There has to be a better alternative to iTunes (on a Mac)

[johnb]

Just a thought - does it crash when playing a natively supported format e.g. playing a mp3 file with LMS filetypes mp3 -> mp3 (native), i.e. when there is absolutely no transcoding anywhere?

Incidentally, I previously mentioned the HP Microserver offers. I see it is available for as little as £86 net of cashback from one reputable online retailer! This, to me, seems a remarkable bargain. (I'm very tempted myself, even though I already have an earlier, but less powerful, model.)

[Resurrection Man]

Just a thought - does it crash when playing a natively supported format e.g. playing a mp3 file with LMS filetypes mp3 -> mp3 (native), i.e. when there is absolutely no transcoding anywhere?

....

Yes it does. I opened up my server to Pippin and he had a crash at exactly the same time as I did. Which on the plus side is great news as it rules out my own internal wi-fi and network...also any possible conflict with Time Capsule/Time Machine.

[johnb]

PS I was wrong, earlier, when I said none of the Squeezebox players natively supported Apple Lossless - the Touch, for one, certainly does. Apologies.

[Resurrection Man]

Delighted to say that all now seems resolved. A couple of beta's from Pippin and kicking Cookie Stumbler into touch has meant that iPeng has been 100% stable in every respect. Truly excellent support from Pippin and have to confess to being quietly gobsmacked seeing his player in berlin accessing my LMS server...which reminds me, I must close the ports down.

[Dave2002]

PS I was wrong, earlier, when I said none of the Squeezebox players natively supported Apple Lossless - the Touch, for one, certainly does. Apologies.

Your post on this made me think a bit as a lot of my library is in Apple Lossless format. I've not noticed any major problems when running to my Classic SB3 unit, so presumably the server sorts this out on the fly.

The SB3 appears to support the following:

native FLAC in addition to MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, OggVorbis and Shoutcast (taken from Squeezebox wiki at http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Squeezebox2) SB2 and SB3 seem to support the same formats according to this source.

The Squeezebox Boom supports formats as follows:

In hardware

MP3 (CBR and VBR)
FLAC
WAV
AIFF
WMA (CBR and VBR)
OGG

With server transcoding

AAC (.M4A)
Apple Lossless
WMA Lossless
APE
MPC
WavPack

The Squeezebox Touch supports the following in hardware

MP3
FLAC
WMA standard
WAV
AIFF
Ogg Vorbis
AAC/HE-AACv2
HD-AAC
Apple Lossless

I think only the Touch supports higher bit rate files, but not up to 192kHz, and transcoding might still kick in with some bit rates and some bit depths. There might be transcoding at the server on any model for some bit rates and bit depths.

Having said that, I've not noticed any significant problems, or major differences in quality due to server transcoding, although these might be apparent with very good equipment and high bit rate source files. I won't be converting my files back to FLAC in a hurry.

[Dave2002]

Delighted to say that all now seems resolved. A couple of beta's from Pippin and kicking Cookie Stumbler into touch has meant that iPeng has been 100% stable in every respect. Truly excellent support from Pippin and have to confess to being quietly gobsmacked seeing his player in berlin accessing my LMS server...which reminds me, I must close the ports down.

RM

Very glad to see that you have a "result" with all this.

[johnb]

Dave,

If the Squeezebox player hardware doesn't natively support the format it will be transcoded by LMS, usually to FLAC, though you can choose other streaming formats via the Settings/Advanced/Filetypes (not that I suggest anyone does that.) I wouldn't expect there to be loss of audio quality due to this process.

Similarly if the player doesn't support the sampling rate, etc it is automatically resampled by LMS to a supported sampling rate. I seem to remember that it uses SOX for the resampling (on Windows and Linux platforms, not sure about Macs).