Listening wirelessly: Gramophone's guide to computer-stored music, from downloading and ripping to streaming and

playback Fri 22nd February 2013

The way we listen to music, and the way we buy and store it, has changed radically in the past

decade. Devices and techniques that were cutting-edge just a few years ago are now mainstream

(or even obsolete in some cases!).

It may seem hard to keep up, but for those prepared to spend the time (but not necessarily money –

much of the equipment discussed is surprisingly inexpensive, or you may already own it), the

increased ways of accessing music can make for an rewardingly rich listening experience.

The features below offer a 'how to' guide to listening to music stored digitally, whether through your

computer, or streamed over a network. Some of the basic concepts are explained and explored –

and if there are any terms that seem unfamiliar, then try consulting the glossary.

‘High-resolution music can be striking, but surround done properly has the power to amaze’

There’s more to that Blu-ray player and surround system than just Hollywood films and

opera recordings – it also has plenty of potential to make more of music, says Andrew

Everard

Audio demonstrations at shops are always something of a hit and miss affair: at best you’ll be

listening to a new component in a system with which you’re familiar, but the chances are the room

will be rather unlike the one in which you listen at home – well, unless you’re lucky enough to have

one room in which to enjoy music, and another in which to actually live!

However, a recent demonstration I attended, given by loudspeaker company Focal’s MD Gérard

Chretien at retailer and installer Studio AV in Eton, proved illuminating: the system was half-

familiar, comprising Focal’s imposing Maestro Utopia 3 speakers driven by Naim electronics fronted

by the NDS/555PS network player, and so was the music, given that I’d been asked to bring along a

USB stick containing some high-resolution music.

From the first bars, I was taken with the sound, and clearly so was Gérard, busily photographing the

display of the iPad we were using to control the system so he could remember what I played. And as

ever, one of the real showstopper tracks was from 2L’s Souvenir project, which was my highlight of

2012’s music.

The Trondheim Soloists sounded superb in 192kHz/24-bit FLAC through the Naim/Focal system, so

much so that I didn’t have the heart to point out that it was possible to make it sound even better.

No, not with better electronics and speakers – though that could no doubt have been achieved by

throwing even more money at the system we were enjoying – but with more speakers. For while

high-resolution music can be striking, high-resolution surround done properly has the power to

amaze.

As previously reported here, the 2L set, released in two stages during last year, was recorded on

location in a Norwegian church in surround sound, with the musicians arranged around the

microphone array.

A true surround experience

In other words, this is a true surround recording, one in which the performance surrounds the

listener, not one of those exercises in adding a bit of concert-hall or opera-house ambience with the

odd echo or cough somewhere behind your sofa.

Yes, surround can be used like that, to give the feeling of being in the audience, but the fact

remains that while our ears can detect the ‘space’ around us – the size, shape and liveliness of the

auditorium, for example –, for the most part the live musical experience is laid out in front of us,

whether on the concert platform or the opera house stage.

True, we’ve had recordings putting the music around us before: the dawn of the DVD-Audio/Super

Audio CD age saw all kind of rock and pop discs being frantically remixed to pan the bass guitar

round to the left or make a cymbal suddenly sizzle behind us. But we’ve moved on from such

gimmickry, and now the ability of a well-made recording such as those coming out of Norway at the

moment to place us in the heart of the performance shows just what can be done with surround

sound.

That’s brought a new use for the Blu-ray player and the multichannel audio system, beyond the

Hollywood blockbusters and the concert or opera discs. For some time, audio industry

commentators have hankered for an audio-only format based on Blu-ray, just as Super Audio CD

drew on DVD technology – well, it’s here, and it’s Blu-ray itself, meaning you need no new

equipment to enjoy these new surround recordings.

In fact, Blu-ray is showing its ability to be a universal carrier of music formats in the hands of the 2L

team, led by company founder Morten Lindberg: not only do the Blu-ray packages carry the

surround formats, they also allow downloads, using a network-connected Blu-ray player, of the MP3

and high-resolution FLAC stereo versions of the music.

So what’s on the disc is LPCM stereo at 192kHz/24-bit, 5.1-channel 192kHz/24-bit DTS-HD Master

Audio, 7.1-channel 96kHz/24-bit DTS-HD MA, and – amazingly –9.1-channel Auro-3D 96kHz/24-bit.

This last, which adds discreet height channels to the conventional surround configuration, is only

just becoming available on a few Hollywood film Blu-rays, so again ‘the little Norwegian label that

could’ is keeping itself ahead of the game.

And it can continue to do so, given that its recordings are made in 352.8kHz/24-bit DXD, making it

possible for even higher-resolution versions to be released in the future – when the hardware has

had some time to catch up.

All of which makes the Souvenir set, at around £27 delivered from www.2L.no, something of a

bargain for the adventurous listener, keen to hear what surround can really do for music.

Network storage: selling customers a player is easy bit, so why don't retailers offer complete system solutions?

Don't just sell the player, sell the storage too – and provide a complete system

‘There’s an opportunity out there, and the hi-fi and home

cinema retail industry is choosing to ignore a way of helping

customers – as well as making some money’ says Andrew

Everard

There’s a chill wind blowing through the hi-fi and home cinema

retailing landscape: footfall – the number of people visiting shops –

is down, and many specialist retailers are struggling.

Yes, at the very top end of the market the business is still there, whether it’s big-ticket system

components selling better than their manufacturers may have hoped in their wildest dreams, or

complete systems, carrying five- or six-figure price-tags, being sold to, and installed for, the

wealthy.

When I visited a training session for custom installers not so long ago, I was amazed to discover that

their business was still pretty good, and to hear that whereas the wealthy once went for homes with

the maximum number of bedrooms their budget would allow, now they’re downsizing on sleeping

accommodation, and instead spending money on leisure facilities such as home cinemas.

Which of course is where those enterprising custom installation specialists come in.

However, in the mass market, or what’s left of the lower end of the enthusiast sector, things are a

bit grim. The economic situation has made customers more cautious about their spending, and

those who have money to spend are much more savvy about prices, and what a product can be

bought for if one goes to an online retailer without the overheads of a high street ‘bricks and

mortar’ operation.

The 'showrooming' trend

As a result, traditional style retailers will tell you that ‘showrooming’ – consumers examining or

trying the goods in a shop, then going off in search of a better price online – is becoming a major

problem: some say they’re being forced to slash prices to compete, despite those greater

overheads, or even drop some products more commonly bought online.

In such circumstances, you’d expect retailers to be looking for any opportunity to win customers

back by offering better service, or indeed additional services. After all, if all you pay a shop extra for

is the convenience of being able to have the item within minutes of deciding to buy, rather than

within a day or two, the extra cost, plus the expense of getting to and from the shop – fares, fuel,

parking or whatever – will likely swing the consumer back into the arms of the online operations.

But I believe there’s one major opportunity out there, and the hi-fi and home cinema retail industry

is choosing to ignore a way of helping customers – as well as making some money for itself.

A conversation with a reader about setting up network attached storage (or NAS) to hold his music

and feed it to a streaming music player – you may have noticed they’re becoming rather popular! –

left me a little dumbfounded: as he put it, ‘I've recently asked two respectable audio stores in my

city if they will provide a NAS drive as part of a package. And in both cases the answer was the

same - "No".

‘What on earth is wrong with them? This is a critical part of a digital system which needs much

more expertise than a CD player, amp or speakers. It's a very poor reflection on these shops that

they can't provide a complete digital upgrade package - I think they are too busy selling Sonos kit,

which doesn't really suit me.’

It’s not a lone complaint: I seem to spend increasing amounts of time in email exchanges with those

struggling to set up such systems, and I think I’ve told the story in these pages before of the

frustrations of one major manufacturer of streaming hardware at the reluctance of its retailers to

have a functioning network in their shops, let alone offer the supply and installation of the same to

their customers.

That’s one of the beauties of the Linn Kiko system. for example: not only is it designed to be used

by those with no knowledge of NAS drives, DLNA servers and network protocols, but it also comes

complete with installation by the supplying retailer (even though it’s not exactly hard to set up

should you decide to ‘go it alone’).

Whether retailers aren’t supplying and offering to install NAS drives and the like because they can’t

be bothered, don’t feel confident about the technology or simply feel online pricing for such devices

will always beat what they would want to charge, I think they’re missing a trick – not just to sell

some extra equipment, but also sway customers over to buying streaming audio systems in the first

place.

Adding a ‘digital plumbing’ service to the offering is going to instill confidence in the consumer, and

as another correspondent said to me recently, ‘I know I can buy it cheaper at Amazon, but I’d gladly

pay over the odds if someone set it up, connected it and showed me how to use the damn thing.’

