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I've had good experiences with a number of turtle beach soundcards. http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/soundcards.aspx

There are lots of USB devices out there with a line-in jack.

Here's one I like a lot. Unfortunately, Turtle Beach has discontinued this product; fortunately, there are some still out there, so buy one now before it's too late.

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/audio-advantage-srm/home.aspx

P.S. This is discontinued... does anyone know where I can find anything remotely similar that is not discontinued?

steveha

Build a MythTV box, install boxee as well and move out of the dark ages brother!

http://www.mythbuntu.org/
http://www.boxee.tv/

Recommended tuner for mythbuntu:
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr2250.html

Recommended sound card:
http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/riviera/home.aspx

I mean, with high quality onboard audio (7.1, dolby etc) now pretty much standard on even budget motherboards, aren't the days of buying a separate soundcard history now?

Indeed. For most purposes the on-board sound is more than good enough these days. I haven't bought a sound card for personal use in years. The last motherboard I bought came with 7.1 built-in, and I only have crappy desktop stereo speakers.

If one of my clients does need a separate sound card I'll go with Turtle Beach. They've been a great alternative to Creative for many years now.

I should probably point out that your best bet is a technology called Dolby Digital Live that remixes stereo recordings to DD in real time. As far as I'm aware, it's restricted to specialty PC soundcards like this one: http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/mtgoddl/home.aspx.

It works fairly well, especially if you like bass. The compression they use seems to be very good at detecting the "lows" and redirecting those to the LFE channel making much better use of your sub-woofer. Everything else is just "okay". You get a good sense of "the source is in front of me" but that's it.

Perhaps needless to say, this technology works best with video games.

Well, there's always these guys: http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/mtgoddl/home.aspx

They've been making fantastic audiophile-grade cards for Win machines for years.

Word of warning though, their older stuff (Santa Cruz in particular) does NOT play nice with Linux, despite being generally fantastic on Windows machines.

Best audio setup I ever had was back when on my old AMD XP1900+ box running Windows XP with my Santa Cruz card hooked to my Monsoon 5.1 flat panel surround sound speakers. Not uber powerful, but INCREDIBLE sound imagery if you were in the "sweet spot". I remember sitting and listening to CDs on my PC because the sound was just so damn much better than even on my stereo.

Unfortunately, that entire setup is long gone. The motherboard burst it's caps, which sent a surge to the audio card, killing it and down to the Monsoon subwoofer (which held all the critical electronics) killing it too. I held onto the Monsoon speakers, but the company went under shortly afterward, and I haven't been able to get replacement parts for it.

Now I just make do with crappy 2.1 onboard audio and elcheapo logitec speakers. The sound is passable for low level listening to background music, but little else. Ahh for the days of yore...

The card in my system will be the LAST Creative product I own

Does anyone know of any other company that doesn't use Creative hardware or chipsets in their sound cards where I can plug my guitar in and have access to pitch-shifting, chorus, flange, auto-wah, like the old SBLive! 5.1 had in their EAX control panel?

I use a Turtle Beach Montego DDL and I love it.

I ditched Creative way back when once I discovered they transcode ALL output to 48Khz. Since I went to Turtle Beach, I must say -- my life is MUCH easier with respect to "good" sound cards. (ie: not onboard)

It also has the nice ability to output anything in DD 5.1 -- even if it's stereo only. My audio receiver really likes that because I don't go in and out of Dolby Digital. Just a nice, clean, constant 5.1 stream all the time. And yes, it supports Vista.

You might take a look at Turtle Beach's sound cards. I'm not up-to-date on how well their current offerings work with Linux, but many years ago I got a card from them that beat the pants off of the equivalently-priced SB Live! Value.

They're only the "leader" because they have no significant competition in the after-market add-on card market. Just try and name two other sound card manufacturers.

Others have pointed out diamond I can not say in all honesty I have bought one of their sound cards. Circa 5 years ago the cost of a SB128 was roughly equal to a base end Diamond solution, and there was reasonable assurance that the SB128 would work.

