Affordable, compact, good quality MP3 playback for the living room

Hopefully someone can help me come up with a solution. What I'm looking for may be impossible, but we'll see. I have limited space in our entertainment center and what I'm trying to do is fairly simple. I want to have good quality MP3 playback for just lounging around, playing board games, reading, etc. We've used a laptop for a while and I'm tired of it. I want something where I can just use a remote to flip between songs and where the remote is the only thing I pack around. Tonight we bought this Philips MCD700. It's a DVD player/mp3 player with speakers. It sounds good enough. And the combo of a DVD player with MP3 playback means we can put in a burned DVD with MP3s.

This would be great save for two really big problems.

#1 - The player doesn't offer any way to navigate between albums. Most of my other MP3 players map a set of buttons to forward/backwards a track and forward/backwards an album. So moving to new albums is a pain.

#2 - The player takes forever to track to the next album or song if I'm using the remote.

I just think it's a bad quality piece of equipment. But as far as I know it's rare to find devices that play burned DVDs and output a decent wattage with good sound.

I know I could go the route of a mac mini + computer speakers, but my guess is that it would be louder and it definitely wouldn't be more affordable. I'm open to suggestions within my admittadly limited parameters. And I'm kind of suspect as to whether there are any affordable PC speakers that could replace even a mini-receiver and speakers.

Oh, and obviously a factor is the more music we can have in the player at one time, the better. So like the current solution has one upside in that it can hold a DVD worth of music. A standard CD player would obviously be a step back.

Have you considered a wireless receiver? I use a DSM-320 to transmit audio/video from my PC to my home entertainment system, but there are almost certainly more affordable/better option for audio alone.

That looks interesting. It would be expensive-ish. That plus a receiver and speakers would push it up a bit and we don't have the room for the reciever. But it's an interesting idea. I can't, from the website at DLink.com, gather what protocol it uses to stream. I use Linux, so I'm unsure if it would work for me, in other words.

Xbox 360 with a Media Player?

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Xbox 360 with a Media Player?

Too loud for me, personally. I want something where if I'm listening to Beethoven the roar of my 360 isn't drowning it out.

Plus I'd have to get it to see my Linux box's share and use it and also somehow get audio output hooked into a receiver still.

Yeah buy an Apple Airport Express with AirTunes. IT's also a wireless router.

I have one. IT works great. Works with Windows too.

Only problem with the Airtunes thingy is that you have to be in front of the computer to control what songs are playing. Why not consider a used media streaming solution, such as a Turtle Beach Audiotron or similar?

Symbiotic wrote:

Only problem with the Airtunes thingy is that you have to be in front of the computer to control what songs are playing. Why not consider a used media streaming solution, such as a Turtle Beach Audiotron or similar?

I'm not familiar with those. I'll google them, but just quickly, what would one connect them to, speaker-wise.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:
Xbox 360 with a Media Player?
Too loud for me, personally. I want something where if I'm listening to Beethoven the roar of my 360 isn't drowning it out.

Plus I'd have to get it to see my Linux box's share and use it and also somehow get audio output hooked into a receiver still.

If I remember right, both Orb and Tversity have Linux versions that will share media to the 360. Also, I'm not sure what kind of noise issues you are having but my 360 is pretty quiet when its just sitting on the Dashboard without a game running. I use it all the time for music and podcasts.

DSGamer wrote:

I'm not familiar with those. I'll google them, but just quickly, what would one connect them to, speaker-wise.

It is basically another stereo component - so you'd connect it to your network (via ethernet), and connect the outputs to your stereo receiver and treat it like any other component (tape player, CD player, etc.) or to a set of powered speakers (like PC speakers or something) and that's it.

How about a Squeezebox? It fits the small size and ease of use requirements but might be too expensive (they start at $299). A friend of mine who's an audiophile freak bought one and is thrilled. It's capable of streaming lossless audio if you want high quality but can just as easily handle mp3 and other compressed audio formats.

Apple TV or Sonos.

You don't want an Airport Express, because they don't have a remote. You want a Squeezebox. They're not cheap, but they do PRECISELY what you're asking for.

The head unit is about the size of a paperback book. It has a big, bright display that's highly readable. You run a free, open source program called Slimserver on a machine in your house somewhere. It'll run on nearly anything, because it's written in Perl. You point that program at your library of MP3s, and tell it to scan, and it reads all the tags and builds a nice database. You connect the Squeezebox into your network, either wirelessly or via wired Ethernet, do a tiny bit of configuration, and you're up and running.

From there, you can access your entire music collection with either a web browser or the included remote. You do have to have a computer on in the house; you don't need to have one with you.

Playback is nearly instant, as long as the server computer is reasonably beefy. You can search by artist or album or track, or put on random shuffles. The sound quality is absolutely superb; the $300 Squeezebox will stand toe to toe with $1500 dedicated audiophile CD players in terms of sound quality. You can connect it via either the analog outs (it uses very nice Burr-Brown DACs) or via the low-jitter digital. It'll do optical or coax. There are no moving parts at all, so it should last the next closest thing to forever.