I suspect there are many consumers out there thinking just the same, or even avoiding the whole

subject of music streaming simply because they fear it’s far too complicated. And if that isn’t an

opportunity for some enterprising retailers, I don’t know what is…

How to build a NAS

Western Digital's NAS-optimised RED drive

Opening the QNAP to load drives

...And one WD drive installed. Three more to go...

QFinder software locates the new NAS device on the home network

QNAP configuration makes set-up simple

I finally settled on RAID 10 configuration

Twonky software finds connected players

Remote manager allows NAS to be controlled remotely from computer or iOS device

Apple Airport Extreme, used as router, has made network more stable

The (almost) simple guide to setting up network storage for your music, and (at least

some of) all you need to know about RAID and backups

You know Parkinson's Law? The one that says 'Work expands so as to fill the time available for its

completion'? Well, the same's true when it comes to storing music – however much storage you

have, the size of your music collection will expand to fill it before you know what's happened.

And if, like me, you find yourself getting antsy when you're up to much more than 60% of the

available space being filled, that means it's going to be time to get yourself some more storage.

So it was that, little more than a year on from my last greatNAS-building adventure, my 2TB

network-attached storage drive was beginning look a bit full, and it became clear that a deep breath

and another project was in the offing.

What spurred me on was the announcement of the NAS-optimised Red drives from Western Digital,

designed to run to run 24/7 in the high temperatures often found inside NAS housings, handle the

noise and vibration found in multi-drive arrays, and to give the user an easy time should a problem

occur, as well as speeding up any recovery required.

Reading about them, I found myself thinking 'NAS' again, and determined to build something with

sufficient capacity to keep me futureproofed for a while.

That meant four drives to offer a variety of RAID options – more on that in a moment –, and also a

new enclosure to supplant my existing D-Link cheapie, still doing solid work but grinding away

slightly wheezily in its location hidden away in a cupboard.

DIY for flexibility

It's possible to buy a complete NAS for plug and play operation, such as the WD MyBook World with

which I started out, but for flexibility it's best to buy a separate enclosure and drives. The enclosure

is the physical box you plug into your system, containing the Ethernet interface and the computer

to control the drives, which are mounted inside it.

Which enclosure? Well, asking around some friends in the know, and spending some evenings

reading up, studying manuals and looking at various interfaces, led me to the QNAP TS-412, which I

picked up for under £250.

While I was waiting for it to arrive, a large box containing four 3TB Reds arrived from the nice

people at WD – now I really had no excuse for procrastination. It was time to get on and put the

thing together.

It's really not that tricky, even for a fumblefingers like me: four sheet-metal caddies slide out of the

QNAP – you just lift a latch and pull – and the drives are fixed to them using four little screws

provided. It's only a tad fiddly, but the design makes it impossible to do it incorrectly and when you

slide the caddy back in the connections on the drive mate up with those on the enclosure.

By the way, if you're daunted by all this stuff, there's a number of providers selling online who'll sell

you an enclosure and drives installed, tested and even set-up with the configuration you want. I had

conversations with Ultimate Storage , which offers a free set-up and configuration service when you

buy an enclosure and drives – I was told the procedure adds two or three working days to the order

time, as the discs have to format and then initialise in your chosen RAID configuration.

As an example, the grand total for a QNAP TS-412 fitted with four 1TB WD reds, giving a total or 2-

4TB of storage (depending on configuration) was around £650, whereas the same housing and

drives from Amazon was around £575. Other suppliers offer similar services.

Discs loaded, the QNAP was powered up, hooked up to the network and the mains, and off it went

checking and formatting the discs. A few hours later, a long beep signalled all was done.

Time to RAID

Well, that bit was easy – now for the set-up, and here we take a short diversion into the wonderful

world of RAID: those in the know look away now, because this is going to be really basic stuff.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, and what it isn't is a back-up system.  While

it's designed to spread your data over multiple hard disks, so that in case of failure it's possible to

recover the data, if the software in the NAS administering the array – or the hardware RAID

controller – fails, there's no guarantee you can retrieve what's on the disks.

So the point to take from this is that even if you have a RAID set-up on your NAS, you really need at

least one entirely separate back-up – as in a second NAS, or an offboard HDD able to contain

everything on your main NAS.

And you need to make sure you either have an automatic back-up strategy in place – my second

storage kicks in at 1am each morning, and copies over any changes made on the main NAS since

the last back-up – or are scrupulous about doing manual back-ups.

After all, you really don't want to spend ages re-ripping or re-downloading your entire collection.

RAID 0 is no RAID at all. The advantage is that you get the full capacity of the disc(s) you have

installed – so four 1TB drives will give you 4TB of space, but the disadvantage is that if one drive

fails, you'll lose all the data.

RAID 1 duplicates the data between two hard drives to provide disk mirroring. So install two 1TB

hard drives and format as RAID 1, and you get a total capacity of 1 TB, but with the reassurance

that, if one drive fails, the data is recoverable.

RAID 2 and 3 involve synchronising the rotation of the disks in the array, and storing sequential

bits of data on successive drives. The main difference between the two is how the parity data – used

to check discs are storing the correct main data – is stored: across the drives in RAID 2, and on a

dedicated parity drive in RAID 3.

The same dedicated parity drive is used in RAID 4, which allows the other drives to spin

independently: the problem, of course, is that the parity drive performance dictates how the whole

array will perform. And if the parity drive fails…

The next most commonly used configuration is RAID 5, requiring at least three discs, which

distributes parity data - used to check discs are storing the same data - across the three drives, and

can tolerate the failure of one drive while still offering recovery. The capacity offered by our three

1TB drive-in RAID 5 would be 2TB.

RAID 6 requires at least four drives, and can tolerate two drives failing, but again will offer 2TB of

capacity from four 1TB drives. As an alternative, you could configure a four-drive system as RAID

with a hot spare, meaning the array runs RAID 5, but one drive is kept unused, ready to kick in

should one of the three active drives fail.

Being a bit 'belt and braces' when it comes to this stuff, I'd opted for the RAID 6 approach, and set

the QNAP chugging to set up the array. This takes a long time – a day or more in the case of the 4 x

3TB set-up I was using – and while that was going on two things happened to cause a rethink.

One was a discussion suggesting that RAID 6 would be working the QNAP's processor too hard, and

that RAID 10 would be a better bet; the other was a power interruption during the formatting

process sufficient to set me back to the 'install the drives and re-initialise' stage.

Now I'm not blaming the family member who unplugged the NAS unit to plug in the Dyson, but...

So, RAID 10 it would be, in which data is striped across two discs and mirrored to the other two. It

can stand two discs failing, gives the same capacity as RAID 6, and avoids – so I'm told - hammering

the processor so hard, thus giving better performance.

Phew! The only downside, I'm informed, is that writing is slightly slower, which could explain why it

took several days to copy from my old NAS to the new one. Fortunately I set up an old netbook

computer to run the copy software – the excellent MuCommander – , meaning at least I could keep

on working.

That and a combination of watching the NAS remotely from the Gramophone office via QNAP's web

manager, and a wife between jobs and thus at home to click the 'retry' button on netbook on the

couple of occasion the copying stalled, meant it didn't take any more than – well, a few days,

anyway!

Once-only task – hopefully...

At least it's a job you only need to do once, and while this part of the set-up was grindingly slow,

subsequent uploads are considerably faster than they were with my old D-Link running Seagate

hard drives, and the QNAP enclosure runs sufficiently cool and quiet to enable it to be used in the

main listening room.

The D-Link often did an impersonation of a Phantom jet running its engines on full power waiting for

the deck catapult to be fired, and so was banished in disgrace to a cupboard.

Serving media is simple: the QNAP comes with a service called QPKG allowing you to load a

selection of 'apps' according to your requirements, and I soon had the old familiar Twonkymedia

server software up and running in its latest form, and talking quite happily to the various media

players in the house, which currently include an Onkyo TX-NR818 network receiver and a Naim

NDS/555PS combination.

Remote access

The NAS also allows me to access and administer the server remotely (from the office, should I want

to), and even play content over the Internet to portable devices wherever I happen to be. So should

I need some music for reviewing or listening when not at home, I can play it via an iPad, iPod or

iPhone, or download it on my laptop and copy it to a USB stick to plug into the front of whatever's

being tested or listened to. Neat.

And I've done some other tweaks to the system: the occasional loss of connection between player

and NAS, or iOS control device and player was due to some IP address allocation confusion in the

Virgin SuperHub we have – a 'known problem', apparently –, and so that's now been switched into

modem-only mode and an Apple AirPort Extreme brought in as a router for Ethernet and Wi-Fi.

This connects down to the Netgear switches hooking all the music components together, so wireless

is now only used for the control devices for the system – currently a new iPad mini, proving its

suitability as the perfect remote control for streaming music systems.

