubuntu) so a USB 250 Gb external hard drive was added. Installed Samba to share the drive and copy songs and the Squeezebox server. Playing either FLAC or Apple Lossless consumes about 40% of the CPU. (It can cope with 192kHz FLACs by the way.)
The first problem was I don't want the automout system, so the drive needs to be added to /etc/fstab. Its also vital to get the permission correct or the Squeezeboxserver user can't read the drive. The drive was formatted VFAT and the whole thing networked via 85 Mbs Homeplug.
iTunes on a Mac has been used to rip, all Apple Lossless of course. There are also a few FLACs around. I would of used FLAC throughout but I like the automation that I got from iTunes. It can be set to automatically rip and eject the CD afterwards. (I know other programmes must do this as well but I was too eager to get going.)
The music server was a problem. I'd rather spend my dosh on hi-fi then more computer bits and I don't want a PC running 24 hours a day. My original Asus EEE PC 701 came to the rescue. It's meagre 4 Gb drive is only really big enough for the OS (Ubuntu) so a USB 250 Gb external hard drive was added. Installed Samba to share the drive and copy songs and the Squeezebox server. Playing either FLAC or Apple Lossless consumes about 40% of the CPU. (It can cope with 192kHz FLACs by the way.)
The first problem was I don't want the automout system, so the drive needs to be added to /etc/fstab. Its also vital to get the permission correct or the Squeezeboxserver user can't read the drive. The drive was formatted VFAT and the whole thing networked via 85 Mbs Homeplug.
iTunes on a Mac has been used to rip, all Apple Lossless of course. There are also a few FLACs around. I would of used FLAC throughout but I like the automation that I got from iTunes. It can be set to automatically rip and eject the CD afterwards. (I know other programmes must do this as well but I was too eager to get going.)
I've used DirSyncPro to incrementally copy the music to the server as I rip it. This process has caused (and is still causing) a few headaches since it uses the file's time stamp to control the syncing. The problem here is the Mac's filesystem is HFS+ and the FAT filesystem don't get on 100%. FAT for reasons only known to Bill Gates and his cronies rounds the time to an even number of seconds. DirectSyncPro has options to get around this (and daylight saving time problems).
The next step is upgrade the server to a HP ProLiant Microserver so I can increase the harddrive space (and back-up!).
Friday, 11 February 2011
Richard Stallman Talk in Brighton
Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks
http://www.theiet.org/local/uk/southeast/sussex/rs-soft-pat.cfmThursday, 26 November 2009
Aliens 'already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim - Telegraph
Aliens 'already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim - Telegraph
It seems if the telegraph can't find real news they print drivel. If aliens are here why do they chose crop circles to communicate? In fact only wheat crops. Never in paddy or maize field (which feed more of the population).
It seems if the telegraph can't find real news they print drivel. If aliens are here why do they chose crop circles to communicate? In fact only wheat crops. Never in paddy or maize field (which feed more of the population).
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Starsuckers celebrity hoax dupes tabloids | Media | guardian.co.uk
Starsuckers celebrity hoax dupes tabloids | Media | guardian.co.uk
I knew it! Apparently Madonna was never even married to Guy Richie.
I knew it! Apparently Madonna was never even married to Guy Richie.
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