Razer I'm not directly familar with, and at $200 for a base model, I'm not likely to invest in it, well, unless that extra shielding actually does an effective job at eliminating the EM noise generated by the system.

Voyetra Turtle Beach much to my surprise is still around, as spoken of by others, and offer a base $30 solution and a $60 solution.

Asus either has or plans to release the Xonar D2 and D2K, but as it doesn't exist in any form other than a press release, I know jack about it.

Cmedia it would seem not only makes onboard audio but pci audio as well. I "might" have met one released by MadDog, but i'm going by memory and relative look of the card.

Welcome to the club. I've been a member since Creative used their patent on shadow volume rendering (ironically known as "Carmack's Reverse") to blackmail id Software into supporting EAX.

Although that was hardly the first scumbag thing they did. Their douchery goes back to the Aureal3D days and beyond. They've just been getting worse and worse.

Besides, Turtle Beach makes better, more featureful cards anyway. The Montego DDL is in a class literally by itself, with realtime Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding of 3D positional audio. Not just passthrough of AC3 streams from DVDs, the way Creative's cards do it. Its only competition was a hard-to-find version of the nForce2 southbridge only included on a few motherboards and never available as a PCI card. And while their drivers are not much better than Creative's, their support is superb. Take a look at their support page for the Montego DDL. Note in particular the FAQ entries where they respond to real, actual questions from real, actual people, with real, actual answers! And then they post them on the website for everyone's benefit! So unheard of these days.

I could gush more about Turtle Beach, but suffice it to say, I love my Montego DDL.

Welcome to the club. I've been a member since Creative used their patent on shadow volume rendering (ironically known as "Carmack's Reverse") to blackmail id Software into supporting EAX.

Although that was hardly the first scumbag thing they did. Their douchery goes back to the Aureal3D days and beyond. They've just been getting worse and worse.

Besides, Turtle Beach makes better, more featureful cards anyway. The Montego DDL is in a class literally by itself, with realtime Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding of 3D positional audio. Not just passthrough of AC3 streams from DVDs, the way Creative's cards do it. Its only competition was a hard-to-find version of the nForce2 southbridge only included on a few motherboards and never available as a PCI card. And while their drivers are not much better than Creative's, their support is superb. Take a look at their support page for the Montego DDL. Note in particular the FAQ entries where they respond to real, actual questions from real, actual people, with real, actual answers! And then they post them on the website for everyone's benefit! So unheard of these days.

I could gush more about Turtle Beach, but suffice it to say, I love my Montego DDL.

Worse, the free (gratis) part is an expiring, "tethered" collection of music for those who use it; downloads to keep are fee-per-track.

DRM workaround for cheapskates....

2 PC's

2 sound cards with digital I/O such as the (currently unavailable [for good?]) Catalina soundcards from Turtle Beach

http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcard s/catalina/producthome.asp

Enjoy! (Did RIAA 'lean' on Turtle Beach to 'pull' these sound cards from the market?...)

P.S.: This is the best, simplest, straightforward, 'secure', method to strip DRM from digital audio files with 100% fidelity to the original file. Right up there with the Windows 'shift key' trick to avoid pwning your PC with a DRM/anticopy encumbered audio CD before you play/rip it.... :) If your PC and soundcard are fast enough, you might be able to get away with 1 PC, 1 Digital I/O soundcard, and a digital 'loopback cable' (if such a thing exists or can be created) to connect the digital I/O ports together on the soundcard when stripping DRM from digital audio files.

P.P.S: If you are going to buy digital audio media online, buy lossless DRM-free CD quality audio media (i.e. .WAV files) and burn your own CDs if you so choose -- everything else out there is essentially 'radio quality' and is basically 'promotional material' that should have a pricetag of $0.00

Or you can try to go real fancy and get Turtle Beach HPA 5.1 channel gaming headset complete with actual miniature subwoofers in each cup + front/back and center channel speakers. Not to mention a removable boom mike and much better overall construction.

Man, slashdotters can be so fucking annoying sometimes...

