My Foray into Digital PC-Audio by Alan Nastir My wonderful wife, Ellen, probably rues the day she decided to surprise me with a 50th Birthday surprise trip to the CES show in Vegas. Not only did that trip rekindle my long suppressed audiophile urges, it also fried my cerebral "Geek" switch to a permanently "ON" position! Making matters worse, while waiting to board our return flight to Tampa, I met Peter, John, Harley, et al, and learned about the existence of the Tampa Bay Listening Society. The rest, as they say, "is history." In the following two part series, I’ll describe my subsequent foray into the world of Digital PC-Audio, and why I decided to rip all my music to .FLAC files, and then assemble a streaming audio server utilizing the Slimdevices Squeezebox2 ( www.slimdevices.com ). As a preface, I'll admit that many would consider me a "lower-end" audiophile. My aural fixation didn't begin until the mid 80's, just as the (gasp) CD was born. Having been otherwise preoccupied during the vinyl/analog generation, I jumped right into digital and have never looked back. My systems have also been 100% solid-state thus far. Many will argue those two facts alone preclude me from ever attaining true high-end sound, but I'll save that debate for another time. Even before my fateful Vegas trip, I'd already been toying with the idea of buying some sort of digital audio media server. Now, mind you, I never had the time, nor even the desire, to download music (legally or otherwise), and don't even own an iPod. The allure of a media server grew out of my frustration of having 700+ CD's in my collection, yet never being able to find the one I wanted to listen to. I've always naively thought the real purpose for having a nice two channel audio system was to be able to relax and enjoy good music.* The sad reality was that my favorite CD's were lying in stacks all around my house, often serving as coasters and paperweights. Prior to my CES trip, I had even contracted with a cabinet-maker to design and build a media storage wall in my Family Room. Luckily, his (and my) procrastination allowed time to come up with Plan B, which would convert those furniture $$ into sound bytes. And so begins my (unfinished) saga. Upon returning from CES, I rummaged through my stacks of scratched CD’s, found some good jazz, and settled down with my laptop to further expand my digital IQ. Days later, I was still drowning in a sea of alphabet soup and acronyms. I finally discovered a wealth of information at www.hydrogenaudio.org, and the PC-Audio forums of www.audioasylum.com and www.audiogon.com I read how "lossy" formats such as .MP3, .OGG Vorbis, and even iPods copy protected .AAC files, are fine for casual or background listening. However, for an (arguably) audiophile experience, "lossless" files would be necessary. Turns out, there are too many options even in that niche… .WAV files (the uncompressed PCM digital format on CD's). These files are quite large, with typical CD's totaling nearly 1000 megabytes (1 GB). Further, it is not easy to catalog and "tag" .WAV files (album, artist, track names, etc.) for ease of organized playback. Turns out, just as computer files can be perfectly "zipped" into a smaller compressed version, and later "unzipped" to recreate the exact file, so too can audio files. Microsoft and Apple offer proprietary "compressed" file formats, .WMA and .ALAC, but there are other (lesser well-known) lossless formats that offer distinct advantages. Monkey's Audio-- .APE files Shorten- .SHN files Free Lossless Audio Codec-- .FLAC files (http://flac.sourceforge.net) All similarly offer "bit-perfect" recreation of the original .WAV PCM data, at 30-60% of the original file size. They can also easily encode disc information "tags" right into the file structure. FLAC is the newest standard, and has the added advantage of FASTER on-the-fly decompression, which is ideal for wireless streaming. F urther, as an open-source format, FLAC has been embraced by many hardware and software engineers, and even a handful of musicians. Best of all, neither Bill Gates, nor Steve Jobs, have built a grandiose business plan around it. So it became obvious that ripping my CD's to .FLAC files would be the way to go. Next problem, how to do that. I soon discovered a plethora of CD ripping software which supported FLAC natively, or with software plug-ins. These include the very popular WinAmp, Foobar2000, and Cdex. For obvious reasons, Microsofts Media Player and Apple iTunes don’t support FLAC. I eventually found out that PC-audiophiles swear by a ripper called Exact Audio Copy (EAC) (www.exactaudiocopy.de) which assures a true "bit-perfect" copy of the CD, by re-reading and comparing tracks numerous times (albeit more slowly). Many claim that this feature makes EAC even better than the highest quality CD player/transport, which utilizes error-correction algorithms to try and extract accurate data. Unfortunately, configuring EAC is quite arduous, but there are many tutorials on the Web to walk one through the process. Now that I was ready to start ripping CD's, next question was WHERE and HOW to store, and serve, the files. I calculated that I would need at least 200 GB to store my ~700+ CD's, while allowing further room to grow. My personal PC is an old Compaq laptop, with a 30 GB hard drive. I considered buying a new PC, perhaps one of the more expensive Media Center PC's, which I could put in my Family/Media Room. They are a compelling concept, but still evolving, and in my opinion, not quite ready for prime time. I'll be more willing to incorporate one into my family room when they offer HDTV recording, cable-card technology, and HDMI outputs, as well as quieter designs. Besides, we already had three other PC's in the house, though none with more than 50 GB. Continuing my research, I learned about some new music server options, like the Escient Fireball E2-300 (www.escient.com) , or the similar McIntosh MS300 Music Server (www.mcintoshlabs.com). Both of those support .FLAC, and offer storage, server, and organizational software, in a single box, but are much more expensive than Media PC's. There are other creative solutions on the market, also quite expensive. (see http://www.yamaha.com/yec/products/MusicCast/) Ultimately, I stumbled upon Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, which are basically freestanding Hard Drives attached via Cat5 or USB to a home network. They can be accessed by any computer on the network. I already had a Linksys Wireless B router, and could plug one of those right into it. With plummeting hard drive prices, they cost only about $1.50 per GB. Linksys and Belkin offer versions, but in the end, I decided to go with a Buffalo Technology 300 GB Linkstation (www.buffalotech.com). The Linkstation has very favorable reviews, and is based on the PERL programming language (PC, MAC, and Linux compatible), but with much less chance of getting hosed by a virus. With this setup, I could now rip CD's bit-perfectly using EAC on my office laptop, and store them as .FLAC files on the networked Linkstation. Although I had invested an inordinate amount of time, I had spent merely ~$400 for the Linkstation. Both EAC and the FLAC conversion software were free downloads. Once I had ripped my CD's to FLAC files, the only remaining issue was how to access and deliver them to my audio setup. In part 2 of this article, I'll write about the novel solution I ultimately found… a little black box called the Squeezebox2. ----- * All dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles know the real purpose of a high-end system is to extract all your hard earned $$ while forever pursuing that elusive final "tweak."