Whole House Music Party (part 2: first steps)

I made a decision on a direction and dove in recently. I did not want to spend too much money right out of the gates in case it all fell apart. I decided to pick up an Airport Express and a pair of speakers to get started.

For the first set of speakers, I wanted something small and powered with good sound. I went with a pair of Bose Companion 2 speakers. The only bad things I read about these in reviews was that the bass can be a bit overpowering. I have found this to be true but it is not bad. I am keeping them in the kitchen for now and the little nook they sit in is a bit enclosed so it's not helping the strong bass either. So far I am happy with the quality and performance of the Airport Express on wireless N. It is not dropping out all that much - really only when I am transferring huge amounts of data across wireless which I rarely do as most of the network is wired.

Also, I came across an application new to me made by Rogue Amoeba, makers of Airfoil. They came out with 'Airfoil Speakers' recently. Speakers runs on OSX and Windows - drumroll - even on iPhone/iTouch! This eliminates a need for an Airport Express for the living room since I can run Speakers on the home theatre PC I built last year.

In addition I picked up a RadioSHARK 2 and am pretty happy with it as well. Very basic functionality of course but it does it's job well. I am not using the intended use of it as they market it as a DVR for radio.

For next time:
Putting it all together with centralized and remote control





Tab:
Airfoil (family pack) $46
Airport Express (Kitchen) $89
Bose Speakers (Kitchen) $89
RadioSHARK2 $47

Contents so far:
Whole House Music Party (part 1: planning)
Whole House Music Party (part 2: first steps)

Tour de France on TV

Over the past 7 years or so I have started to notice how I watch the Tour is an interesting footnote about where I was at in life each year.

My first Tours I was employed at a cable ISP as a entry level technician. I didn't have too many responsibilities at the time and was blessed with bosses that were also cyclists as well. One of them brought in a TV, plopped it down on my desk which was at a centralized spot for everyone and we let it roll live every day. Awesome. I think I was at this job when Beloki had his carreer ending fall and Lance showed off his cyclocross skills without flinching. I still remember a few of those commercials - the DR Field and Brush mower! And something about a pancake.

Over the next few years I watched it every evening by way of the Tivo - only one of the best invention made has ever created. This allowed watching at night, on my own schedule and without commercials. One year I attempted to use the Tivo tools to pull recordings off the device and onto a desktop.

In 2005 - and Lance's last win (well, his original "last" win) - we were in Europe and had the opportunity to see the final time trial and the loops in Paris. Amazing!


For years in a row Versus was rumored to be finally doing HD. Murphy's Law Of course this year in 2009 I wasn't ready for it since we canceled cable late in 2008. I did sign up for the online streaming which was nice but not the same as watching it years past. I was able to find we still got Versus since we still had cable internet service albeit not in all the High Def glory i saw clips of. Blast! Even worse, I figured I would be able to catch some of the replay's at work in the break room since they have Dish service and nice HD tv's. Nope. They don't get Versus. BLAST! One good thing about working the terrible work shift I am on (10am to 7pm) is it let me watch most of the stages live in the mornings. I was even able to get morning workouts in, see the last 30 mins of a stage and get to work on time.

Since we are moving into our new house soon I am pricing out our options for the future. I'm leaning towards Dish network at the moment. I will have the Tour timeshifting in High Def next year!

Whole House Music Party (part 1: planning)

Owning an Airport Express years and years ago, I have always thought the idea was excellent but never had a huge use for one in apartments. Walking through the house, listening to the same music sounds like a dream to me. I am starting to put together a plan for playing whole house audio throughout the new diggs. It is going to rock. Literally.

Options considered so far:
- Sonos
- Logitech Squeezebox
- Airport Express
- Roku
- Creative Sound Blaster Wireless

Requirements:
1) Must be easy enough for the better half to use
2) Must be controllable by both of us
3) Not too expensive Want to haves:
4) Interoperable with iTunes
5) Controllable remotely
6) Does everything, even walks the dog
7) Some sort of connection to other services & streaming radios (satellite, FM, Pandora, Last.FM)

Batter up:

A) Sonos

Holy price prohibitive...! This is definitely the high end / does it all / no need to fiddle with it option. Reading up on it I truly did give it a chance based on everything it claims to do and the apparent ease of the remote control interface, but in the end this is not for me. I'm a geek. I want to fiddle. I want to break it, then put it back together better the second time.

Cost: $999 for remote and two rooms (one amp'ed, one not)
about $550 for additional rooms (for amped unit + speakers)

Sonos Pros:
- Keeps it simple
- Free iphone native app
- Audio quality is stellar in reviews Sonos

Sonos Cons:
- Cost, way too high $/room ratio



B) Logitech's SqueezeBox Duet, and other products in same line (Product Line Link)

Looks like in 2006 Logitech bought SlimDevices. The Squeezebox Duet is the latest product from this lifeblood. The brain of the Duet is the wifi remote which piqued my interest right away. All the marketing material makes it seem like it hooks up great into Pandora and XM/Sirius. I already knew it connects well into Firefly (mt-daapd). What ultimately killed it for me was lack of any iTunes interoperability and lack of iTunes purchased music ability. I drink the koolaid, I'm not going to lie.

Price:
$399 for controller and main unit
~$350 total for additional rooms (classic unit + speakers)


C) Airport Express + RadioSHARK + Airfoil
$ 99/Airport Express retail
$ 45 for RadioSHARK
$ 46 Airfoil (family pack) estimating ~$150/room
3 room total: $541


Airfoil : Airport Express : RadioSHARK: I knew from the start I was going to gravitate towards this option but to be fair I tried to give everything else a shot. Years ago I had the original Wireless G version. I was curious if the Wireless N version was going to be more stable as I did I have trouble streaming while a bit of data was transferring around.

The new house does not have a wired network installed but I am very strongly looking at installing Cat6 throughout. This would hopefully eliminate any trouble with audio dropouts and possibly even allow me to extend the wireless even further with the Airports scattered in different spots. If you aren't familiar, you can stream music from iTunes to multiple Airport Express units (Apple recommends only up to 3).

The software Airfoil goes a step further and will accept audio from any app on the mac and stream it to one or many Airports. I came across the RadioSHARK device recently and what I read online makes it sound like it would be perfect if I can remotely control it. A simple USB FM tuner with software that will let you tune to any station you want. I listen to enough local radio that I really wanted this as part of the feature set.


D) Roku Soundbridge
$129/unit

The Roku has been around for a while, possibly the first of it's type. From my initial reading it looks like there is no way to play the same music on multiple units. Looks like you can if you use the SlimServer but not iTunes. The interface still looks pretty basic these days. Leaning away from this one.




(E) Creative Sound Blaster Wireless for iTunes

This device came out on the mark right about when I was researching all the options. I was excited to see something new hoping for new features. This device is amazingly poorly named. It does not really do anything special in iTunes as it will stream many other products, and it uses 2.4 ghz for transmission not Wireless G/N. Looks like the reviews are specing it at about 100 feet range. Not exactly what I am looking for.