1. Another defunct one: Turtle Beach Audiotron
2. Yet Another: KiSS DP-500
3. This one's actually for sale on Amazon: Roku Soundbridge M1000
4. Also for sale: Slim Devices Squeezebox
5. On the high ($2000) end, Denon AVR-4036 Receiver has streaming (among many other things.)
6. And the winner of our "strangest item": sermonaudio.com internet radio. Though I suspect you'd have to hack it to get it to play anything other than their content :)
7. Oh, I guess you don't have to hack it, you can just buy the un-sermonized version as Penguin Radio.
8. D-Link has a DVD player with internet streaming radio called DSM-320RD Medialounge. It's even wireless. There's also a HD version, the DSM-520.
9. Even Philips has a series called Boombox.

I'm sorry my initial example was poor. I just grabbed the first link and didn't look at it much. Nonetheless, there are umpteen fucking examples of streaming internet radio devices. Many of them are available on the shelf, even at places like Circuit Shitty. And I've seen several at Fry's, come to think of it.

I still use my Turtle Beach AudioTron.

http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotron /producthome.asp

The biggest selling point to me for the AudioTron was the fact that it didn't need server software. The device would scan your network for CIFS shares with MP3/WAV files (Windows Networking or SAMBA) that it had access to.

The AudioTron also has a complete web interface in it's firmware, supports internet radio stations, had a semi-active third party software community, integrates well it your stereo system (looks like a stereo component), supports optical audio-out, etc...

Too bad they discontinued it.

As a former long-time Creative customer who has been burned many times and have seen many others burned, I'm no longer interested in Creative products. What I am interested in is this:

http://www.hidiaudio.com/products/mystique.html
http://www.bluegears.com/soundcard_xmystique.html

That's right, a card that can perform real-time Dolby Digital AC3 encoding (aka Dolby Digital Live, or DDL). The spiritual successor to the nVidia Soundstorm!

Turtle Beach has a card with the same chip, although their driver support is a bit lacking in comparison:

http://turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/mt goddl/

And this is the chip that drives them both:

http://cmedia.com.tw/product/CMI8768_plus.htm

The cards are pretty affordable - newegg has them both for under $100. Personally I'd rather go with the X-Mystique due to better driver support and on-board coax output (even though both cards come with optical cables, IIRC).

I guess Terratec has an Aureon 7.1 card that has DDL as well, but they don't market their cards to the U.S.

I've moved on to Turtle Beach and been happy ever since. Much more stable drivers and pretty much comparable hardware (with some nicer high-end stuff).

. . . why does Creative still refuse to include an optical out on its sound cards?

Yes you can get the live drive, but on a media PC that's designed to be on show, it makes sense to have the digital outputs out the back, where they can be easily concealed.

HiteC do one, as do turtle beach, why not Creative?

But it was called the audiotron, and it cost $399 brand new. Admittidly it didn't have a wireless nic in it, or a cd-burner, but I can't see how the additional $400 is required to integrate those two. Also, a brand new xbox costs far less, and you can have XBMC up and running in no time. That gets you movies, music, images, and hey, yeah, games too.

One other thing, this device claims to be all about quality of sound. Well, sorry, these are still MP3's, and your quality of sound is dictated by the source material. Your 96khz mp3 won't sound any better here than on your computer speakers. Same goes for your cd probably. Unless all your music is on DVD-Audio, which this thing can't play, you probably wouldn't ever notice a diffrence.

Get an SB Live! Value or an SB Audigy! Value.

The only problem with this is that SB Live!s suck ass. I have seen so many people's computers lock up, crash intermittently, or refuse to even boot because they had an SB Live! that didn't want to play nice with the rest of their hardware, and the featureset really isn't all that good even for a budget card.

