Hands on: Get to grips with audio streaming

The CD has pretty much been reduced to the status of a carrier bag for music. After you’ve bought it, you rip the tracks to your hard disk then forget about it.

Digital music is taking over as it’s easier to store, catalogue and carry around on your mp3 player.

However, it’s not so convenient when you want to listen to it at home. Our stereo systems and speaker setups generally aren’t capable of interfacing directly with our PCs to play the library of tracks stored on the hard drive.

But that’s starting to change, so this month we’re going to look at some of the devices you can use to wirelessly beam your music from your PC to your hifi.

Audio-streaming devices

One of the first devices designed to let you link your home stereo to your PC was the Slimp3 from a company called Slim Devices.

It connected to your stereo via the aux phono connectors on the rear, and allowed you to navigate through the library of tracks stored on your PC using the remote control and the bright display on the front of the box.

However, the design of the unit was rather ugly. Over the years Slim Devices has tweaked the styling and changed the name to Squeezebox.

The current product, the Squeezebox 3, is one of the best audio streamers around and has a great-looking design. However, it is pretty expensive at £230 for the wireless version.

A cheaper alternative is the Roku M1000. This works in a similar way to the Squeezebox, but has an interesting tubular design that looks very stylish.

It features a similar, slightly smaller display and can be connected to your stereo via a pair of phono connectors or the twin digital audio socket.

Evesham is reselling a rebadged version of the product for £150 under the name M-Bridge Wifi Music Player.

These are probably the best audio streamers on the market at the moment, but there are cheaper options. The Philips SLA5520i costs £80, is easy to set up and has decent sound quality, but the screen isn’t as bright or easy to read as the Roku or Slim Devices products.

Netgear used to offer the budget MP101, although it has been discontinued. It was available for under £100 and you may still be able to find old stock from some online retailers.

It has a better screen than the Philips model, but the display still isn’t in the same league as the ones you’ll find on the Squeezebox 3 or M1000.

The software connection

Most media streamers come with their own software. Generally this software will run in the background on your PC and feed the music from its hard drive out to the device over your Ethernet or wireless network.

It may include features that let you organise your music library to add extra tracks to be shared or remove tracks you don’t want to access any more.

The quality of the software shipped with audio streamers can vary greatly. The good news is that most audio streamers conform to a standard called UPnP AV (Universal Plug and Play for audiovisual content).

This sets out exactly how the streamer should interact with the server software running on the PC.

In practical terms it means if you don’t like the server software that comes with your audio streamer, you may be able to use different UPnP AV-compatible software or, if you have audio streamers from different manufacturers running on the same network, you can use a single piece of server software to feed both.

Depending on the make and model of your device, there may be side effects. For example, some devices allow you to search for tracks by typing in the first letter of a song title or artist name using the device’s remote-control keypad.

If you use a different piece of software you may lose this functionality. Nevertheless, there can be benefits. The new software may provide extras such as better support for Internet radio, or it may speed up navigation of your music library.

For example, if you own a Netgear MP101 or a Macsense Homepod audio streamer we’d seriously recommend you try out the free music server offered by Twonkyvision.

Netgear has put a restriction on the Internet radio feature of the MP101 so you have to pay a fee to access a decent list of stations, but we still found the Internet radio feature could be unreliable with certain wireless routers.

However, by switching to the Twonky Music server software you’ll be able to access any Shoutcast Internet radio station and get the benefit of the faster library navigation offered by the Twonky software.

In the case of the Macsense Homepod, the supplied software is unreliable, prone to crashes and a bit sluggish for track navigation.

It hasn’t been updated for a significant period of time. By switching to the Twonky Music server you’ll suffer fewer lock-ups and enjoy faster track navigation.

Windows Media Connect

Microsoft has developed its own UPnP AV media server software. The software is called Windows Media Connect and is available as a free download.

The main reason Microsoft has developed Windows Media Connect is that it offers support for streaming wma (Windows Media Audio) files that are protected using the Microsoft DRM (digital rights management) system.

As it’s a proprietary format, no other music-streaming software offers support for protected wma files, so if you buy tracks from online stores such as Napster, Yahoo or HMV you have to use Windows Media Connect to feed them to your music streamer.

However, the music streamer must be compatible with Microsoft’s DRM technology for it to work. The range of devices that are compatible is limited, but growing.

The Squeezebox 3 and Netgear MP101 don’t support protected wma files, but the Roku M1000 and the Philips SLA5520i do play these files when you use Windows Media Connect.

Terratec’s Noxon 2 audio streamer also supports protected wma files.

If all this sounds like it needs someone to come in and simplify the whole process, you’d be right. In fact Intel is looking to do just that with the next version of Viiv.

It plans to automate the way you connect media streamers to protected wireless networks so you don’t have to mess around with Wep keys, and it wants to make it easier to share DRM content across different devices such as media streamers in the home.

We’ll have to wait and see whether it succeeds.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!