If it has a weakness, it's playlist management. I'm not sure you can work with playlists with the remote at all. With the web server, the playlist interface is pretty weak. You add the albums or tracks you want to a live playlist on a Squeezebox, and then save it to disk. No drag and drop, and changing track order is kind of clunky. It does work, and it remembers them just fine, but this is an area where iTunes is WAY better.

Fortunately, Slimserver has the ability to tie into iTunes for playlist management if you need it. You can point both Slimserver and iTunes at the same music library. As you make changes in the iTunes playlists, Slimserver will pick them up within a few minutes.

The hardware supports WAV, FLAC, WMA, and MP3 natively, and the server can transcode many other formats to one of those. I use mine to listen to Real Media and AAC+ stations all the time. In the case of AAC+, it takes a little tinkering with the server, but it's not that difficult.

Oh, one final caveat: use the nightly stable builds, rather than the releases. Their 'stable' versions are often badly broken. The nightlies are almost always great. I don't what it is, but they have a corruption fairy in their midst or something... as soon as they package up a release, something breaks, and then they take forever to fix the stable version on the website. The nightlies... just work.

This is an awesome piece of kit.

You can try the whole system out for free and see if you like it: download Slimserver at Slim Devices. Once it's running, it'll offer the Softsqueeze program as a download... Softsqueeze is a Java emulator of a Squeezebox. It'll work exactly like the real thing would, though of course it won't sound quite as good. That'll let you see if you like how the system works without spending a cent. And it'll keep working if you do buy a real Squeezebox, so you can sync your computer with your front stereo if you like, or have separate streams for both. Slimserver will drive as many Squeezeboxes as you like.

One last hint: use the included 'Fishbone' skin. It's much nicer than the default.

TheGameguru wrote:

Apple TV or Sonos.

One key, though, is I want it to behave like a regular CD player. Just with more capacity. The big knock I can see against Apple TV is that I'd have to actually have the TV on, no?

One question about Squeezebox since we do have a Linux server running constantly. So this would be perfect for us, it sounds like. Plus we don't need playlists as they way we tend to listen is pick and album and listen to the whole album. Or pick and artist and listen to every album of theirs we've ripped.

Is the sound quality out of the unit itself good enough? Or do you need an amp, speakers, etc. additionally?

Well, it's just like a CD player; it has no speakers or amp of its own. It has a line-out, digital outs, a headphone jack, and nothing else. It's meant to be plugged into a stereo stack. It's an audio component, basically. The sound quality is superb, but it's not standalone.

By default, it resembles a CD player in terms of playback, too... you choose an album and hit play, and off it goes. Or you can choose an artist and hit play. It's like a tiny magic box with your entire music collection instantly on tap, plus Internet streaming radio stations and Pandora and the like.

Here's another solution for ya. You can play your MPs3 over your Wii pretty easily using the internet browser on it. There's a few programs out there that do it. WiiTransfer is one of them.

Tivo also does an alright job of playing your mp3s.

There's also the Ipod solution. Not perfect either, but I think the $100 dock addition comes with a remote. You have to be right up at the Ipod to see what music is playing though. Still it also serves as a ........portable music player.

Oh yeah and I would second AppleTV as an possible option if you're in the $300 range.

Malor wrote:

You don't want an Airport Express, because they don't have a remote.

It depends on your setup. Do you have a laptop? Then you don't need a remote. A laptop makes for the ultimate remote too. It's way easier to find songs and what not when you have a keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

trip1eX: the original poster says:

We've used a laptop for a while and I'm tired of it. I want something where I can just use a remote to flip between songs and where the remote is the only thing I pack around.

Thus, he doesn't want an Airport Express.

Aren't iPod remotes all wired, though?

Edit to add: also note, the AppleTV requires a television be on to use it. You can use a Squeezebox with just the remote and nothing more.

I have the precursor to the squeezebox (SliMP3, which is essentially a squeeze box with a different case and no wifi) and will second that choice.

It can use playlists if you like, it will run on any platform and it has plug-ins galore. That said, it does run a bit high on the price side but you'll forget about that once you see how easy it is to set up and deploy.

You do not need any extra amps or speakers, it has multiple format outputs to plug into your reciever, stereo or surround sound so as long as you've got a stereo in the house already you should be good to go.

I use mine wired (as I said I don't have a wifi one) and have no problem playing VBR/CBR (Up to 320br) and can turn it up so while we're out on the deck or around the firepit it still sounds fine (speakers and stereo gear help with this but an MP3 is an MP3 if you can tell the difference you most likely don't use MP3's anyway). Which brings up another point, if you decide to go to another format, the squeeze box pretty much plays them all so if you go .WAV (there are such people and I've considered it since storage is so damn cheap) it'll play it.

Except for a full on PC in the living room, the Squeezebox/Slimp3 is the best device for the job because you can actually read it from across the room in my opinion.