Try a Turtle Beach Riviera if you need a good budget card.

if the server/desktop has XP PRO, then use remote desktop connection, and "leave audio on server"

2nd- additionally, if you want to watch via winamp, you can also use output stacker (a plug in that may no longer be available (see stories about ripping from music stores via this method)) to have the audio go out to two different destinations I use output stacker to have the audio from winamp play over a lyra wireless sound device connected to my stereo.

a third solution, has nothing to do with the audio being on the PC, buy a cheap USB audio adapter, http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audioadva ntage/ thing is smaller than most flash drives, and does 5.1 optical out, or provide a 2nd headphone jack- I have one on an OLD pc that I upgraded to XP, and XP couldn't use my soundcard (srs?) at all.. it is very CPU intensive, (kinda/exactly like a winmodem does)

for the old PII 300mhz machine it's on, it provides excellent sound, but that machine can't display divx/xvid and audio at the same time..
(ok, it does, at 3 frames a second or so- even in a box)-- with the audio plug disconnected, video picks up considerably, (but I can't hear it then)

caveat, it's REALLY touch about it's port, unplug it from a USB connection, and connect it to any other USB port, and you WILL have to reboot

as for changeover due to proximity? sorry- can't help, but with output stacker as I described, you can turn down the laptop and up the PC when you get closer....

not sure about the framerate, video over RDC-never tried it.

Luck....

M-Audio Sonica Theater which I see retailing for about $85.

Turtle Beach Audio Advantage USB which goes for $29 and seems to need a better driver to pull DTS sound on a Mac.

So that should do it. :-)

Virtual Surround Sound USB Audio Adapter for your PC or Laptop

...which for $29.95 gives you an optical out from USB. Combined with the Mac Mini, I think this makes for a killer system, since it'll interface nicely to my 46" LCD television.

I can't wait to get it all wired up and on to my network!

I have an Auditron made by Turtlebeach and I will never again take my CDs out of their cases. It only runs audio (mp3, wav, Internet Radio) with both a digital and RCA out which for me is just fine but if you are looking for video, get a tivo.

The best things about the AT is that THERE IS NO SERVER-SIDE SOFTWARE! It runs using the SMB protocol so it is really easy to set up on both windows and linux. It has its own remote, a lcd display on the front of the standard stereo width box, and a web interface to the device. You can have multiple ATs on the network and multiple sources of music files. And for the developers out there, since day one they have had a well-documented API for user projects. It is really slick.

The only problem is that it is no longer being manufactured so finding one is dificult but well worth it. Funny thing is, the AT got its latest PC Magazine's Editor's Choice award AFTER they stopped manufacturing it.

PC Magazine Editor's Choice 2004 TechEdge Editor's Choice 2003 PC Magazine Editor's Choice 2002

I use an audiotron and a Dell Powervault 725 N.

The Audiotron is a nice piece. Easy to use, and will work with anything that can serve up SMB shares. It does not play OGG though.

-ted

Sharpdevelop - Free (GPL) .net IDE, requires the .net framework and SDK
Bloodshed Dev-C++ - Excellent free (GPL) C and C++ IDE, using the Windows GCC port

You asked for suggestions on IDEs? I use IBM's free Eclipse with QNX's free C/C++ extension called CDT everyday on both linux and windose (Well actually my buddy uses the linux port). It is phenomenal and getting better everyday. I am using a old borland compiler but you can use any C/C++ compiler you want including gcc. I don't program in the .Net world but I am pretty sure there is a .Net plugin somewhere. And if you can't find one you can write one pretty quickly with IBM's plugin development perspective.

I'm into rippin' my CDs for my Turtle Beach Audiotron (fair use, RIAA jerks) so I also am not without EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to rip beautifully to .wav, LAME to convert to .mp3, MP3Gain to normalize, and ID3-Taggit to manage tags and filenames. Details

Sigh.

I've had a Tutrle Beach audiotron for 2 years now, and it's great. While it requires a computer with a web browser for initial setup of the radio service, after that you don't need a computer.

While it does rely on a runing server for initial sertup (called Turtle Radio) to pick your favorite channels and download the station list to the unit.

The only drawback is that you can't enter a radio URL directly into the machine.

However, I do the majority of my net radio listening on this device. And while it's only limited to MP3 streams, I don't find that much of a problem.

There ARE tools that support WAV tagging. Try ATWavTag, designed to be used with the Turtle Beach AudioTron , a network connected MP3/WMA/WAV player.

