Squeezebox and Pandora
Category Technology
A year after moving north, my 1300+ CD collection is still in boxes out in the garage and will remain there indefinitely. In the year before we left, I slowly converted every CD to WMA files on a hard disk, and every CD is now stored on an 80 GB drive on one of the servers. When I first converted everything to digital files, I used a small ATX style PC as a network attached music player. I used a USB attached SoundBlaster card with an digital optical output to route music to the stereo system. This method worked pretty well, but using a whole PC was certainly overkill, looked out of place, and generated a lot of heat and noise. I started evaluating the various network attached music players with the intention of purchasing a TurtleBeach AudioTron. Along the way, I thankfully discovered the Squeezebox by SlimDevices (http://www.slimdevices.com). This device has revolutionized the way I play music and has been one of my favorite products this past year. It’s about the size of an external floppy drive, and has an Ethernet and two digital output connections. (it is also available in a wireless configuration). Using the remote, I can play, rewind, skip and otherwise manage my collection of music stored on the server’s disk. (The is separate open source software that runs on the server and streams the music to the device) But organizing the music in various playlists, I can choose a selection of music for what ever mood I am in. I have a second device installed in our detached screen-room which is synchronized with the one in the house so that the same music plays in both locations (or I can easily unsync them and play separate streams of music).
A year after moving north, my 1300+ CD collection is still in boxes out in the garage and will remain there indefinitely. In the year before we left, I slowly converted every CD to WMA files on a hard disk, and every CD is now stored on an 80 GB drive on one of the servers. When I first converted everything to digital files, I used a small ATX style PC as a network attached music player. I used a USB attached SoundBlaster card with an digital optical output to route music to the stereo system. This method worked pretty well, but using a whole PC was certainly overkill, looked out of place, and generated a lot of heat and noise. I started evaluating the various network attached music players with the intention of purchasing a TurtleBeach AudioTron. Along the way, I thankfully discovered the Squeezebox by SlimDevices (http://www.slimdevices.com). This device has revolutionized the way I play music and has been one of my favorite products this past year. It’s about the size of an external floppy drive, and has an Ethernet and two digital output connections. (it is also available in a wireless configuration). Using the remote, I can play, rewind, skip and otherwise manage my collection of music stored on the server’s disk. (The is separate open source software that runs on the server and streams the music to the device) But organizing the music in various playlists, I can choose a selection of music for what ever mood I am in. I have a second device installed in our detached screen-room which is synchronized with the one in the house so that the same music plays in both locations (or I can easily unsync them and play separate streams of music).
As great as this device is, I am even more excited about the new inclusion of the Pandora radio service in the device. Pandora radio (http://www.pandora.com) is a service of the Music Genome Project that allows you to assemble custom music stations. To use the system, I select “create a new Pandora radio station” and I am then prompted for a musician or a song title. The system then uses this information to find similar music and builds a radio station of custom song selections. The selection of music is based not on the genre tags in the MP3 files, but rather through an analysis of the actual songs. The service “looks” for other songs or artists that sound like the one you based the station on. That in itself is interesting, but what makes the system unique is the ability to learn and further customize your selections. When a song is playing you can use the remote to tell the service that you either like or dislike the song. Based upon the selections you make, the service then adapts the music to your tastes. Our friends Donald and Bernadette were visiting yesterday and I was, of course, showing off the product and creating new stations. To test the system, we made a Lucinda Williams station to see what type of music would be picked. Since she is something of a cross-over artist, I figured we would get music from several different genres in the mix. Playing the station, we discovered quite a bit of rock and folk related songs, but also quite a few C&W singers. After indicating that I didn’t like one or two of the twangy sounding artists, the nature of the music shifted more towards folk and rock and roll and country artists stopped showing up.
The service isn’t perfect and I suspect that the number of available songs is still somewhat limited. The service allows you to further define your radio stations by adding additional artists, but I have discovered that many artists outside the mainstream are not found, as are artists that have not had a major release in the last couple dozen years. Some genres are not available such as Classical or Latin, and when I tried to create a Celtic station based on the one or two artists I could find, I ended up with either BlueGrass or strange experimental violin music.
Still, for such an early stage project, that is very little to complain about.
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