Does Sonos allow you to control an Internet radio application, like MusicMatch? I really dig the Sonos system, but I play Internet radio more often than from my personal MP3 collection. I am building a new house right now, and looking for something like Sonos that will allow me to wirelessly control Internet radio more than anything. Any suggestions?

Does Sonos allow you to control an Internet radio application, like MusicMatch? I really dig the Sonos system, but I play Internet radio more often than from my personal MP3 collection. I am building a new house right now, and looking for something like Sonos that will allow me to wirelessly control Internet radio more than anything. Any suggestions?

JHymn is the solution for iTunes DRM, so you don’t have to burn and rip.

Are you planning on buying [i]all[/i] of the stuff on that shopping list? If so: COOL!

Philip: most PCs start out nice and quiet, but wait until the fans and disks get older and their noise will go up a lot. I bought these Maxtor (or was it WD?) “Ultra Quiet” drives over a year ago for a simple RAID-1 setup in my Linux box (see below) and boy they were quiet! Unfortunately, by now they are the loudest drives I have ever owned…

How well do the different rooms sync up? Is there any delay?

Preston, GN: the Sonos will play uncompressed WAV or AIFF files quite hapily, as will it play FLAC lossless compressed files (about 2:1 compress ratio) So you really don’t need to lose any quality by burning and then ripping DRMed files.

A cheaper alternative to Sonos is the Squeeze Box. Not as nice, but a helluvalot cheaper. I have used one with no problems. It does require server software, for which I run a bog standard Fedora Linux box with two drives in RAID-1 to hold my music. The software also runs on Windows or MacOS X, if you don’t plan to run a dedicated music server for it.

Did you ever find any decent links to reviews of the Infrant and comparisons to the TerrorStation ???

Preston,

Music on a CD is digital data and as such can be reproduced to any number of generations without degredation. The problem here is that the duplication you propose passes a lossy-compression boundry. That is, the DRM file is compressed, you uncompress it to get it to CD (CD format is not compressed) and then you recompress it when you send it back to MP3. Recompression results in a different file. If that is done only once and a decent MP3 setting is selected, it shouldn’t matter too much. Going back and forth several times would probably impact quality quite a bit.

The same problem happens with digital images. This is why it is best to keep the image in an uncompressed state (shoot RAW, only modify RAW/TIFF images, etc.) while working with it and only save to JPEG (or a different compressed format) as the final step.

Lossy compression kills the generational non-degradation feature of digital data.

Protected files bought off iTunes can be burnt to an audio CD. Rip the new audio CD and you end up with plain MP3 files (or whatever format you choose). A bit tedious, but workable.

Is there any lose of fidelity? Since audio CDs are in fact digital data(?), it seems there should be no degradation.

Standard wireless speakers are another alternative to ripping up ceilings, but you’ll get a burst of static whenever somebody turns on the microwave.

Your shopping list inspired me to order a Kilowatt exercise device; it should arrive in a few days.

Nice!

After making my comment about not really needing anything more than a P&S digital camera, I ended up getting a Canon digital Rebel XT about a week ago, my first non-P&S still camera. (I’m working part-time on a web project involving a fair bit of photography, and wanted something nicer to take my pictures with.)

I have much learning to do in this department, but so far I’m impressed, and rather enjoying doing some more high-end photography. Now I need to work expanding my lens collection.