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Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
An increasingly temperamental CD player seems to have prompted a refresh programme of our 28 year old stereo system (which will go on FreeCycle tomorrow unless anyone here is interested in a Yamaha RX-530 & CDX-530E?). We've replaced it with another Yamaha, the CRX-N470D, which pretty much covers the functionality of the old receiver/CD player setup with the addition of DAB radio but without the multiple connections for turntable, tape recorders etc.

The big change though is the addition of networking facilities (Airplay, Bluetooth etc.) and the availability of the Yamaha MusicCast app which enables full control of multi-room setups from an iOS device. I usually find third party apps disappointing but first impressions of this one are pretty good.

In the old days, friends used to joke that it seemed to be my ambition that every piece of equipment should be connected to everything else and that no interface should be left unused. I suppose I have to admit to an element of truth in that because, having now got all these networking possibilities, I find myself wondering how best to use them.

So, would anyone care to share their experiences and opinions on this topic? What really works for you? What works, but never gets used? Which features do you now wonder how you ever did without? etc.

Trevor

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Okay, so can it really be that nobody here has dipped a toe into the audio streaming pool? I know there are Airport Express and Sonos users out there for example, but maybe you modestly (wrongly) think that your opinion will be of no interest?

Anybody?

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Mick Burrell
I'll reply Trevor so you know we're not ignoring you but I doubt it will help ;-)

I have an Airport Express attached to a hi-fi unit's AUX input and I can stream music from Mac or iPhone to it - it just works.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Derek Wright
I used iTunes on the Mac Pro to rip all my CDs, I then used the iTunes copy function to move them to the Mac Mini.

To hear the music I use a Sonos Connect device to read and select the CDs. The data from the connect is sent via an Arcam Sonlink (a DAC) to the Hifi Pre amplifier.
The hifi system then handles the music as if it was coming directly from a CD player.

Why did I rip the CDs on the Mac Pro and then copy to the Mini rather than rip on the Mini - the CD player on the Mini was quite noisy and probably older than the one on the Mac Pro and I did not want to damage the CDs with a faulty tracking read write head.

I also use the Mini as a server to run Handyprint so that we can print from the iPhones and iPads to printer that does not support the Apple print process (AirPrint - perhaps)

The Sonos Connect does also handle internet sourced program be it voice radio as well as the music streaming services.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks for the responses.
Mick, we too had an Airport Express plugged in to the back of the old stereo system. However, whilst we did occasionally use it to stream from iPlayer Radio, we found that for playing our own music, it was easier to get the CD off the shelf rather than fire up the iMac to stream it from iTunes. I can see that for someone more playlist than album orientated, or someone whose music is mainly sourced by download or streaming, the balance of convenience may be different, but for us there was quite a wide gulf between what was possible and what was actually useful.

Derek, Thanks for the detail on your setup - I will look up the devices you mention. The new Yamaha unit we have bought does have the capability to access a music server as a source so I think using a Mac Mini (or even just a network accessible drive?) would be a possibility. However, in the light of the above Airport Express experience, I’m cautious about any arrangement whose convenience relies on leaving another device permanently powered up for what would be fairly spasmodic use. The Yamaha does also have a USB port so at the moment I’ve copied my iTunes Music folder (not the library) onto a low profile USB pen drive. This lives permanently in the socket and, from the MusicCast app, I can browse the drive, which is organised by artist. This gives no access to Playlists created in iTunes but playlists can be created in the MusicCast app, but I haven’t explored this yet.

At the moment, I haven’t got much in the way of classical music ripped in to iTunes but, if that too is organised by artist (rather than by composer) in the iTunes Music folder, then just copying onto a USB stick may prove less convenient if you have to remember which orchestra played your favourite Mozart symphony in order to find it.

I’ve splashed out on a WX-010 Yamaha MusicCast speaker (which also does Airplay, Bluetooth and internet radio), just to explore the room-to-room streaming facilities. So far, this seems to work as advertised - but I’m still not sure how best to use it.

So, I’m still interested in hearing others’ experiences - especially with an emphasis on what has proven really useful, rather than just what works.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Tony Still
I routinely use a Denon CEOL which is an Airplay streamer plus CD drive, Internet Radio, iPod dock, USB, FM radio and some other things that I've forgotten. I use it with Airplay from iTunes on Mac and Music on iPad plus occasionally as a CD player. It is cabled to my router but the Mac uses WiFi to get to the router.

