sound advice 28 november, 2001 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

Well, the holidays are upon us, and in the spirit of the season I am going to suspend my usual bitch and moan session. Impossible? Perhaps. Still, I will try. I am going to attempt to focus my attention on something uplifting and happy: Spending money. Well, to be more specific, spending money to achieve audio utopia.

Are you one of those people that are really into audio? Do you have, or wish you had an excellent car stereo system? Do you have a nice home audio system? Do you have hundreds of compact discs in your collection? Yes, being an audio nut is a very expensive habit. However, if you already have the bug, then read on as I share new ways for you and your money to go their separate ways.

Hello, everyone. My name is Johnmichael, and I am an audio freak. As a result, I had to pawn my first-born to get a digital receiver. (My daughter arrives within a few weeks, so I guess I will have to pay up shortly.) Next to the receiver I have a few hundred compact discs, and a five-disc player digitally connected to the receiver. As ridiculous as all of this is, this setup is hitting only half of my audio fantasyland. The quality of the sound is excellent, and certainly sounds better than a crying newborn, however convenience is very low. If I am in the mood for jazz, I have to search through hundreds of CD's to find the five perfect jazz CD's that fit my mood. Classical? Same problem. What if I am in the mood for The Beatles mixed with Billy Joel? Search for the five perfect CD's out of the dozens in the collection and I have wasted the better part of an hour and not listened to Yellow Submarine or Piano Man once.

Sounds like I have chronic laziness, right? This is true, however anyone that organizes hundreds of CD's will know the problem. Yes, one could buy a couple-hundred disc holding CD player, but that is even worse. It does not know how to group the music together, and certainly does not know which discs are what. What happens if I need to take a couple dozen of the CD's on a car trek to Pasadena to watch the Oregon Ducks beat Miami in the Rose Bowl? Suddenly that hundred disc holding CD player becomes enemy number one. (Behind Miami, of course.)

To achieve true audio perfection I need to take the true computer geek approach: A computerized sound system.

So, the first stumbling block is the hardware: I used an old PII laptop hooked up to my home stereo (these old laptops can be found for dirt cheap). Of course, the hard drive on the laptop is not nearly large enough, so I would store the music on a networked desktop system with a large 60gig hard drive ($150 for the hard drive update). I have a wireless network card ($100) attached to the laptop to connect to the shared drive of the desktop. Now I have a computer with access to a shared MP3 file storage area, with a total cost of under $400, including the extra hard drive I bought for storing all of the files.

Now, if you are not used to having a desktop computer always on in your house, this might seem ridiculous. In fact, instead of buying a hard drive for an always-on desktop, you could purchase a USB external hard drive to attach to the el-cheapo laptop and that would work fine (add an extra couple hundred to the total cost, however). In my case, I have many computers in the house, and have a system that I use as a file server anyway, so creating a music partition was a no-brainer. If you also use multiple computers in your house, I would highly recommend exploring setting up a file server / print server like this arrangement whether you plan on setting up this home stereo idea or not. This will allow any computer in your house to access files, including the MP3's and play them via Music Match or download to a portable MP3 player. Very handy. If you feel like getting really geeky and set up a true Windows 2000 file server, you can create roaming profiles and have your 'stuff' travel with you to whatever computer you log into.. But, I digress. If you do not want to set up a file server, a USB hard drive will work fine.

The other hardware option is to get an old PII desktop system and hook up the large internal hard drive to that. This is an operation that will likely only set you back a couple hundred dollars total if you shop well.

Next question was a matter of software. I purchased and installed Windows 2000 Professional because it is stable, but mainly I use Win2000 for the hibernation feature. Using the Hibernate feature allows me to never actually have to wait for the computer to reboot when I start it up to listen to music. You could also use Windows XP and get the same results, but it has larger system requirements. Another reason I do not recommend XP (ever) is I hate Microsoft's new copy protection schemes, because I should not have to jump through hoops when all of my software is legal.