It's all very glitch-free now, and connections between controller, network player and NAS are both

rock-solid and much faster.

Oh, and I've also added an uninterruptible power supply for the QNAP, which senses any power

failure and kicks in battery power to give the NAS time to shut down smoothly.

And that last purchase proves that, even in this age of digital music, the possibilities for tweaking –

and that audiophile thing of just buying stuff – are still limitless...

A separate DAC has its uses – but, just as two decades ago, it’s neither a universal panacea nor a must-have’

Arcam was a pioneer of add-on DACs: the rDAC is one of its latest models

These colourful little DACs from NuForce combine converter and headphone amp

It seems everyone is making – and talking about – digital-to-analogue converters, but

we’ve been here before, says Andrew Everard

Open any hi-fi magazine, or click on any Internet forum where audio is discussed, and you could be

forgiven for thinking that DACs – digital-to-analogue converters – have come to save the world. Just

about every manufacturer has at least one in its range, and many new names, from companies

best-known for computer accessories to all-but-unknown Chines manufacturer and what seem

almost like garden shed operations, making products in small numbers and selling direct online.

You can pick up a DAC for as little as £30, or you can spend many thousands of pounds on a

converter, and they come in full-size hi-fi casework, in little USB ‘dongles’ or even built into cables.

You can buy DACs with USB inputs as well as the usual electrical and optical S/PDIF hook-ups, DACs

doubling as headphone amplifiers, pocket-sized units designed to be carried in your pocket with

your iPod or iPhone, docks with DACs and even one packing an atomic clock against which digital

data is referenced.

That last one is the Rubicon Atomic AD/DA Preamp, made by Antelope Audio – you may remember I

covered it in my report from the German High End 2012 show earlier this year – and it will set you

back around $40,000.

What’s more, there’s a whole cottage industry springing up around DACs, with the same people

keen to tell you that ‘digits is digits’ or ‘it’s all about 1s and 0s – simply get that right and the sound

will be as good as it can be’ willing to enthuse about what can be improved by changing the power

supply on a budget DAC, or even self-building or buying battery power-packs for their chosen

device.

Unfortunately, casual buyers swept up in this whole ‘DAC to the future’ frenzy seem confused: read

those online discussions and you see questions like ‘Is it possible to buy a CD player with a DAC

built-in?’, ‘Can I put a DAC between my Blu-ray player and AV receiver to improve the sound of

surround soundtracks?’ and ‘How do I add a DAC to my mini-system to make it sound better?’.

The answers to those questions, by the way, are ‘Yes, they all have one built-in, but only a few let

you plug in external digital components’; ‘No, because the DAC can’t decode the surround sound

formats’; and a simple ‘No, because there’s nothing for the DAC to add to such as system’.

What goes around...

We’ve been here before: when I first started writing about audio, DACs where everywhere, following

the launch in the late 1980s of Arcam’s Black Box, which finally made use of the mysterious ‘digital

out’ sockets on the CD players of the time. When I bought my first player, the manual hinted that

the socket was there to allow features such as pictures on CDs to be shown on a connected TV –

whatever happened to that one? – but what the likes of the Arcam did was allow early players with

limited digital-to-analogue conversion resolution to be updated to the then-current specification.

Yes, we’ve been here before, which is why DACs had their time in a audio limelight, then gradually

became a less important part of the market.

A quarter of a century of refining the design of CD players, and the level of performance available

from even modestly-priced machines is more than a match for the exotica of the early days of

compact disc, which is why I’m not surprised to read things like ‘I bought a DAC to improve the

sound of my CD player, but having tried it for a few days, I’ve taken it back for a refund – compared

to my player, it sounded very poor.’

It just goes to show that yes, a separate DAC has its uses – but, just as two decades ago, it’s neither

a universal panacea nor a must-have. However, there are now more DACs on the market than ever

before, and that’s for a very good reason: if your music is stored on a home computer or portable

device, the addition of an external converter can form a high-quality bridge between it and your

audio system.

Some computers offer an optical digital output – on laptops it’s sometimes hidden in the headphone

socket – and so can be connected directly to an AV receiver, which has built-in digital to analogue

conversion; others even offer an HDMI output, allowing audio and video to be transferred.

All computers, however, have USB connectivity, and that’s where the modern DACs come in: most

have a USB input for this kind of connection – though you should check the one you buy has a Type

B USB input for a computer, and not just a Type A to which the likes of memory devices and

portable players can be commected.

So yes, DACs have an obvious use or two in the modern music landscape – but before you buy,

make sure you really need one, and get an audition to ensure you’re getting an improvement, not

just an extra box.

‘Whether it’s the St Matthew Passion or the Ministry of Sound, the gapless problem is the same…’

Spotify enables you to specify gapless playback...

...While media players such as the Naim UnitiQute are gapless as standard

Those with large classical music collections are the ideal users of network-stored music

and streaming solutions – so why are so many players still not serving us music as it

should be played?

‘Mind the gap’ – it’s a monotonously familiar announcement on the London Underground,

presumably soon to be delivered in multiple languages to save stumbles, twisted ankles or worse

among the thousands of Olympic tourists due to descend on the capital over the next few months.

You see, trains and platforms were designed at different times during the near-150-year history of

‘the tube’, and so sometimes they don’t quite fit together, leaving that awkward gap to catch out

the unwary. A bit like music and digital streaming systems, then – except the history is rather

shorter.

It has a lot to do with the way home digital music storage has evolved – initial players were little

pocket machines designed to hold a number of tracks for listening on the move – but as has been

noted in these pages before, there are areas in which much of the specialist audio industry is failing

those who want to stream classical music.

It’s not just about those awkward gaps between tracks when ripped or downloaded to digital

storage, then played back on many a network hi-fi player – they’re not a problem when you are

listening to pop songs which are separate tracks, but can play havoc with an operatic or symphonic

work recorded as a number of tracks, with the music flowing straight through across the track

breaks.

On many a player, you don’t get that smooth flow, but rather an awkward silence of a few seconds,

sometimes in the middle of a phrase, making the work all but unlistenable.

Yes, in the old days of 78s one would have had to turn or change discs several times to get through

one movement of a work, but in 2012 those gaps are something of a pain, not least because they

don’t have to be there. After all, there are players able to go straight through a work, only observing

the ‘natural breaks’ such as those between movements, and it isn’t a facility only available at the

high end of the market.

Naim’s network players do it, as do Linn’s, and so do inexpensive solutions such as Logitech’s

Squeezebox models, not to mention iPods and the like. Even online music streaming service Spotify

now does gapless playback if you want – it’s enabled as a default in the latest versions of the

software, but can be turned off if required.

That said, a large number of players out there are still unable to handle the gaps between tracks

smoothly, as you may have gathered from some of the reviews in these pages in recent times.

Manufacturers tend to say it’s a problem they’ll address in future firmware upgrades, or in some

cases adopt an expression of surprise and say no-one has ever raised the subject before.

That last point is surprising: as much as the problem afflicts classical music listeners, and we may

be in the minority of buyers – though arguably not so when we’re talking about a network player

with a four-figure price tag – so it also annoys those whose musical taste extends to ‘dance mix’

albums, in which a celebrity DJ combines many tracks into a seamless flow of music.

Or rather doesn’t, if each track is separate, and the player can’t handle gapless playback.

Whether it’s the St Matthew Passion or the Ministry of Sound, the problem’s the same.

So why are there gaps anyway? Well, it’s to do with the encoding of tracks, and the way the player

handles them: if music uses an encoder to reduce the amount of data it occupies, then the player

has to work out what encoding has been used, then set itself to decode the audio. And the ‘more

encoded’ it is – ie the greater the data-reduction – then (to simplify greatly) the harder the decoder

needs to work on the ‘reconstructive surgery’.

And of course many players still take the iTunes view that each track is a distinctive song, to be

played separately, and can't entertain a world in which tracks may be designed to flow into each

other as a single piece, while offering 'way points' to make long passages of music more easily

navigable by the impatient.

Yes, there are ways around the problem – well, sort of: it's possible, for example, to specify in

iTunes that an album is gapless: highlight the tracks in an album, right-click to 'Get Info', say 'Yes',

you want to edit information for multiple items, choose 'Options', tick the box next to 'Gapless

album' and choose 'Yes' on the pulldown, then 'OK'.

However, while this should give you gapless playback on iPods and the like, it still can't help with

many third-party music streamers: the only way round the problem is to splice all the tracks you

want to run together into one track, using a free audio-editing program such asAudacity.

Trouble is, you'll then be left with one long track – say an act of an opera – and it'll now be

impossible to skip to sections of it as you could when it was made up from a number of tracks. It's a

solution, but not exactly an ideal one.