Airplay is superficially very good, it maintains the quality of the source file and is very easy to use (as you presumably found with Airport Express). However, the protocols appear quite fragile and drop out if, for example, AirDrop is used. It was also dreadful for several years while Apple shipped a variety of broken wireless stacks in OS X (I nearly junked my MacBook at the time, suspecting hardware problems). My experience is that Sierra was much better (on two different MBPs) and that High Sierra is almost as good.

One of the features touted for the forthcoming Airplay 2 is larger buffers so that may be more resilient; my CEOL has been superseded so I doubt it will get an upgrade. Airplay 2 also offers multi-device/room so is worth exploring. A friend has Sonos kit and that also is good (and has more resilient wireless protocols) but, IMHO, is too much hassle at the source end because it is not integrated into the OS. Airplay 2/HomePod seems to be a direct attack on Sonos so hopefully Apple will ensure that it is properly engineered.

I have all my music as Apple Lossless in iTunes and I really like the convenience. I also have all the music (as AAC) on my iPad and that is essentially flawless (vindicating the CEOL and consistent with everything we have heard about OS X's wireless).

A while back, Apple added Composer and several other Classical-orientated options to the Songs view. You need to enable them (Cmd-J). My music is Rock/Pop and really what iTunes was intended to use.

We also have a Bose Bluetooth device here and that's fine for casual listening. Not very convenient to set up as the audio destination though, on either macOS or iOS.

I'll collect my fee on the way out... ?

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks for that Tony. I’ve just had a look at the CEOL N9, which is broadly similar to the Yamaha CRX-N470D. So, when you want to play some music, do you usually fire up the Mac and stream from iTunes (using the Apple Remote app, perhaps?), find it on the iPad and use Airplay - or just put the CD in?

I did notice the option to include the composer in iTunes views but haven’t explored it yet. Unless there is a way to persuade it to structure the iTunes Music folder by composer, I think my idea of accessing the music on a USB stick won’t work very well for classical music. However, if the Playlists facility on the Yamaha MusicCast app isn’t too clunky, that might offer a way out.

At the moment I’m about 2/3 through the folk/rock/pop CD cabinet so the Classical challenge is a while away yet. Also the instructions for the Yamaha are quite explicit in saying that the stick must be in FAT16/FAT32 format. Am I right that this limits me to 32MB capacity? If so, this might become an issue at some point.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Mick Burrell
FAT32 will take files up to 4GB. The max drive size is 2TB but that's not likely to be exceeded by your USB stick ;-)

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks Mick - good to know there is some headroom there. However, although Yamaha’s MusicCast system seems to be generally well regarded, its main weakness (at least when compared to the Sonos system) is a very limited search facility, so this may prove to be the limiting factor on how much music can conveniently be accessed from one USB stick.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Tony Still
I almost always use Airplay from the Mac (the CEOL is in my study where the Mac usually is and the CDs aren't). If I am excited over a new purchase, or it's borrowed, then I use the CD drive.

I use iTunes directly, no remote, as in the study I'm generally using the Mac anyway. For casual listening, I tend to use Music on the iPad (again with no remote) as it's easier than starting the Mac.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks Tony. By way of a progress update, I’ve now almost finished ripping the non-classical CDs into iTunes and have an iTunes Music folder of about 27GB to show for it. This is structured into folders by artist (strictly by Album Artist) so, once copied onto a USB stick inserted into our new Yamaha unit, it should be easy enough to browse to the music we want.

However, the next job is to tackle the second cabinet, consisting mainly of classical music. As far as I can see, there is no way of telling iTunes to organise this into folders by composer, rather than artist, which is what is really needed. At the moment I can think of three approaches which may or may not work:

i) Copy the iTunes Music folder, then manually rearrange it all into Composer folders.
ii) Type the Composer into the Album Artist field to trick iTunes into organising the folders appropriately in the iTunes Music folder.
iii) Instead of basing the USB stick on the iTunes Music folder, Create a Playlist for each composer then export the contents of each playlist to an appropriately named folder on the USB stick.

Comments on these or any other ideas would be really welcome.

