Ted Timmis

Hi CharlyD, Thanks for your reply. I'm a little curious why FLAC seems to be preferred to WMA lossless on these forums. I know this runs against the grain of popular wisdom, but I like the Windows Media Player (certainly better than Itunes for large collections). I also like the tagging which is available with Windows files even without employing a media player (my library is roughtly 80,000 songs) With FLAC files, I have had to put the tagging information in the title slot as it doesn't seem to allow artist, album and genre to be entered in the other slots. I also think bit for bit that WMA files sound better than MP3. So, back to my original question, why do you (or anyone else) prefer FLAC? Is it the fact that it can be played natively without transcoding on many devices? Is there any sound difference? Is there a better way to tag FLAC and can you attach album art? Again, if anyone has any thoughts, I would be interested in hearing them.

Hey Gavin, I have spent a great deal of time looking into hard drives as servers for music and photos. In fact, I just shelled out $1200 to recover 800gbs of music after I knocked over my external hard drive when attached to my laptop. In my estimation, I think the way to go is a DLNA network attached storage device, also known as a NAS. A NAS is basically an external hard drive with a small processor in it and has its own IP address. What this means is that you can plug it into your router and then stream (wireless or wired) music throughout your home network. You can even access the router from locations outside your home as your own private website. The other critical aspect of NAS storage is DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance). DLNA allows the NAS to communicate with other DLNA devices such as a DLNA TV, Receiver or even a digital picture frame. The beauty of this kind of set up is that you can play music, videos and photos from the NAS anywhere in your network as long as the receiving device is DLNA certified. You can even use your iphone or Android as a remote control on some of these devices. The next question is which one to get. The things to look for are raid capability, expandibility, itunes support, bit torrent support and surveillance camera support. Finally, one should consider the speed of the processor. Having looked into many different NAS devices, I have narrowed it down to two. These drives are QNAP (I believe it is QNAP Pro 439+) and Synology (I believe it is Synology DS 209). These are the fastest NAS devices available; from what I understand there is very little delay when playing music. Also, I believe they both have the Intel Atom processor which means they have the processing power to run the DLNA software and transcode where necessary. These will set you back around $700 to $800 although I have to confess that I haven't purchased one yet. Finally, a less expensive alternative is to buy a router with USB storage capability. These routers have a usb port into which one can plug an external hard drive. Once plugged in, the router will allow the drive to be accessed on the network. One example (which I am currently using) is the Apple Airport Extreme. It has no problems with lossless files but playback is limited to my computer. There is also a slight delay in playback. One point with the Airport Extreme: You must re-format the drive to FAT32 to have it work with the Airport Extreme. Most drives come formatted in NTSC. I'm not exactly sure what this means but make sure you do it on a new drive as this will wipe out any data you have stored on it. Anyway, I hope this helps and please let everyone know how your setup works out.

Hey CharlyD, I was very interested in the fact that you were able to stream WMA lossless. I have been looking at the Onkyo TX-NR807 for a long time for this very purpose. The only reason I haven't pulled the trigger is that the 807's user manual says that it will support WMA lossless up to 320 kbps. I assume this is the same as bps but wasn't sure. Most WMA lossless files are recorded at between 800 and 1400 bps. Could you elaborate on this? Also, were you able to easily find files to play? How did it sound? Any comments would be appreciated.