Digital Audio Streaming - GETTING STARTED GUIDE

An easy getting started guide for making the leap to digital audio storage formats such as MP3 and FLAC, including choices of file format as well as information on the audio and storage equipment required.

Getting Started

Maybe you've got a growing MP3 collection and you would like to unleash the music from your PC and play it back at full hifi quality through your stereo. Or do you have a large CD collection and have been thinking about making the leap and converting it across to a digital media format? The aim of this article is to help explain some of the technology and help make understanding how it all fits together a little bit easier.

It may seem like there are too many conflicting technologies to choose from, but digital music technology has been around for quite some time now and has become very established.

It's now very common to have an entire music collection stored on PC's or network storage and played back through streaming audio players such as the Slim Devices Squeezebox, Pinnacle Soundbridge or Sonos multi-room music systems. Music jukebox software such as Winamp and MusicMatch is now readily and cheaply available for PCs and Macs and many people listen to their music this way.

Which digital format - lossy or lossless?

So you decided you are interested in making the leap to digital audio streaming, but what digital format is right for you?

The main decision is over whether you want to store your digital music in a lossless or a lossy format. With lossless formats no information is removed from the audio stream when it is converted to a digital audio file, whereas with lossy formats certain information is removed from the original recording in an effort to save on storage space.

If you cannot accept losing any of the original audio information then you will want to choose a lossless format such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) or MPEG-4 ALC (Audio Lossless Coding). It is quite common to archive a CD collection to a lossless format so that none of the original audio data is lost.

Both lossless and lossy formats will normally reduce the amount of storage consumed by the resulting audio file by a technology known as compression.

However, many people find that the lossy formats, such as MP3 and AAC, provide excellent quality audio reproduction and can accept that some of the original data is lost. You may find that in playback tests on your equipment the difference between a lossy and lossless format is minimal.

At myBoomBox we would normally recommend that a CD collection be converted to a lossless format. We would recommend this for the following reasons:

• The process of converting your CDs to digital audio files can be a time consuming (or expensive) process - you don't want to have to do it again in the future if you decide that a lossy conversion is not good enough.
• Although you may not be able to hear the difference between a lossless and lossy conversion on your current hifi setup, you may be able to hear the difference in the future when you upgrade your hifi equipment.

Where do I store all my digital music - NAS or Media Centre PC?

With the availability of lower cost network attached storage (NAS) devices and Media Centre PCs it is becoming possible to think about having your entire music collection stored in digital audio formats.

A NAS device is simply a small unit containing hard disk drives that is connected to a computer network. NAS devices now provide more than enough storage for you music and have advanced data protection to save your precious music from being lost or corrupt if there are hard drive failures. Best of all NAS devices are quiet and have low power consumption - so it is safe and energy efficient to leave a NAS on 24 hours a day - so no need to have a PC turned on all day.

There are now a number of NAS devices that have media streaming servers such as SlimServer or TwonkyMedia built in, which means there's no need to mess around with software on your computer. You simply connect an audio streaming player, such as a Slim Devices Squeezebox or Pinnacle Soundbridge, to the same computer network as the NAS and start listening to your digital music. With modern wireless Wi-Fi networks it's possible to connect all this up without wires - so you can put audio streaming players anywhere in the house or office without running ugly cables.

Many of the multi drive NAS devices provide advanced features such as RAID to protect your music files from hard disk drive failures and data corruption. See our Storage Jargon Buster for more information on RAID and storage technologies. In any event it's always advisable to have a backup of important data, so you should definitely make sure you have a secondary copy of your digital music collection on CDROM or DVD.

How to connect it all together?

It's fast becoming easy to connect equipment from different manufacturers together. There's no longer any need to be a computer network wizard to make it all work. Thanks to industry groups such as the DLNA and connectivity standards such as UPnP AV it is now very simple to hookup media servers and media players.

Media servers that support UPnP AV, such as TwonkyMedia and Mediabolic, come pre-installed on many network storage devices, so you can hook up any UPnP AV compliant media player and start accessing your music collection without fuss.

Audio Streaming Terminology

Confused by all the technical jargon? Looking for some plain English descriptions of what UPnP or DLNA actually means? Let our glossary of useful audio/video streaming terminology help make some sense of it all.

If there is anything you think is missing or something you would like explained in more detail please us and we will be more than happy to help.

DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) - is a trade body made up of vendors and manufacturers who work in the home entertainment industry. Members offer "DLNA CERTIFIED™" branding for those products that follow their Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines. The aim being that if you buy two devices that are DLNA certified they should be able to work together.

The DLNA’s mission statement is to "share a vision of a wired and wireless interoperable network of Personal Computers (PC), Consumer Electronics (CE) and mobile devices in the home enabling a seamless environment for sharing and growing new digital media and content services".

Firefly Media Server (formerly mt-daapd) - is an open-source media server for the Pinnacle / Roku SoundBridge and also for the Apple iTunes software. It serves media files using the Roku Server Protocol (RSP) and Apple's Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP).

Network Media Player - a standalone device that is able to play back music, video and/or pictures stored elsewhere on a computer network. For example music in MP3 format stored on a NAS or a PC can be streamed across a network to a Network Media Player such as the Logitech / Slim Devices Squeezebox.

SlimServer - is a streaming audio media server supported by Slim Devices, developed in particular to support their range of digital audio receivers - the Squeezebox & Transporter. It is open source software, meaning the source code is freely available to anyone for updating and/or modification. SlimServer is designed for streaming music over a computer network, allowing users to play their music collections from virtually anywhere there is an Internet connection.

SlimServer supports a large number of audio formats including MP3, FLAC, WAV, Ogg, and AAC. It can stream to both software and hardware receivers, including Slim Devices Squeezebox, as well as many media players capable of playing MP3 streams.

There are numerous plug-ins and device drivers available for SlimServer, which include features such as support for home automation systems from AMX LLC and Crestron Electronics as well the ability to listen to BBC RealAudio streams with a plugin called AlienBBC.

The SlimServer software can run on a computer and also a number of NAS devices, such as QNAP TS-101, QNAP TS-201, Infrant, Buffalo Linkstation, and Linksys NSLU2. Although some NAS devices may require more effort than others to get SlimServer installed and running.

TwonkyMedia – is a DLNA certified UPnP AV media server developed by TwonkyVision that can be installed on a computer or NAS device. TwonkyMedia lets you share your digital photos, music and videos across a computer network so that you can play them back on UPnP AV compatible client devices.

UPnP AV (Universal Plug ‘n Play Audio Video) – is a standard developed by the UPnP Forum for storing and sharing digital media, such as photographs, movies, or music between electronic devices. UPnP Media Servers are available for most computer operating systems and many electronic devices. Hardware devices such as Network Attached Storage Devices (NAS) often come with a UPnP AV Media Server pre-installed or it may be possible to install one.

Examples of UPnP AV Media Servers include TwonkyMedia, Mediabolic, Windows Media Connect, Media Tomb, WIZD, GeeXboX.

Examples of UPnP AV media player devices and software include Pinnacle/Roku Labs Soundbridge, Helios X3000/X5000, SnaZio Digital Media Player, Buffalo LinkTheater, Nero ShowTime, Philips Streamium and Terratec Noxon2.