Trevor

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Mick Burrell
Trevor, if you click on the View menu, you will see that you can show the Column Browser. Here you can choose to show a column for Composer. Does that help? If you've picked up the CD information from Grace Note then the composer will be there for you.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Mick, the object of my particular exercise is to get the music onto a USB stick in a folder structure that is easily browsable using Yamaha’s MusicCast app. So, although as you say iTunes is very flexible in how the music can be viewed, the iTunes Music folder where it is actually stored, remains organised by artist. Unless iTunes can be persuaded (tricked) into doing this differently (eg by putting the composer’s name in the ‘Album Artist’ field), I think I’ll have to create the file structure directly rather than just copying across the contents of the iTunes Music folder. Hence the thought of exporting directly to the stick one composer at time, either by creating playlists or sorting by composer in the column view.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Tony Still
Trevor, I'm sure you've thought of this (otherwise I'm a little late):

For future-proofing, it's worth ripping your CDs to Apple Lossless format since that retains full CD quality iTunes (disk space permitting because, although it's compressed, the files are quite large). You can then choose to transcode to a lossy-compression format where the target device is space-constrained or the destination cannot read Lossless.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar John Ansell
Trevor, I had a similar problem a few years ago when we purchased a car that allowed me to plug in a USB memory stick containing lots of mp3 music. This gave me 2 problems my music was in lossless format not mp3 and the car was fussy about the directory/ folder structure on the memory stick. My solution was to write a script that runs on the Mac to convert and export the music from iTunes and put it in the folder structure required by the car. The folder structure is dependent on the metadata set up for each CD in iTunes.

After importing a classical CD I edit the metadata in iTunes to spilt it into the works on the CD by changing the album name for a work to the work name followed by the artist names in (). I also change the artist name to Z_composer, this allowes me to easily find all classical works by composer.

You may be interested in the script as it could solve your classical music problems for your Yamaha.

We have recently purchased another car and it has different requirements for the folder structure so I will be looking to update the script again soon. I could also update it to include an option for your Yamaha.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
John. I remember your talk to the Bournemouth group on this subject a couple of years ago so I’m glad you’ve joined in. Thanks.

I’d certainly like to have a look at your script before I commit to a course of action. I don’t know whether it is possible to upload it somewhere here with a link so others can also pick it up? If not, perhaps you could e-mail it to me. The front half of my Apple e-mail address is trevorhewson

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar John Ansell
Trevor, I have uploaded the script to my website at: http://walks4softies.co.uk/ConvertMusic.txt

My email address is in the file.

The script is written in Perl.

I wrote the script about 5 years ago. It goes throught all the music in my library looking at the comments field in the track metadata. If the comments include "car" it converts/copies the music to the CarMusic folder. If the comments include "phoneJohn" it converts/copies the music to the PhoneJohn folder, I had an Android phone at the time.

The script also looks at the genre matadata. For classical music it puts the converted /copied file into a subfolder "/3. Classical/composer name/album name/song name. For all other genre the subfolder is /2. Modern/artist name/album name/song name.

The script uses the command "ffmpeg" to convert music files.

email me if you require any further information.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Thanks John. I naively assumed that it would be an Automator script which I might have dared to try to adapt. I'm not sure I know what to do with a Perl script but will get back to you if I have a try and need help.

We're just back from a week's holiday so have some catching up to do before I can return to this project.

Re: Music Streaming

Avatar Trevor Hewson
Reporting back as promised.

In the end, for the classical stuff, I went for the mandraulic option. I created a 'Yamaha Music' folder on the iMac and setup within that a folder structure which mirrored the paper catalogue which we have managed to maintain for many years.

Then, after each CD was imported into iTunes, the files were copied from the iTunes Music folder to the appropriate folder in the Yamaha Music folder. The Yamaha Music folder then serves as the master for making the USB sticks.

However, rather than just copying to the USB sticks, I used Chronosync. This is an app I purchased many years ago to maintain my website on iDisk (those were the days!) Chronosync promised lifetime free updates and to date, they have lived up to that promise. So the USB sticks are effectively treated as backups to the master Yamaha Music folder on the iMac which should make future additions and changes quicker and easier to transfer to the sticks.

Just in case anyone is interested, the equipment we've ended up with is as follows:

Lounge - Yamaha RX-V483 AV receiver
Dining Room - Yamaha CRX-N470D Mini CD System
Workroom - Yamaha WX-010 Wireless Speaker

All three are Airplay-capable (Also have internet radio, Bluetooth and various Music streaming services which I don't know anything about!) and are operated via Yamaha' MusicCast App.

If anyone wants to know any more please just ask. I've no experience of any other similar systems (e.g. Sonos) though, so can't help with any comparative assessments.
 
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