The AudioTron is a neat gadget by the way, you should check out the geeks who support it.

My guess is they are trying to compete with the Linksys, the Turtle Beach Audiotron, and others...

Maybe combine it with a home NAS device (easy to expand a Tivo into that, I would think).

not quite true. the real reasons most players don't support ogg are:

1. flash costs money. the amount of sales generated from adding ogg support are not sufficient to justify adding the additional 128kb of flash or so that would be required to throw in an ogg decoder on every single device shipped. you'll notice that most harddrive based devices (such as the phatbox or audiotron) have quickly added ogg support, since it essentially costs them nothing.

2. integer-math ogg decoders have not been around for too long, and are still fairly processor intensive. as optimizations to the tremor code occur, expect to see more ogg implementations out there.

DIY for Mac, as an example

Otherwise, there are commercial choices from Philips, HP, Sony, Kenwood, Hauppauge ($100) and Turtle Beach ($300).

...read this for more...

There's actually a reason you don't see this done more often: Unamplified audio (like the stuff coming from a soundcard) doesn't travel very far. 20, 30 feet max before you start getting signal degradation. You'd be better off getting 4 cheap PCs with cheap soundcards and mounting everything remotely over NFS (and there are already stereo components that do this exact same thing.) I know it sounds like a fun project, but you can buy products like this that allow you to access your MP3 collection and control it remotely (via http, remote control, etc.) Basically, you're gonna need some sort of player at every amp, otherwise it's just not gonna sound good.

More than that, you can have multiple Audiotrons around the house playing different tracks from the same library. Better still, your library need not be on a single machine, so your have your music on your machine, your S.O. on another, and the kids on yet a third, but to the Audiotron spread throughout your home, it's one big happy library.

This is basically a refinement of the suggestion of an amp in each room with some sort of simple/slow/old machine acting as a basic interface and player, only the a-tron is your interface machine. This works well because the atron sports a scroll wheel and large LED display so getting to music is easy. Plus, it looks like a stereo component and is fanless.

Combine this a Phillips Pronto remote or three and you've got a full house, highly configureable sound supersystem. Heck, you can even change tracks on all the a-trons in the house from a web browser.

Anyway, maybe you can tell I like my audiotron. To me, it's clearly the best solution.

Here's the atron site

Not to piss all over the hax0r spirit, but why not look into something like the Audiotron from Turtle Beach. It's a bit on the pricey side, but it's great for serving up (actually receiving) MP3s to a stereo over CAT5 from some machine in your home.

Uncle Eazy

Info here

Run Cat 5 to each of these in every room. Set up a file server containing all of your music (windows or linux will do just fine).

-ted

First off, read the below past comments on this article. It ran just recently, and will answer alot of your questions concerning maximum suggested length of audio cable to run, among other options for wiring.
Best Options for a Home Entertainment Network?

Second, you really have to analyze your scenario (i.e. length of audio cord, zoning, etc.) to determine how you want to serve and interface with your MP3 server(s). My opinion, run as much damn ethernet as possible....lots and lots I tell you (unless of course you just install smurf tube). Additionally, dont be silly and attempt to control the volume from the server software. Keep your recievers at a nice level, and install inwall slider switches for volume control to the speakers.

Now to go off the deep end, I will describe my scenario, and all the n-th opinions that I debated with.

I wanted 3 zones in my home: Basement, Kitchen/Living Room/Dining Room, Master Bedroom/Bathroom. Each room has its own set of square inwall speakers, or round ceiling speakers; however are clumped in the zones as described. Server must be out of site in the basement wash room (Wife requirement 1.001.A).

So after measuring how much audio cable I would have to run from the basement to the 3rd floor master bedroom/bathroom, it was time for a new plan (the other zones are no problem since the other zone is directly above the basement wash room).

My scenario is that I originally wanted one MP3 server with multiple audio cards. After many nights giving this a try with XMMS, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player (8, 9, 8-SDK, 9-SDK) I came to the conclusion that it is a pain in the butt. This is especially true if you are using multiple brands of audio cards and/or older machines. Additionally, this still does not solve your multiple reciever problem (or buying a little more expensive mulitple input/output reciever). If you have multiple older machines, use those for multiple severs, *not* client selection machines....I will get to this later.