Then I purchased and installed Music Match for cataloging all of the files. I am (also) not a fan of Microsoft's Media Player. Yes, with Music Match you will have to pay a few bucks to get all of the features ($20), but it is far more comprehensive, easier to use, easier to burn CD's, and is just plain an all around nicer program. Plus, Music Match has not incorporated copy protection in their MP3 recording like the folks in Redmond did with Windows Media formats. Wait .. I thought I said I was not going to bitch and moan. Doh! Sorry.

My favorite feature of Music Match is the "Auto DJ" capabilities that allows you to create play lists of any duration based on genre, album, artist, or any other criteria you like. It also has the best "Internet Radio" feature of any media player I have used. Yes, in order to get the CD quality sound from the Internet Radio feature it costs $40 a year, but if you enjoy music as much as I do, it will be a very easy forty bucks to part with.

Then it was time to decide a format. I settled on MP3 as my file format at 128K. I debated using the 160 varieties, but after doing some listening, I determined that even with a digital connection from my computer it was difficult to discern the difference. While I could have used Windows Media 128, I decided not to for three reasons: (1) MP3 is the standard, (2) MP3 has nothing to do with Microsoft, (3) MP3 will work with an MP3 player.

The last, and most important issue is sound quality. If you have ever hooked up speakers to a computer, especially an older laptop, you will note that the sound quality is of questionable value. Even with a top of the line sound card, the sound output will not be good enough for a true audiophile. Therefore, I purchased a $70 device that plugs into the USB port of the laptop and the other side connects to the digital port of the receiver. The results are spectacular. A digitally connected CD player and the MP3 recording are identical to my ear. In fact, the MP3 version sounds better than an RCA jack connected CD player on the same receiver. You can find this digital device at www.minidisco.com where it is sold to download MP3 files to a Sony MiniDisc player.

If you do not have a digital connection on your receiver, go out and buy a digital receiver first. Just kidding. Actually, there are USB to RCA devices out there as well, and they will have much higher quality than connecting to the audio out port of a sound card. But, if you do not have a digital digital receiver, the sound quality to you might not be as important as the convenience factor of having all your music available at any given time. If that is the case, try out your built in sound card attached to your receiver via an RCA cable and see if you are happy with the results. I suspect you will be much (MUCH!) happier with a USB connected receiver, however.

After getting the setup running the dreaded moment arrived. It was time to convert all of my CD's. I have a reasonably fast (40X) CD player on one of my computers that converted my CD's to MP3 format. Music Match connects to CDDB so all but a couple dozen of my discs automatically had title, artist, genre and everything else correctly labeled. Admittedly, I went back and changed some of the genre categories because CDDB has some strange interpretations at times. However, I estimate that if you slowly work at it in between normal household activities changing the CD every so often, it takes about a week for a hundred discs.

If you take this approach, please note that you will want to convert all of your CD's from the same computer and build up your music library file in one copy of Music Match. After you have done this, then copy your library file to the shared MP3 storage area where your other computers can open it. Otherwise, you will have to wait as Music Match at each station catalogues your music library. If you have a large library, this will take much longer than you will be willing to wait.

Okay, enough of the crap, lets get to the bottom line. What is this going to set you back? Well, if we include everything, and are conservative:

Laptop: $160
Windows 2000: $200
Music Match: $20
60 gig HD: $150
Wireless Network Card: $90
Digital USB Connector: $70

Total Cost: $690

At nearly seven hundred bucks I might have to give away my second born, too. But, when I look back, I bet I will think it was worth it. Now I can come home, press a button and have my computer "Auto DJ" a selection of any genres, artists, and titles I want and it sounds every bit as good as if a DJ was actually switching the CD's for me.

Of course, you likely do not need to spend this much to get these results. If you can deal with the occasional system crashing, you can probably do without the most expensive item, Windows 2000. If you already have a large hard drive on a computer at home, the price is now down to $340. If you can skip wireless and run a CAT-5 cable to your laptop, then the price is down to $250. If your main computer is near your stereo already, then you can skip on the laptop and the cost is $90. Of course, the digital USB connector already includes a licensed copy of Music Match Plus, so the total cost is $70. Maybe I will be able to keep the children after all.

Damn.

Oh well.. My best wishes for you and yours for a happy and safe holiday.