Tagging classical music

[classical11]

(01-05-2014 09:59)DavidHB Wrote:  @classical11

...

As you clearly are at least experimenting with streaming music, I should be interested to know what, for you, constitutes "fully embracing the streaming concept". Is it about committing the cost of a high end player that can provide the remarkable sound quality that can be had from a digital stream? Or are you concerned about the effort required for a major ripping and tagging exercise? Both of these issues were concerns for me, but I now know that neither problem was insuperable. I am with gnomus in believing that the advance that streaming music provides over previous media delivery systems is such that the technology is already well worth adopting.

David

Hi David,

By "fully embracing streaming" I mean mainly putting away my CD collection (storing it for backup purposes) and buying digital downloads instead of CDs. And (probably the hardest part) demoing the new system to my wife and convincing her to use it.. :-)

In terms of the streaming equipment I use - it's very basic but it works well for me: I use raspberry Pis with external USB DACs recommended in this forum:
https://forum.minimserver.com/showthread...757&page=5

I run Pete's MediaPlayer renderer on the Pis in conjunction with mpd. The renderer software supports OpenHome extensions and I also get gapless playback working flawlessly. I am more than satisfied with the quality - if I were to upgrade anything it would probably be the speakers.

The tagging effort is certainly an issue. I have a system that works reasonably well but it is a fairly time consuming task. I do think it's worth the investment though because I will (most likely) always be listening to my classical collection (as opposed to some other stuff that I will eventually get bored with).

I definitely agree that streaming has many advantages and is definitely worth adopting. This is thanks mainly to developers like Simon who appreciate the importance of standards. I was never very interested in it in the past when only proprietary systems were available (such as Sonos).