So how can you minimise the problem? Well, for the reasons of compression and reconstruction

mentioned above, you’re more likely to get gapless playback if your tracks are stored in a lossless

form – either as FLAC or Apple Lossless – but there are other factors involved, such as the encoding

software used to create the tracks in the first place, the media server software being used and so

on. It’s frustratingly hit and miss, but the fact is that some players manage to play so seamlessly

that their owners must wonder what all the fuss is about, so why can't they all?

The best assistance I can offer is that the audio reviews in Gramophone will continue to make it

clear which products can – and can't – deliver gapless playback, something many other reviews

overlook, and I'll keep on badgering those manufacturers whose products insert gaps about the

importance of finding a solution as soon as possible.

By the way, it was mentioned earlier that the gapless problem isn’t the only one facing the classical

music enthusiast with a taste for streaming – while we’re at it, can we get all the metadata stored

when music is downloaded or ripped sorted out, please?

Surely we should be able to find stored music with a simple composer/work/performance or

orchestra/conductor search, rather than having to remember in exactly which order the encoding

decided to list the performers and then do the Sherlock Holmes bit to find the work I’m after.

Yes, it's possible to go into the metadata with an editing programme and adjust the labelling to get

somewhere near my ideal, but life’s really too short, and that’s all a bit Heath Robinson in this

swishy new world of music at our fingertips, isn’t it?

A mass of information about just about every recording is out there – can we please start using it?

There’s no right format for music – just the one best suited to your needs

Some recent moves on the downloading front show signs that more music is set to

become available in whatever format you want, says Andrew Everard

There’s a lot of debate around how one should store music for playback using a network player,

streaming client, network radio, streamer, access point – you see, we can’t even agree what to call

the things, so the chances of any kind of accord on formats is minimal!

Some will tell you that 320kbps MP3 is more than adequate, and that it’s impossible to hear an

improvement using more data-hungry formats, while others view either CD format WAV or AIFF, or

lossless FLAC or ALAC as the minima, and would much rather have their music at resolutions

beyond that available on CD.

Yet others will look at some of the high-resolution music now becoming available and smell a rat –

how can we be sure that the shiny 96kHz/24-bit download for which we’ve just paid an arm and a

leg isn’t just a simple upsample of the CD-quality original?

The answer to that one is actually relatively simple – you just run the music file through a piece of

software such as Audacity and look for a ‘brick wall’ drop-off in the frequency spectrum just above

20kHz – but I’d argue that we really shouldn’t have to resort to such investigation.

Instead, those channels offering ‘hi-res’ music should play with a straight bat; if they don’t, and we

all get suspicious of anything high-resolution, then those same distributors are in danger of shooting

themselves in the foot.

Some recent releases and moves in the high-resolution music arena have thrown some of these

points into sharp focus: the website of Linn Records, the former Gramophone Label of the Year, is

now starting to offer hi-res downloads drawn from the catalogues of Universal Music labels Decca

Classics and Deutsche Grammophon; another demonstration-quality release from Norwegian label

2L allows the comparison of the sound – and storage requirements – of various formats, and Apple

iTunes is now offering music ‘Mastered for iTunes’ content on its iTunes store, claiming to deliver

‘Music as the Artist and Sound Engineer Intended’.

Let’s take the last of those first, because that claims deserves rather closer scrutiny: at the time of

writing there are some 100 albums available ‘Mastered for iTunes’, of which about 40 are classical

or ‘crossover’ titles.

Apple talks about its ‘latest high-resolution encoding process’, and assures the music industry this

‘ensures that your music is transparently and faithfully distributed in the way you intended it to be

heard’ while requesting it supplies iTunes with high-resolution master files – ‘any resolution above

16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our

encoding process’  and hints that it may still be looking at higher-resolution downloads, saying ‘As

technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping

the highest quality masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future

improvements to your music.’

However, the “Mastered for iTunes’ files are still encoded using lossy compression; it may be

variable bit-rate iTunes Plus AAC, but it’s still basically 256kbps AAC. It seems the rumoured iTunes

high-resolution revolution may still be some way off.

However, while Linn is taking baby-steps with its Universal downloads – though at the time of

writing, the cataclogue was showing signs of growing –, those there are are very good indeed. I

downloaded a few for a listen as 96kHz/24-bit files, including the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (Sir

Colin Davis/Royal Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra) and Mahler 8 (Solti/Chicago SO), and through

my system there’s definitely a power, dynamic openness and detail not available from a standard

CD. I’m looking forward to this particular catalogue growing.

Already small but capable of sensational sound quality is the catalogue from 2L, which has just

released its latest recording by the Trondheim Soloists. Souvenir, released in two stages, was

recorded in surround using the DXD format, giving about four times the resolution of standard SA-

CD format DSD, and is available at CD quality, as MP3 files, as high-resolution stereo and

multichannel at 96kHz/24-bit, and as 192kHz/24-bit stereo.

Oh, and as an LP Direct Metal Mastered from the DXD files, which are 352.8kHz/24-bit, and a Blu-ray

disc combining almost all of the formats.

Thanks to 2L’s Morten Lindberg I was able to download all the versions of the set, and compare

sound quality and file sizes: I am absolutely sold on the quality gains available all the way up to the

192kHz/24-bit stereo – I don’t, as yet, have anything able to play the FLACs taken from the DXD

version!

But of their kind, even the MP3 files are very good-sounding, so it’s really a matter of trading

storage space for better sound. That could be a consideration for many: taking one track, the

opening of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, the MP3 version (at 320kb/s) occupies 22.7MB for

just under nine and a half  minutes of music, the CD-quality FLAC 51MB, the uncompressed WAV

99.3MB, the 96/24 version 187.4MB and the 192/24 365.6MB.

And for hilarity’s sake, the DXD ‘master’ is 782.7MB.

It just goes to show that there’s really no right format for music: it’s just a case of choosing the one

best suited for your needs. Me, I’ll stick to the 192/24 for listening at home, but the 320k version

would be perfectly adequate for an iPod through the white earbuds or for listening in the car.

But I really must find a 384kHz/24-bit digital to analogue converter, just to satisfy my curiosity…

‘The end of the CD isn’t nigh (well, not just yet, anyway…)’

Linn may have moved over to an all-streaming world, but the CD lives on

Despite occasional outbursts of panic, there's life in the silver disc yet, - Andrew Everard

We’ve just had another one of those panic-flurries that seem to run through the audio and music

industries from time to time: ‘The end of the CD is nigh’ headlines popped up all over the place, as

the wonderful world of the internet seized on a highly speculative piece published by an online

music magazine, and quoting as its only source one of its own journalists.

‘The major labels,’ the article claimed, ‘plan to abandon the CD-format by the end of 2012 (or even

earlier) and replace it with download/stream only releases via iTunes and related music services.

‘The only CD-formats that will be left over will be the limited edition ones, which will of course not

be available for every artist. The distribution model for these remaining CD releases would be

primarily Amazon which is already the biggest CD retailer worldwide anyhow.’

It went on to say that it had tried getting feedback from EMI, Universal and Sony, but all declined to

comment.

And we know what a refusal to comment means, don’t we? In internet logic, it must be true.

Thing is, we’ve been here before, when Linn announced it was no longer going to make CD players,

instead concentrating on its rapidly-growing range of music-streaming products.

Again the ‘end of the CD’ headlines spread like wildfire around the interweb, at least until Linn’s

Gilad Tiefenbrun pointed out that he didn’t say he was going to stop buying CDs (well he wouldn’t,

would he, given that the company includes the 2010 Gramophone Classical Label of the Year?), but

that he would buy them, rip them, and then enjoy them on his shiny new Linn DS system.

Even in these pages Naim’s Technical Director Roy George suggested only a couple of months ago

that most of the company’s R&D effort was going into streaming technology at the moment, but

with a clear implication this was due to limited – though growing – resources, and the fact that,

while CD is quite a mature technology, with streaming it’s a matter of ‘the more we know, the more

we have to learn.’

Yes, yes, but surely there’s no smoke without fire when it comes to the fate of the CD? After all, the

sales figures suggest digital downloads are rising apace, while sales of ‘physical media’ are taking a

big hit, aren’t they?

Well, yes, but it’s not quite as black and white as it looks: while industry analyst Gartner says that

‘In the past 10 years, CD sales, the largest revenue stream for the industry, have eroded, while the

online music revenue share is rapidly increasing,’ it’s going to take quite a while before the two

graphs cross.

To quote Gartner’s own figures, ‘Worldwide online music revenue from end-user spending is on

pace to total $6.3 billion in 2011, up from $5.9 billion in 2010. Online music revenue is forecast to

reach $6.8 billion in 2012, and grow to $7.7 billion in 2015.’

