Monthly Archives: January 2015

Relax Rock Playlist

Alternative, Folk, Indie, Playlist, Rock

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Oh my! January can be sort of a bummer month, supposedly being a very depressing time of the year. If you are tired of all the running around and hoopla from last month, and you need to just sit and relax, then here’s a playlist for you. Go get some herbal tea, wrap yourself in a warm blanket, lay back in a barcalounger, and listen.

8Tracks (no account required):

Spotify:

A music junkeez home… Audio Equipment Review – Sonos…

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A couple of years ago, whilst complaining to Sideshow Andy about trying to find a way to wire the homestead with speakers, I was introduced to the world of Sonos.   I investigated it – mildly…  I dragged my feet…  I asked Andy for the website.. again… and then conveniently forgot…

Skepticism set in….
“I just spent money on 3 sets of wired speakers… what to do with them?
“Would my current wifi – lame as it is… cut off on a regular basis?…
“Would it take a whole lot of effort to set up?…
“What if I just get a couple more BOSE docks?…
and the worst…
“I’m going to keep trying to get that speaker wire up two stories without drywall work….

Well – this Christmas, two years later, and no closer to getting those speakers wired up to my two teen’s rooms, I decided to take the plunge.  What a great family gift!  Andy – you were spot on!
(Let’s  not forget the sound canceling headphones Chip gifted when he knew what was coming… that was spot on too!)

We started with two Play 3’s and a connect.  You see, I spin a fair amount of vinyl.  With a connect, you can access your receivers audio with the Sonos speakers.  It looks too like I can access my BOSE Sound system that is wired through a connect:amp to play music from our computer or phones, but I haven’t gotten there yet.  That… is a future purchase.

My plan was to see how it worked out with the girls, and slowly add to the rest of the house.  Oh the best laid plans…  I’m not the most patient one.  (I’m guessing by the time February hits all of the rooms will have a Sonos in them.)

Alyssa opened hers first… and began setting it up.  She simply plugged it in, downloaded the app to her phone, put in the necessary wifi credentials and within minutes she was accessing the speaker from her phone over our wireless.  She then came into the living room to assist me in setting up the connect while Jess was opening hers.

Jessie had a little help with a brilliant idea… She nabbed Alyssa’s speaker for herself, and replaced Alyssa’s speaker with hers.  Viola!   A configured speaker with NO work.. heh… gotta hand it to her – she’s crafty…

When Alyssa returned to retrieve her speaker to put it in it’s new home – she was a bit dismayed as to why it wasn’t working.  (well – technically it was… )
After a bit of grumping about the youngest getting away with murder…. she quickly set the second one up too.

The connect was a bit more difficult to set up – or maybe it’s that it was really “too” easy?  It was just a matter of realizing “line in” was from the audio receiver in the family room.  Oh – and figuring out which outputs went with which inputs.  The documentation on this was a bit sparse – really just a couple of  generic pictures.  Of course – none of them matched “my” particular receiver.  But – meh – no matter.  We persevered! Before we knew it I was hijacking Alyssa’s speaker with some obscure band to the desired results of “you’re ruining my life” !!!  Followed by giggles…

It’s been a few weeks since the original set up.  The girls have been thrilled.  When a particular unenjoyable genre pumps through the walls – Chip and I have the option to put on headphones and pull through.

On a comparable note, I also received a BOSE blue tooth speaker as a gift for Christmas.  I have been using it in the basement, where we have not had the opportunity to add our Sonos yet.  The issue with the blue tooth – is that if I leave the room – I lose connection.  Or – at times it will “skip” or hesitate… but not very often.  I’m pretty pleased with the speaker for purposes of having something to entertain me while I’m running it out on the treadmill.

So – this week – we added a third Play 3.  I had not really been using the content on my phone because I was letting the girls give me feedback and use their own.  They have been mostly using music services – Sirius, 8tracks and Pandora.  I placed this one in our Master Bedroom, and attempted to play some music from my phone.

This… is where my patience dropped.  Through no fault of Sonos, I could not access much of (over 75%) of my music on my phone because of copy protection rules.

What???  Most of my music – I had burned into iTunes years ago from CD’s that I own… what is this??? HOW can they say it’s not mine?  I bought it!  <insert adult tantrum here…>

BUT I BOUGHT IT!
BUT I BOUGHT IT!

After some initial digging, and kudos to Sonos – the answer was on their site – I ended up signing up for iTunes Match.  iTunes Match is a yearly subscription for $24.99.
For this $24.99, I can:

  • Store all of my music in the cloud
  • Access all of my music (up to 25,000 songs – more if they are purchased from Apple) from any device (up to 10) that uses my Apple ID.
  • Have access to “shiny new 256kbps AAC versions of your audio files” – which are not limited by DRM rules.  (and Sonos CAN play them…)

So – even though I was pissed that I had to “buy” a subscription to access my own music – it does solve a couple of issues I’ve been running into – and frankly – it’s worth the $24.99 per year just for that.  Life is too short to stay grumpy… can’t change it – moving on….