An added bonus is you can make your linux box (if you go that platform) an NTP server as well and have an accurate clock in teh living room to set your other clocks after a power outage.

Which brings up another point, if you decide to go to another format, the squeeze box pretty much plays them all so if you go .WAV (there are such people and I've considered it since storage is so damn cheap) it'll play it.

FLAC is usually a better choice... exact same sound (you get the same bits!), but about 60% of the space. Decoded in hardware. The server defaults to transcoding to FLAC on the fly... it uncompresses alien formats to WAV, recompresses to FLAC, and sends that stream. The presumption is that CPU is cheaper for you than bandwidth. You can set it to send WAV instead, if you're long on network and short on processor power.

I think it's better than a PC if all you want to do is play music... it's absolutely silent, uses just a couple of watts, and takes nothing more than a remote to work. Turn on your receiver, hit play, done.

If you want video too, an AppleTV is a good option. Apples easily do lossless, so you get essentially perfect sound. But you have to have the TV on to run it, you have to hack it to really exploit its full potential, and it doesn't natively talk to SlimServer (which I think is really great software.) You can run Softsqueeze, but Softsqueeze can't do true bitperfect.... the Java sound libraries apparently don't allow it to.

So you'd want to run iTunes, and you'd have to turn the TV on to use it, but in exchange you get video playback capability too. Whether or not that's worth it... dunno. I know I'm not replacing my Squeezeboxen anytime soon.

Thanks for all the advice, but I punted in the end. I bought the same shelf system I have at work. Doesn't take up much space, I know it navigates burned CDs quickly and easily and displays the titles. It has a small remote that's responsive and the tradeoff is I have to swap cds sometimes (which I already have burned). Plus I already know that it sounds good.

This one, again. Anyway, in the end I decided that an $80 total solution was worth it. Especially as it means goodwill with the wife when I ask her if she's willing to give Carcassonne a try.

Yeah, you asked for cheap. Squeezeboxes aren't, sadly. Best of luck with it. And Carcassonne.

The $300 wouldn't be so bad. What tripped me up in the end (with most of the solutions I looked at) was the need for a receiver. Our entertainment center is very compact and practical. Used to hold a 20" Wega and now holds an HDTV, but otherwise it only has space for the 360, DVD player, cable box, then something small, stereo wise. Most solutions required a receiver, thus special (not included) speakers, thus a new entertainment center to hold said receiver. Next thing you know you're at well over $500. For $500 I could have done an iPod + a Bose speaker dock. But that would have required managing an iPod. So in the end... punt. The wife will be happier for it, anyway and by proxy I will.

Oh, I didn't realize you didn't have a stereo at all. Squeezeboxes are best on a proper stereo with real speakers... given that setup, they're phenomenally good, and will shine with very expensive gear. It's not unusual to hear about them driving $20k electronics stacks, although the advent of the better Transporter (at $2k! *cough*) has probably reduced that a bit.

Starting from absolutely nothing, though... probably not a good solution.

Bose, BTW, is usually way overpriced for the sound they provide. They're generally reasonably decent, but you can almost always do much better for the same amount, or get the same quality for a lot less.

Malor wrote:

trip1eX: the original poster says:

We've used a laptop for a while and I'm tired of it. I want something where I can just use a remote to flip between songs and where the remote is the only thing I pack around.

Thus, he doesn't want an Airport Express.

Well if you a have Mac laptop you can set iTunes to play through your speakers and then use the included remote with Front Row/iTunes to skip songs and blast them through your stereo with Airport Express.

Also I bet someone makes a remote to control iTunes on a Windows pc.

But otherwise you have me. I didn't see his no laptop requirement and that he really wants a cheap stereo that also plays mp3s.

Malor wrote:

Aren't iPod remotes all wired, though?

Nope.

Decent solution if already have an iPod or want one. PLays video too.

trip1eX wrote:

Nope.

Decent solution if already have an iPod or want one. PLays video too.

Yeah, if you have an iPod this is a good idea. I had an older gen device like this which stopped working with a firmware update for the iPod, though, so be warned of that possibility if anyone buys a 3rd party device.

I like my iPod, but the DRM stuff they go go through both for their AAC iTunes Music Store files and for their 3rd party integration really upsets me.

Well, FWIW, it looks like they may start to move past it. It'll be interesting to see how EMI does with its no-DRM tracks on iTunes.

I got my dad one of these. for Christmas. It allows him to stream his mp3s from his computer to the living room with only a small remote control to bother with. For $50 it might just do what you want.

Following the iPod train of thought, maybe you could buy a 2-4GB Sansa and speakers+dock unit for it. I am sure such a combo can be had for ~$250 or less, thus being more cost-effective than a similarly configured iPod solution.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Following the iPod train of thought, maybe you could buy a 2-4GB Sansa and speakers+dock unit for it. I am sure such a combo can be had for ~$250 or less, thus being more cost-effective than a similarly configured iPod solution.

2-4 gigs? Why not drive to work in a baby carriage? Pah!