Because I had such a stretch from the server room to the bedroom zone, I decided that I will need to have another server in the bedroom. I toggled between the option of either a Hush Computer or a Audiotron. Both are silent, small, and look nice in your TV cabinet.

Even though the AudioTron, Winamp, XMMS, all have APIs; I decided a long time ago that I would write my own MP3 server software with WMP SDK and DirectX (so guess my choice of OS). Because I have complete control of the software I created my audio network as such:

• Lots and lots of ethernet
• Small audio network in the Master bedroom/bathroom. 2 rounds in the bedroom, 2 rounds in the bathroom, Hush computer in the TV stand which recieves remote software commands (like timed events) from the server and utilizes a network share of all the music from the server. My next task is to write the front end, hook up the SVid out to the TV, and hook up some IR controls such that I can control the MP3 selection with my remote (Sony Commander). Having the second (loose term) proxy/dumb server, solves my multiple server/audio cards problem. IMHO, if the audio cable is to far to stretch, link a middle computer with the server with your ethernet, and consider making your zones as large as the maximum length of strung audio cable (hence you never have a server with multiple audio cards). Yes, I know that it may suck that you may not listen to different music than a room that is 5 feet away, but deal with it, it is a small price to pay (this was my sacrifice of clumping together the Dining Room/Kitchen/Living Room; however this works out really slick)
• Basement Washroom/Server Room. A tad beefy, but a 1.4 ghz machine as my server. Sinc

Microsoft has been adamant that the Xbox is and will remain a gaming platform. Period. The knee-jerk reaction to news of additional capabilities, such as voice and music, is "The Xboxes aren't selling as game consoles, so they're trying other applications in hopes of selling more boxes."

This doesn't make much sense when one considers that Microsoft loses money on every Xbox. The bill of materials is $400-$500, and they retail for $200. That difference can't be made up on volume. This business model is to lose money on the consoles but make it back (and then some) on the games, much like the razor/blade model. Games are high-margin products, especially those created in-house, and I would think that the Xbox business case is dependent upon preserving those margins. So pushing the Xbox as an enabler of low-margin services doesn't make much sense. Let's look at those mentioned...

Voice
Sure, Xbox Live voice quality is pretty good. Since Xbox Live requires broadband, it's not tough to obtain toll quality. But why would they want to? There are many reasons why voice over IP hasn't taken off (customers don't want to be tethered to their PCs, long distance is already cheap -- you'd better not be paying more than $0.05/minute for interstate calls), and to my knowledge Xbox Live doesn't have the billing capabilities required for voice services. The article states that Microsoft would move the chat capability to the Xbox Live dashboard, which implies the requirement of an Xbox Live subscription. It's unlikely that this feature would convince consumers to subscribe to Xbox Live. Microsoft would also need VOIP-PSTN gateways, so their customers can call people who don't use an Xbox. Telephone service is complicated. Maybe Microsoft would partner with a company such as Vonage, but they certainly aren't the easiest to work with.

Music
A neat capability, much like the QCast Tuner for the PlayStation 2. Consumers have shown little willingness to pay for this, however, as they're accustomed to free players. Service like Rhapsody and pressplay would undoubtedly benefit from freedom from the shackles of the PC, but their revenue shares are micenuts compared with Microsoft's costs. Given the current crop of LAN-to-stereo bridges, like the AudioTron and the SimpleFi, the Xbox does stand out, but this advantage may be gone in a few months when the likes of Linksys launch its low-cost device.

Movies
One of the reasons for Movielink's slow start is the simple fact that most consumers prefer to watch movies on their TVs, not their PCs. This problem is defeated with the Xbox in the mix, as it enables high-quality video output to the TV. Perhaps Microsoft plans to download the top 3-4 pay per view movies to the Xbox hard drive each night (Movielink movies are 500-600MB each, so they would easily fit on the 8-9GB Xbox HDD), so when the consumer chooses a popular movie playback begins immediately. The margins on this business are low, too. And Microsoft will compete with existing TV-based PPV and Video on Demand, which is slowly rolling out to cable systems. This makes a tough market even tougher.