However, the same figures show physical media are far from down and out: ‘By comparison,

consumer spending on physical music (CDs and LPs) is expected to slide from approximately $15

billion in 2010 to about $10 billion in 2015.’

So that’s a rise of some 30% in online music sales, and a fall of around 33% in CDs and LPs, but

then if the Gramophone steam abacus doesn’t fail me, those figures also suggest online accounted

for some 28% of the total market last year, and will be 43% of the total in 2015.

In other words, far from the CD being a dodo within the year, it’ll still account for the majority of the

market four years from now.

And it’s not hard to see why: the majority of music available online, legally or otherwise, is at

relatively low resolution: 320kbps MP3 is the exception rather than the rule, with most content at

192kbps or less.

Yes, there are some labels offering content at CD quality in FLAC, or even higher resolution in some

cases, but heavens does it take a long time to download unless you are one of the very few lucky

enough to have superfast broadband running into your home.

I’m getting to the point where I’m seriously considering an upgrade from my current 8Mbps service

to the 100Mb Virgin is now offering in our area, just to get rid of the interminable wait I have every

time I have to download some music.

But that means an extra £40-something per month, on top of the music I buy – and at that point

waiting a day or so for the mail-order envelope to pop through the door doesn’t seem that much of

a hardship.

UPDATE: Since writing this piece, I have switched our home broadband and TV services over to

the 100Mb Virgin package. The internet's now much faster. I'm still buying and playing CDs.

‘Apple’s not known for giveaways, but open-source Apple Lossless may herald the start of something big…’

Apple: heading for a lossless future? The Classical Shop offers a good range of 24-bit downloads

Apple’s recent move may seem of only passing interest, but it could have wider implications for the

future of high-resolution music, says Andrew Everard

I recently offered some thoughts on the current music downloading scene, as part of my reasoning

for the ongoing survival of the CD. I stick with my opinion about the need for faster broadband to

make an all-download world (or indeed one in which music is streamed, rather than stored locally) 

truly viable, but there are signs that the other stumbling block for downloads – the generally low

quality of the files on offer – could be showing signs of crumbling.

And just for once, in a market usually driven by ‘fast food’ access to the latest pop release, it looks

like the classical music industry could be leading the way, taking downloadable music from

scratchy-sounding MP3s up to CD quality – and beyond.

Start to look around the classical labels, and there’s a surprising amount of music already available

as CD-quality FLAC files – true, it’s just scratching the surface of the entire recorded catalogue, but

there’s definitely progress being made. What’s more, files are available going beyond the

44.1kHz/16-bit CD standard laid down using the technology of the mid-1970s, and with which we’ve

now been stuck for well over three decades.

You can now buy files at 24-bit resolution, in some cases even in surround, and at sampling rates

right up to the 192kHz used, for example, for some of the Linn Records Studio Master recordings.

True, the majority of content out there remains in MP3, with a maximum bitrate of 320kbps – more

than good enough for many a modest system – but the first signs of a move on to something better

are beginning to show.

Chandos, for example, has a growing catalogue of music to choose from, sold through its online

division The Classical Shop, which also offers titles from a huge number of labels including the likes

of the LSO, the LPO, the RPO and Washington National Cathedral.

Not all of the titles are in what the audio community describes as ‘hi-res’ – ie at bit-depths and

sampling rates beyond the CD standard –, but there’s a lossless option (choose that and you get the

MP3 version free), and a dedicated 24-bit section. This includes Chandos titles, and releases from

labels including the BBC Philharmonic, Chaconne, DaCapo, Marco Polo and Pentatone.

Pentatone also appears among the titles available on the Linn Records site, which has expanded

from offering just its own recordings to adding a selected range from a small number of other

labels. Ar the end of 2011 Linn Records offered a number of Studio Master ‘starter packs’

demonstrating the breadth of its high-resolution catalogue: The massiveUltimate Studio Master

Collection, at £3850, included every Studio Master recording from Linn and its partner labels – over

300 titles.

Around the same time, Linn also announced that its recordings are now available in ALAC (or Apple

Lossless) as well as FLAC. Hyperion also offers recordings in this format, which offers compatibility

with Apple’s iTunes, and which has recently been made ‘open source’ – ie available to all – instead

of Apple keeping it close to its chest, as it has until now.

Now Apple’s not known for giveaways – it didn’t where it is today by ‘doing freebies’ – but open-

source Apple Lossless may herald the start of something big. At least that’s the view of Linn

Products’ boss Gilad Tiefenbrun, who says that ‘I reckon there’s a pure, commercial motive. And

that is...24-bit.’

Open-source ALAC will enable more equipment to stream music in this format – Naim, for example,

recently added Apple Lossless streaming in its products –, but Tiefenbrun says there’s more to it:

‘Here’s the deal: the majors offer Apple the 24-bit catalogue. Apple wants the format to be ALAC for

the sake of iTunes compatibility. The majors demand ALAC be open source, so that the good stuff

can be enjoyed beyond the Apple World to the widest possible audience.

‘In other words, I believe this is an essential piece of the jigsaw that will see iTunes offering 24-bit

music downloads in 2012.’

If that happens, and 24-bit music becomes more widely available, that can only be a good thing for

audio and music industries alike. And for once, the classical music industry is leading the trend.

Is computer audio turning music from a social pleasure into a solitary one?

As music moves increasingly towards downloads and streaming, let’s not lose sight of the allure of

the comfy sofa, and listening with others, says James Vesey

When I was a child, one of the highlights of the day was Listen With Mother. It was a chance for

parents to take a break from household chores (and children from devising new ways of annoying

those parents), and for both to sit down and enjoy listening to something together.

Spool on a decade or so, and many of my musical discoveries were made while at university, where

those of us lucky enough to have record-players would often visit each other’s rooms to play a new

acquisition.

I always remember the joy and amazement on the face of a Wagner-fanatic friend the first time I

played him the opening of Bach’s St Matthew Passion; I think he went out the next day and bought

the set for himself.

And it was at university that an unhealthy interest in the endless noodlings of prog rock developed

into a passion for classical works: almost every day brought a new musical discovery, listening in

fellow students' rooms, and a slight broadening of my listening horizon.

Now, as the download/music streaming age dawns, there are arguably even more opportunities for

hearing new music whenever one wants, but there’s a fundamental danger with having all your

music concentrated on, or accessed via, your computer.

And that is that you’ll find yourself sitting at the computer to listen.

Even worse, in today’s ‘content rich, time poor’ world, there’s the possibility that music will for

many slip even further from being something one consciously makes space for in one’s life, by

sitting down and listening, and instead is no more than a background for surfing, emailing, Tweeting

or whatever.

In the past – and I am afraid I’m talking dim and distant rather than recent – I went fairly often to

meetings of a recorded music society. Once I got over my fear of being surrounded by people who

knew much more than me – fortunately it wasn’t like that at all – I found it an excellent way to

discover new works in the company of others, and having a chance to share, discuss and even

argue about what we’d just heard.

The fact there was a pub next door to the venue for these meetings meant discussions were often

as protracted as they were heated.

Yes, I know these days one can do that via all kinds of social networking sites, but it just isn’t the

same as listening together, sharing the same musical experience.

On a more personal level, I enjoy sitting down with my partner to listen to a new recording, not just

to have some to ‘bounce reactions off’, but also to see just how it affects us. It’s always an

enjoyable moment when a work comes to its end, and there’s a silence followed by one word:

‘Well...?’

Yet when I look around so many websites dedicated to ‘computer audio’, and browse through the

user-galleries showing ‘My system’, I’m a more than a little dismayed to see speakers sat on

desktops either side of a big computer monitor, with the only listening position clearly defined by an

uncomfortable-looking ‘executive’ swivel chair.

Maybe it’s a sign of the growing up of the initial iPod generation, used to shutting the world out

when listening to music, but it needn’t be this way. As these pages have been explaining for some

time, there’s a wide variety of ways to bridge the gap between PC and hi-fi, and make music-

listening sociable.

Apple’s AirPlay: the future of wireless audio?

iPad and Zeppelin - making music

Will this latest Apple add-on take the company one step closer to hi-fi domination?

For a company thought by many to have single-handedly revolutionised the music industry, from

the computers on which music is recorded to little pocket devices on which to store favourite works

– and even the means to buy them – Apple, to date, hasn’t been too successful when it comes to

translating its success into the hi-fi arena.

Its Apple Hi-Fi unit – an ugly, plasticky stab at an iPod dock speaker system, launched back in 2005

– was widely regarded as pretty woeful, being bettered by a whole range of products from third-

party companies. And while I note with some amusement that at the time of writing one optimistic

company is hopeful that some unfortunate will stump up $800 – or well over £500 – for one of these

units, the Apple Hi-Fi never caught on, not least because it really wasn’t. Hi-fi, that is.