However… it’s not as easy as just signing up for Match.  You need to do something kind of scary…
You need to create a smart playlist with all of the music you need to get new versions of – AND DELETE YOUR MUSIC.  This… was difficult for me to do… only because of the immense amount of time it had taken me to burn in a whole lot of music via CD.  Like… years.
Within about 15 minutes I had taken a deep breath, and followed the detailed instructions from MacWorld.  (After all – most of this stuff I still have physical CD’s for)  I started the download of “new” digital copies – in excess of 2600 songs, and went to bed.

Waking up bright and early I found that there were some connection difficulties with my wifi.. (see skepticism #2…) and the download only 1/2 completed.  Patience wins… I tried again and succeeded.

THEN – I needed to enable iTunes Match on my phone.  Today I’ve been playing songs for most of the day from my phone.

What I have found:

Initial Skepticisms addressed:

  • “I just spent money on 3 sets of wired speakers… what to do with them?
    – no idea – they are still sitting in my closet.
  • “Would my current wifi – lame as it is… cut off on a regular basis?…
    Well – yes.  If my phone is not in a particular position, the streaming DOES cut out.  Caveat here – I’ve had wireless issues forever… BUT – we did just put in a new router.  We just need to move the Sonos TO that router and I am fairly confident the issue will be resolved.
  • “Would it take a whole lot of effort to set up?…
    Nope – not even a little…. (well – with the exception of the iTunes issue)
  • “What if I just get a couple more BOSE docks?…
    While the blue tooth is working for me in the basement, and the BOSE dock I have in the kitchen has a fabulous sound – it can’t “participate” with the rest of the speakers.  Blasting out all rooms in the house with the same music… yeah – A NEEDED ATTRIBUTE.
  • “I’m going to keep trying to get that speaker wire up two stories without drywall work….
    I’m thinking maybe… just maybe… the cost of these wireless speakers will be well below drywall repair on multiple stories of my home…. 🙂

Sonos Link:
http://www.sonos.com/?r=1

Link for how to upgrade your iTunes tracks should you choose iTunes Match:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1163620/how_to_upgrade_tracks_to_itunes_match_fast.html

 

 

 

 

A Year’s Trip with Spotify — Long Term Review

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Taylor Swift may not like Spotify, but that is no reason for you to ignore it. After all, only some of us are pop stars trying to callously increase our net-wealth by embargoing a streaming service. For the rest of us, Spotify deserves a look-see… especially if you listen to a lot of music.

And that’s the benefit of a music streaming service. If your music exploration doesn’t move beyond being told that Taylor Swift has a new album, there isn’t much exploration for you. But if you are constantly on the hunt for something new to tickle your ears, go giggle with Spotify.

Besides the obvious benefits of a streaming service, Spotify is a particularly good implementation of one. They have native Mac and Windows desktop apps, which I have found to be really well done. Their iOS and Android/Kindle apps are also sleek and efficient. And last year when they screwed up their iOS app, they owned up to it pretty quickly.

Syncing between them is a breeze and, truthfully, the other services could take some queues from Spotify on this. The Spotify apps automatically sync playlists with each other, and you control which computer/device downloads the playlist. That is, everything has access to the playlist but the songs themselves aren’t synced unless you decide to sync them. And syncing the songs is very fast in my experience. Alas, you need to pay for the Spotify Premium service if you want off-line song syncing. But you can always stream.

And Spotify doesn’t just stream it’s music. It will stream your music too. This is a feature known as local files, where Spotify will stream MP3s on your computer to your mobile device. The only downside here is that they won’t stream your music from one computer to another.

As for playlists, Spotify has several curated playlists… though truthfully I’ve never been wild about any of them. But anybody can make a playlist public, so there are all sorts of playlists available. You can even create URLs to your playlists (which are recognized by Facebook, WordPress, and other social networks), and create collaborative playlists with other Spotify users.

A surprise feature with the mobile apps is that they will detect if your computer is running Spotify locally and act as a remote control. This is great for setups where your computer is hooked into your local stereo and you want to control the music while moving about. If you desire a more sophisticated setup, Spotify has passable Sonos integration as well.

Just about the only thing I don’t like about the mobile app is that my playlists are not a top menu or button item, but instead buried two layers deep. The desktop apps can be augmented with plugins. For instance, I have HypeMachine, Filtr, and SoundDrop for exploring new music. And those are features on top of Spotify’s own “radio” feature, which will take a song of your choosing and attempt to find similar songs of that genre that you might like.

The desktop app also builds on Facebook friends, allowing you to follow the music they are playing (if you follow them). While some people do not like this feature, I’ve found it to be quite useful. Admittedly, most people I follow on Spotify aren’t thrilling me with their musical tastes, but there are one or two people who have introduced me to some good stuff. And for those nuggets of gold, I go back time-and-again to the Spotify friends feature to find more good tunes.

Overall, I give Spotify 3 thumbs up… well, I would if I had a third thumb. If you are looking for a streaming service and, especially if you don’t want to get caught in some sort of Apple iTunes dependency hell, I strongly recommend Spotify. Give it a try… after all, the free service is free.