Summary
Low margin + low penetration services will not lift the Xbox to profitability. Great games will. Strong Xbox Live games will give customers a reason to pay $9.95 a month for the service. Hopefully the EA/AOL exclusivity deal will end soon, so Xbox can benefit from good sports titles. Until the games improve, Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They have the cash to be patient, however.

Disclaimer: I work fo

Here a Tom's Hardware Guide to Music Across Your Home Network

DesignTechnica gives it a 9/10.

musicians, on the other hand, buy turtle beach sound cards...

You could upgrade to the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card.

IMO, Sensaura's 3D positional audio is vastly superior to the Creative stuff and makes a huge difference with first person games. Really good drivers as well.

And for the price, there's simply no comparison whatsoever.

True, One of the reasons I got a Audiotron, was because of the optical output.
btw, they should have a new line of boxes out "any day now".
Oh yeah, and to all the "just build a PC". It's hard to explain, but a device like the audiotron works really well. Streaming and MP3s really get nicely integrated into your current setup in a way no homebuilt mp3/streaming-pc-player can to. It's easy to use with the remote or front panel. no fans humming, it just "feels" like another stereo component, which I think is cool.

WiFi or not, I'd rather still have a Turtle Beach Audiotron connected to my home stereo!

I think I'll keep my Audiotron. At least I can play whatever I want in streams ans has an optical output for my preamp. And Turtlebeach actually listens to people on their mailing list and they release Firmware updates, including beta-ones to play with. The Philips unit, looks like something I would have in my kitchen(which is fine), but I'd really prefer the Audiotron in my stereo stack.

This is good news in a nebulous sense, but what about actually getting 3rd party adoption? How many players out there support FLAC? Or even Ogg Vorbis?

I've been contemplating a digital audio player like the Turtle Beach AudioTron for awhile now, and while the AT has better support for a variety of formats than most, it's missing both FLAC and OGG (and the developers have stated it's not coming due to lack of CPU power).

I'd love to encode all my CDs onto a central server and have several units around the house playing from that. But I'd rather not rip around 1000 CDs more than once. And it's still not cost effective to just store them as WAVs - using FLAC would double the capacity.

Yeah, I know... Samba can translate files on the fly now, but that requires a good bit of horsepower. The Celeron 300A in the server just isn't going to be capable of transcoding FLAC->anything in real time, much less do it for 2 or 3 streams at once.

I guess the question is, what's holding back consumer electronics companies from implementing OGG and FLAC support? Is it technical, financial, or what? And what can Xiph do to help them in this?

I recommend the Audiotron. It plays streams over the internet, mp3s, wmas and can be totally configured and controlled over a web interface. More importantly it has a digital output so the quality is there (as long as your mp3s are good quality, of course).

Slashdotters, before you slam this thing, please consider the following facts:

not everyone has a spare PC or two lying around the house
some people DON'T have their PC sitting in the middle of their family room, right next to the stereo.
people value elegance



Hmmm, yeah companies like turtle beach or Sonic Blue should have came up with and idea like this...

they could have sold it under the names like audiotron or Rio reciever

what a great Idea! you are such a smart feller!

Think about it... someone could have mp3's playing without a computer! I wish the above 2 companies would have thought of that 2 years ago...Oh wait.... they DID!

I have seen that Digitally Imported has a audio P2P option from allcast.
I am not using it personally as I am listening to the shoutcast streams on my Audiotron, so I don't know if it's worth anything, but the idea is nice.

As another happy Audiotron user, I will also point out that it is not only controllable from it's ethernet connection (both web interface and a programatic interface) but it has an IR remote. It's a nice device that integrates well into an audio rack.

Sadly, no ogg yet -- they too are wrestling with the shoe horning of ogg into an ARM processor.

I use the Turtle Beach Audiotron, and in fact am listening to it while I type this.