In the intervening years, Apple seems to have contented itself with racking up monumental sales of

iPods, iPhones and, most recently, iPads, not to mention flogging millions of “songs” – yes, even

individual tracks of a complete classical work are “songs” – via its iTunes stores worldwide.

Rumours continue of ways in which it might be planning further to tighten its grip on the music

business: not long after New Year, gossip is circulated about a streaming music service, storing

users’ libraries on its own cloud servers rather than on computers, phones, pods or pads.

Meanwhile, the audio stuff has been left to makers of iPod docks, systems with iPod interfaces and

the like: every one of them attracting a nice fee for Apple to get the official logos on the box. We

have basic speaker docks, systems able to connect digitally to the portable devices for better sound

than that available using an analogue connection (and thus the devices’ frankly fairly woeful

onboard DACs), and of course iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad control apps, able to “drive” network-

connected systems.

If all this wasn’t Applecentric enough, one manufacturer even makes an app whose sole purpose is

to make your iPhone’s interface look like one of its products when you’re playing music: take a bow,

McIntosh!

However, AirPlay – the latest iTunes wrinkle – looks like it may have serious implications for wireless

music in the home. It started out innocently enough, as a means of connecting your iWhatever

portable library to another computer, or a streaming device such as the latest Apple TV (another of

Apple’s desirable home content devices, but this time firmly focused on online rentals of movies

and other content for playback via the TV). Play your music, or film, on your iPhone, iPod Touch or

iPad, and with a couple of clicks of your fingers – well, flicks of your finger, but you get the idea –

you can “throw” it onto a device for wireless playback.

Apple’s now signing up some of the big names in home audio to the system: for example, if you

own selected Denon, Marantz or JBL products you can pay a premium of around £40 to have them

AirPlay enabled, so your music (or video) can be streamed through them from your portable device.

Listen to music through those little earbuds while walking from the station, or via your car’s

iInterface, and as you walk into the house you can flick the music onto your main audio system

(almost) seamlessly.

Bowers & Wilkins has become the first big audio name to launch a dedicated AirPlay product: the

new Zeppelin Air version of its popular, and stylish, ovoid iPod speaker system, seen above, can

also stream music wirelessly from Mac or PC computers.

What’s more, you could have a Zeppelin Air in each room of the house, and stream music to all of

them simultaneously from a single device. That’s getting consumer electronics manufacturers and

Apple excited, and one or two companies making established multiroom systems a tad nervous: if

you can do all this with something included in AV receivers, speaker systems or even your TV, will

people want to buy a dedicated multiroom music system?

It seems Apple hasn’t finished with the way we buy, store and play music just yet…

More ways to stream the Gramophone Player – and all your other music, too

The options for music streaming just keep on growing: we explain some of the most

recent arrivals

The Gramophone Forum continues to be filled with discussions regarding methods of connecting the

online GramophonePlayer to existing hi-fi and home cinema components, which is why I’ve been

spending a lot of time of late experimenting with different methods of bringing the two together.

You can read more about one of the simpler ways I’ve encountered elsewhere in these pages,

where we have a review of the Musical Fidelity V-Link, designed to sit between a computer’s USB

output and the digital input on a hi-fi system or AV receiver.

Whether with the Gramophone Player, BBC Radio 3’s “HD” stream – which, as we all know, is only

higher definition than most normal internet-streamed radio, at 320kbps, and not at all high-

definition when compared to, say, CDs – or music stored on a computer, the V-Link makes a serious

difference to the sound.

What’s more, as noted in TW’s review, the Musical Fidelity seems to have the effect of making audio

quality “computer agnostic”: in other words, it doesn’t matter what computer is “upstream of” the

device: the sound quality will be just as good.

So it would be perfectly feasible to use a budget netbook computer – and you can buy those for as

little as £150 these days – as a source for your music listening, streaming from websites, internet

radio stations or even music stored on a network device. And with very little load on the computer –

just a browser and wireless networking – it should run quietly and unobtrusively.

I’ve also been staring long and hard at my iPod and iPhone and trying to work out how to use those

as more effective music streaming devices within the context of music stored on, or streamed to, a

computer. The obvious route would be to use the portable device as a network client, but I know

many find these players too small and too slow for such tasks, not to mention their limitations when

it comes to running some kinds of website.

The answer could be found in software able to stream from a computer over a home network to one

of these portable players, which could then be used in a speaker “dock”, or even connected to a hi-

fi system. A bit like Apple’s AirPlay system, but in reverse.

Such applications have been around for a while and which you choose is as much a matter of

personal preference as governed by your choice of computer, but I’ve had good results using Rogue

Amoeba’s Airfoil software, available for both PCs and computers running Apple’s OSX. It costs

around $25 (£20 once the VAT man’s had a snap at it), and is able to “hijack” any application –

including web browsers – and stream its audio to a computer running either Airfoil Speaker

software, or a similar free “app” (for all those iThings).

It works extremely well: within minutes of coughing up the cash (PayPal is dangerous in making

these things so easy) I was able to stream both the Gramophone Player and BBC Radio 3 web audio

to my iPodTouch, plugged into my NaimUniti using a USB cable. And very good it sounds, too.

However, there’s an even less expensive way of doing this, from neatly named Swiss software firm

Clever & Son. WiFi2HiFi is an almost free iTunes “app” – 59p at the time of writing – which works

together with a free software download, available for PC or Mac, to do much the same as Airfoil.

With the two loaded you can broadcast from computer to iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad over the home

wi-fi with very fine results, and the design of the software is so simple I doubt many people will have

a problem using it.

For those wanting to dig deeper, there’s even software available to turn your main computer into an

internet “radio station”, into which you can “tune” using a variety of streaming music client devices,

some of which we’ve covered here in recent months. However, I suspect the complexities of setting

up those are best left for a future issue.

Connecting your computer to your audio system

The case for feeding audio from computer to hi-fi is ever more compelling, says Andrew

Everard

The arrival of the Gramophone Player was one of the most fundamental shifts in the history of the

magazine, marking the replacement of the long-running cover CD with an extended range of

content accessible anywhere you can fire up a network browser.

The encoding quality chosen – 256kbps – is on a par with all but the very best internet radio

streams, and the switch-over to an online offering is part of a growing trend towards music both

stored on, and streamed via, home networks and computers.

You’ll have seen that trend developing in these pages over the past year or two, as more equipment

has become available to act as an interface between computers, networks and audio systems, and

even I have found myself switching from a severe case of iPod denial to ownership of an iPod Nano,

an iPod Touch and an iPhone!

Lurk around the internet forums where such things are discussed, and you’ll find no end of debate

about the best types of software to stream music and/or video from this kind of computer to that

kind of client device: I’ve even seen sites publishing line after line of computer code to be typed in

to make a product do something for which it was never designed.

With all that in mind, it’s hardly surprising that many glaze over when it comes to the idea of

connecting music on computer to a hi-fi system, which is why I thought the time was right for some

back to basics advice, covering the simplest ways of bringing the two together.

And the starting-point couldn’t be simpler: every computer has an audio output of some kind, even

if it’s just a headphone socket, so you can just buy a cable with a 3.5mm stereo plug on one end

and a pair of standard RCA phono plugs on the other. Fit a 3.5mm plug into the computer’s

headphone socket, RCA phonos into a spare line input on your amplifier, and you’re all done.

So far so good, but it’s not unknown for the headphone output to sound a little ropy, or indeed for

there to be the potential for some interference when connecting up in this manner. So some form of

digital connection may be preferable, especially if you have an AV receiver with digital inputs.

Some desktop PCs have a digital output, usually on an optical socket, while a surprisingly large

number of laptops have a miniature optical output hidden in their headphone socket – you can buy

optical cables with an appropriate plug, or an adapter.

If you have a conventional amplifier, you can buy an affordable digital-to-analogue converter to go

between such an output and a standard analogue line-in, and many of these will also accept input

from the USB socket on the computer. In essence, they function as an external soundcard for the

computer, forming an interface between any audio the computer can play and the input of your

amplifiers.

Does all that start to sound both complex and expensive? It isn’t: these devices offer simple plug-

and-play operation, in that the computer will simply recognise them when they’re connected, and

they take over audio functions. And expensive? I’ve just bought one such device to experiment with

for the princely sum of £27, including next-day delivery.

If you have your computer to hand but want the audio sent to a hi-fi system across the room,

there’s that Apple AirPort Express, but unless you just want to use it to stream music from a number

of music applications you’re going to need add-on software.

Fortunately, there are some wireless versions of the USB converter idea, such as the Sitecom WL-

060 illustrated on this page. The little USB stick plugs into the computer, while the remote black box

sits with your hi-fi system: the two pair up, and then you’re sending whatever audio your computer

is playing wirelessly to the hi-fi.

It’s simple, it’s effective, and it’s £50 or so, with similar devices available from companies such as

Lindy and other computer accessories specialists.

If you haven’t tried it yet, I really do suggest you try to make the link between your computer and

audio system: there’s no shortage of music available out there, legally and without charge.

And of course there’s always the Gramophone Player...

Digital music storage formats

There’s a bewildering range of formats in which music can be stored. Andrew Everard

makes sense of them

CD is simple: it’s one format, playable in all players, so you can be sure any disc can be put in any

player, and music will come out. Make the move to storing your music on a computer, hard drive or

other memory device, or indeed stream it from an online service, and you enter a bewildering world

of formats, codecs, bitrates and filename extensions.

A track is stored on a standard CD as a “.cda” (CD Audio) file, but becomes a “.wav” if you rip it

unchanged to a Windows computer, or an “.aiff” on a machine running Apple OS. Same file, three

file extensions.

Then there are the two kinds of what is commonly called audio compression, but is more correctly

referred to as “data reduction” or “bitrate reduction”.

“Lossy compression”, as it is commonly known, works by throwing away some of the data used to

record the music, based on well-known psychoacoustic principles. The lower the bitrate, the more

gets thrown away.

CD Audio runs at about 1.4Mbps, so clearly to get down to even high-resolution MP3 files, at

320kbps, quite a lot needs to be ditched; when you get down to 192kbps or even 128kbps, you’re

only using a small fraction of the data on the original disc.

Although MP3 has become a generic term for both data-reduced music and the hardware used to

play it (to most people, an Apple iPod is an MP3 player), it’s far from the only codec available to

produce “compressed” music files.

Windows Media Audio has its own versions, and there are systems such as Advanced Audio Coding

(or AAC), which is based on MP3 but generally felt to give better sound quality for a given bitrate,

and Ogg Vorbis, which has similar characteristics but mainly finds itself used by those with an

unhealthy interest in experimenting with data formats.

Furthermore, within the compression choices, you have a range of options: for MP3, for example,

Apple’s iTunes offers you the choice of three quality presets, or custom data-rates as low as 16kb/s

or up to 320kb/s.

The final option on iTunes is “Apple Lossless”: like Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio Lossless and

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), this operates in a different manner to the data-discarding “lossy”

systems, and more like file-zipping programs on a computer.

These lossless codecs keep all the data of the original music track, but pack it into less space for

storage, “unzipping” or extracting it when playback is required.

Lossless files are much larger than their lossy counterparts, but still only about 50-60% of the size

of the original WAV or AIFF file, and of course when uncompressed, as decoders for these formats

do as music is played, they should (provided the encoder has done its job properly), be identical to

the original music file, both in terms of identical data and in their sound.

I’ll not get drawn into the audiophile arguments – we’d be here all night – but the two schools of

thought are a) that lossless sounds better than MP3 and other lossy formats, but not as good as the

original CD; and b) files stored using lossless codecs sound every bit as good as the original CD – of

course they must, since the data is identical. I suggest you try them, and make your own decision!

Audio formats at a glace:

Apple Lossless is iTunes’ star turn, and very good it sounds too. Not all non-Apple network and

portable players accept it, which is why software such as Elgato’s EyeConnect is available to

transcode it on the fly, and iTunes has an option to save MP3 versions of files for use on mobile

devices.

FLAC is the compression codec I use most, both when ripping CDs and when buying high-resolution

music downloads. It’s free, it’s cross-platform, and it seems to work with almost anything.

320kbps MP3 is my baseline choice when storing music for non-critical listening – content I know

I’ll only be using in the background, or on the iPod.

WMA/AAC streams are worth seeking out when listening to internet radio. Although MP3 may be

the most popular streaming format, WMA and (in particular) AAC can offer better sound for the

same bitrate. Have a poke around the website of those internet stations you like, and see whether

they also offer higher-quality streams.

Ripping and streaming

Computer-stored music has gone way beyond dodgy downloads from suspect websites.

Andrew Everard explains how to store your music

Recorded music's future is something of a theme in recent issues of Gramophone, thanks in no

small part to Linn’s announcement a while back that it’s stopped making CD players, and the spin

put on that news in certain quarters.

However, as I  explained in my Infidelities comment at the time, the company neither said that

everyone was about to stop buying CDs, nor that the one true way is downloaded music.

Instead, it reported that a significant part of its customer base seems to be storing its music on

home servers and accessing it via remote client units, and that’s something that makes a lot of

sense should you want a multiroom set-up without all the complexity of a full custom-installed

system.

The equipment required for such a set-up can be very simple: a computer with a decent-sized hard

drive and a CD-ROM transport, plus either an amplifier and a pair of speakers or an active speaker

system will do it.

There are also hard-disk music servers designed to sit in the equipment rack and either deliver

music direct to the amp and speakers or stream it over a home network to multiple “clients” or

receivers, either using wired Ethernet or wireless wi-fi connectivity.

The most flexible method involves the use of a Network Attached Storage device connected to a

home router – usually the same access point used for internet distribution – and accessible by

remote devices on the network.

One such NAS designed with music in mind is the RipNAS (pictured), an £875 unit complete with CD

drive for ripping and 1TB of internal storage, with up to two 3TB add-ons, at £550 apiece,

supported. Once the unit is set up, it’s simply a matter of feeding it discs as it rips then ejects them

until you have your entire collection ready for use.

The slightly more laborious way involves using a computer to load the storage device over the

network; but whichever way you choose to do it, you can opt for a variety of file formats and

resolutions, from space-efficient low bit-rate MP3s – which I wouldn’t recommend – right up to

lossless formats handling CD quality and even beyond.

As well as offering them as downloads, some labels even sell discs containing high-resolution music

files, specifically designed to copied to such storage and played in this way.

And when it comes to playing them, you have a huge choice, from the likes of the Linn Majik DS-I

and Naim’s NaimUniti through to laptop computers, internet radios and even network-capable AV

receivers.

I even tried a little rugby-ball-shaped device not so long ago called the Chumby: as well as

delivering the weather forecast, Twitter and the like, it can also act as a simple music player.

So the CD isn’t dead – far from it. It’s just that the latest streaming music devices make it simpler

than ever to have all your music to hand wherever and whenever you want to listen. A bit like an

iPod for grown-ups, really.

How to store your CDs

At the most basic level, you can store a large CD collection on a home PC: almost every machine

comes with both a generous hard drive and a CD drive built-in, and Apple’s ubiquitous iTunes

software is both free and capable of storing music at up to 320kbps MP3, using Apple’s own lossless

compression, or uncompresssed.

Although other ripping software is available, iTunes will be more than enough for most users, and

using either a wired connection or a wireless system such as Apple’s Airport Express, the music can

be connected to any hi-fi system with a spare line input.

However, that does put your music collection at the mercy of hard-drive failure, so it’s sensible to

make a back-up to avoid having to re-rip everything. Even better, if you have a home network, is a

Network Attached Storage device, preferably with mirrored drives for back-up security, connected

to your router.

This can then be accessed by a range of devices around the home to play the music, as explained in

the main article above, and the choice of music-streaming devices is growing extremely rapidly. You

can even get to your music over the internet wherever you are in the world, using remote access

software.

System alternatives

Carrying on from his article about storing music on computer hard-drives, Andrew

Everard looks into playback options

No apologies for returning so soon to the theme of alternatives to the conventional

player/amplifier/speakers set-up we’ve almost all been using for decades: the music playback

landscape is changing, and with that change the way we all think about systems is likely to be

altered for ever.

For example, Linn’s Majik DS-I is a complete “just add speakers” system designed to stream music

over a wired network, as you can see above in the system picture.

And Naim’s revolutionary Uniti system continues to grow into a family of products, each of them

with music streaming at the core of its capabilities. As I’ve mentioned in the past, there’s a wide

range of such “client” devices on the market, from the likes of the DS-I and Uniti down to simple

portable internet radios, almost all of which have a stereo output and can thus be used to pipe

music into a hi-fi system or amplifier.

Of course, not all of these radios deliver the best audio quality, and the sockets are mainly designed

to feed a pair of simple headphones, not a hi-fi system. But a few models also have a digital audio

output, and that’s where things begin to get really interesting.

You could, for example, connect such a unit into a spare digital input on an AV receiver, or use it

with a separate digital-to-analogue converter into a conventional stereo amplifier.

There’s no shortage of such DACs on the market, at prices starting from around £100, and you

could even use your home computer as a streaming client for a network music collection – most

have a digital audio output these days – or even more simply just store your music on it for a very

simple desktop system, such as that suggested by Klipsch opposite.

The next step in this rationalisation of the home hi-fi system? The advocates of such things suggest

you can go even further, and replace your amplifier and speakers with active speakers, in which

crossover, amplification and drive units are combined.

Active speakers have been popular in the “pro audio” field for a good while and as a result there’s

no shortage of designs to choose from: some have multiple audio inputs, some remote control of

level and source selection, and a few even have that digital-to-analogue conversion onboard, too,

making them simple to connect up to a computer or other digital source.

All this will come as a culture shock to those brought up on the conventional system layout

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, but it could be a way ahead. Not the only future for home

audio, mind – just one way hi-fi may go. 

Wired or wireless?

The most effective way of making your music available to multiple clients on a home network is to

store it on a Network Attached Storage device – basically a hard drive attached to your network

router – then access it remotely using a client device such as those discussed this month. But how

do you connect one to the other?

The thinking from Linn is emphatically that a wired Ethernet connection is the way to go: it even

suggests you set up a subnetwork for your music system, keeping it away from the network you

probably use to surf the internet and so on. If you need to make a “wireless” jump from one room to

another, Linn suggests, you should use powerline transmission devices, which piggyback data on

your mains wiring.

Others, however, seem quite happy with a wireless solution, which after all has more than enough

capacity to stream music around the home. And of course it has the advantage that you can have

music wherever you want it without the need to run cables all over the place.

I have tried both network systems over the past few months and can honestly say there is no

quality difference; you can choose merely on convenience.

However, if you have a busy wireless environment in the home, with computers, printers and so on

jockeying for bandwidth, you may just find a wired connection for music is the most reliable

strategy.

The changing face of system connectivity

The latest equipment has a range of unfamiliar socketry. Andrew Everard attempts to

make sense of it all, and help you make the right connections

Once, it was so simple: the turntable connected to a dedicated input on the back of an amplifier,

and everything else went into those ubiquitous red and white RCA phono sockets, one for each

channel of each input.

These days, however, everything – from amplifiers to micro-systems to tuners and CD players – is

sprouting all kinds of unfamiliar sockets of odd shapes and sizes, and offering ever more options for

connecting product X to product Y. And while those familiar with the back end of AV receivers may

be familiar with some of these new connections – multichannel analogue audio, optical and

electrical digital and HDMI inputs, for example – the stereo amplifier sector is also seeing massive

changes.

Available on some modern stereo amplifiers, and I suspect set to become more familiar in the near

future, is a range of digital inputs, allowing external digital devices to be connected directly.

Amplifiers increasingly have onboard digital-to-analogue conversion, to which devices such as

computers, digital players and the like can be connected.

And CD players, of course: yes, they have their own conversion built in – and we haven’t seen a

widespread revival of the old transport-only machines that accompanied the first blooming of

standalone DACs a decade or more back – but if you have an older player with a digital output, a

modern amp with onboard digital capability could be a worthwhile upgrade.

Many computers now have digital audio outputs, allowing their often fairly woeful built-in analogue

stages to be bypassed: even on some laptops you’ll find a digital output concealed in the

headphone socket, accessible using a mini Toslink optical cable.

However, if there isn’t a dedicated digital audio output, some devices now have USB Type B sockets

designed to take the audio from computer to amplifier over a simple, inexpensive cable (although

inevitably there are also pricey audio-only USB cables coming onto the market).

These sockets are found not only on amplifiers but also on some standalone DACs – and even on a

few micro-systems and the odd CD player (such as the Audiolab 8200CD) and network player – and

offer extremely simple connectivity with a computer. Once hooked up, the computer “sees” the

device as it would a new soundcard, and simply plays music through it – no need for any drivers or

software, in most cases.

Talking of networks, as you may have gathered from the products appearing in these pages over

the past few months, an increasing range of devices can stream music from a computer or network

attached storage (NAS) device, either using wired Ethernet or a Wi-Fi wireless link.

Apart from standalone systems such as the NaimUniti and UnitiQute, Arcam’s Solo Neo and the

Marantz M-CR603, there are dedicated network media players designed to connect into an existing

system: we’ve already tested the Marantz NA7004 and a Rotel offering, and more are on the way.

Finally, there’s the iPod, and things have moved on a way from the old 3.5mm stereo to two phono

cables and basic iPod docks. The latest generation of products can offer control of the player direct

from your remote handset, and some even take the audio from the portable players in digital form,

again bypassing the none-too-special circuitry inside the handheld machines.

Some companies offer USB sockets into which the standard Apple white lead can be connected;

others offer built-in iPod docks or clever multipin sockets to accept a range of modular adapters.

These last connections can be used for iPods, but in some cases also for Bluetooth audio adapters

and even Wi-Fi connections.

Also beginning to appear are products able to take advantage of Apple's AirPlay connectivity,

enabling wireless streaming from the Apple devices to a hi-fi system. At the moment such products

are few and far between, but there are all the signs that the idea will catch on fast.

As I suggested earlier, we’re now a very long way from one pair of sockets marked “phono” and a

row of identical “line” pairs – but the good news is that today’s audio components offer more ways

of listening to music than ever before.

How Onkyo is aiming to expand worldwide high-resolution music choice

The e-Onkyo site Labels include Norway's 2L Onkyo TX-NR818 supports hi-res downloads

The term ‘flying visit’ was true in both the literal and metaphorical senses, writes Andrew Everard:

in order to spend a day and a half with Onkyo’s engineers at their base in Osaka, Japan, I spent the

better part of 20 hours travelling, door to door, each way.

Yet the time spent in the air and in airport lounges, plus the furious jet-lag I’m not entirely sure I’d

shaken off several days after my return, was more than worth it: far from being a company all about

the ‘crash bang’ world of thrill-ride home cinema, Onkyo is getting back to its roots by turning its

attention to equipment able to deliver ‘HD’music to a very high standard.

The company – in rough terms, its name means ‘sound harmony’ in Japanese – could have been

forgiven for sticking to the AV arena.

It’s the AV receiver market leader in several European countries – including the UK, where it has

held that position for the past four years, has a market share of 34.5%, and last year sold some

34,000 receivers, increasing its sales 5% in a sector down 12% due to the current economic

unpleasantness.

Neither is it doing too badly globally: since launching its first surround receivers back in 1987, it has

shipped some 6.7m units, putting on a bit of a spurt in the past five years.

It has a tie-up with guitar-maker Gibson, which it hopes to use to improve its market penetration in

the USA, and recently formed an alliance with TEAC, which will see the two companies pooling

resources in distribution and – in all likelihood – production.

A side effect of this last move should be greater prominence for TEAC’s high-end Esoteric brand in

the UK where it has been something a well-kept secret for far too long.

e-Onkyo music portal

However, there’s another string to the Onkyo bow: it’s called e-Onkyo, and it’s a music download

service currently only available in Japan, but with global ambitions.

Launched in 2005 – ‘we were beaten by iTunes by three days,’ says e-Onkyo’s Taku Kurosawa – the

service started small: ‘ITunes had millions of tracks; we had eleven!’

Since then it has grown to the point where it now offers some 60,000 tracks: 15,000 of them in

various forms of high-resolution, from 96kHz/24-bit and 192kHz/24-bit FLAC through to SA-CD

quality DSD downloads, which can be played by many models in the company’s recent ranges of AV

receivers.

Now it’s adding Dolby TrueHD audio-only downloads to its arsenal, allowing high-quality surround

sound to be purchased, downloaded, and played via Onkyo’s latest midrange receivers, the TX-

NR717 and TX-NR818.

The demonstrations given by the Onkyo engineers, using a laptop acting as a server, the TX-NR818

and a system of Monitor Audio speakers, certainly sounded impressive: we heard some music from

some of the smaller specialist labels the company intends to offer via the service, which is already

‘live’ in Japan.

These included tracks from Norwegian audiophile label 2L, whose catalogue should be familiar to

regular readers of these pages.

Licensing nightmare

And while the team says it’s in talks with major labels, it’s likely that e-Onkyo will only have the big-

label stuff for Japan. It has the will to make e-Onkyo happen as a global portal, but the licensing

nightmare that is the music industry could well halt progress.

That’s something acknowledged by company vice-president and chief operating officer Hiroshi

Nakano, who suggests that, desirable though it would be to have big names and major labels

onboard worldwide, it’s more likely that the e-Onkyo offering will involve smaller specialist labels.

These include 2L, Japanese classical label Octavia and Germany’s Nishimura, with Nakano saying

it’s likely the service will have a stronger classical bias simply because ‘the copyright situation is

easier’.

That won’t get any argument from this quarter: in a market with limited classical music downloads

at ‘better than CD’ resolution, any extra sources of content are more than welcome.

And while Onkyo clearly has an agenda to complement current and forthcoming hardware with

downloads its products can play, the fact that the portal will make available music in a variety of

formats, with performances both familiar and unfamiliar, can only be good news.