Sonos - A Bridge Too Far?

A few years ago I was in a hi-fi store, rudely eavesdropping on a conversation between a couple on Sonos. He was sold, she clearly thought this was (another) of her husband's daft ideas. I recognised the look I've seen so many times on my wife's face.

The salesman just passed a hand held Sonos controller to the lady and smiled. That was a really great sales tool, the wife scrolled though the music and clicked on a track. The shop was filled with "her" music, and she broke into a broad grin. I imagine they now enjoy a great Sonos system in their home.

On Saturday I found myself in a nearby PC World store. They now sell Sonos and there was another couple, him sold, her doubting. The salesman was trying to close the sale and telling rather than showing her, how easy the system is to operate. He didn't have a hand held controller (they abandoned that in favour of phone and iPad apps) and he hadn't linked his own phone to the in-store device. Her face was becoming more stony with every passing techno-babble second.

"What's that?" she said, in a tone of voice which, in the case of my own dear wife, means its never coming near our house.

The salesman explained it was the bridge, and at the moment it's free. Back home in Sonos HQ that's probably a big deal but over here, on a cold retail park on a dark December afternoon it's not a deal closer. You have to have it. "Why?" she said, not unreasonably. The PC World salesman tried to explain, and ended up with a lame you-have-to-have-it. But Mrs didn't want it. This time the husband tried "you'll hardly notice it's there" to which she retorted that she will, it takes up space, it gathers dust, it eats electricity, and it probably bleeps or flashes and keeps the kids awake or cause the hound to howl. "The other one didn't have one of those" she said, crushingly.

At this point I feared my eavesdropping was becoming noticed so I drifted off to another part of the store. Some minutes later we saw the couple walking across the car park, neither clutching a PC World or Sonos bag.

Since then I've been thinking. Yes, I understand why they dropped the controller in favour of apps, and sort of appreciate why they have the bridge unit, but somehow their stance might be comprehensible to the techies among us, to at least half Mr and Mrs Normal out shopping, it's an unnecessary bit of kit.

Sonos Alternative? From Pure?

Just seen this, it caught my eye as I love the Pure Avanti we invested in a year or two ago. Yes - could Pure become a serious alternative to Sonos? I've got some head scratching to do but this is the article in question.

Pure Connect iOS and Android apps updated.

No More Futures?

Every so often I've written about my hopes and dreams for Apple's iPod range, iTunes and Apple TV. I have been spectacularly wrong on every point. So at the time of the last major Apple product-fest I decided to hold my tongue even though many others were predicting upgrades to Apple TV and iTunes.

What was announced? Nothing. Why? Well I am coming to realise just how small a company Apple is and the ground they cover - from cloud computing, tablets, desktops, laptops plus all the software associated with an operating system (new version of Mac OS announced already) let alone major applications including iTunes.

And anyway, Apple are doing a great job. When it comes to home entertainment look how advanced Apple is compared to others. We've just finished a major DVD ripping project for a client who has invested in first class video streaming hardware. When you look at the connected TV the image is no better that you'd get with a connection to Apple TV and the mess of trying to resolve metadata with non-standard video file types is a nightmare.

Sure Sonos are selling their players in number. But nothing compares to Apple's dominance of the home entertainment sphere. Quiet upgrades have crept out and as Jobs used to say - Apple, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV - it all just works. That's not a bad lead to sit on.

iTunes Match? iCloud?

We're noticing a lot of demand from clients to deal with their iTunes Match account. Having looked into the details of the service, and also having experience of services such as Spotify, I can see why it's popular.

What is iTunes Match? OK - Match is a service which looks at the contents of your iTunes music library, if it sees music you have there it will make it available to other compatible devices. If those devices (max 10 in total) are computers (Apple or Windows) you can download a copy of that track, if the device is an iPhone you can stream your music. Streaming is the same as listening to your own music as if it were being played over the radio.

Confusingly Apple is now making available copies of purchased music via your iTunes account (at least if you look at the Apple USA website, my music isn't showing up in my iCloud account here in the UK). Very different to iTunes Match.

The way Match works is if a track is both in your library and iTunes Music Store Apple makes that track available to you instantly. So if you've got a cruddy old MP3 version of The Rolling Stones, good news, you'll have access to a much better quality new 256 Kbps version. Anything that doesn't Match - ie music you have ripped that iTunes Music Store doesn't hold - will then be uploaded to the cloud. That will be streamed to you later.

Match is a great service. It provides a pretty quick online backup / archive of your music. It enables you to get hold of your music on other devices, in other places, very easily. For many people you'll get a quality boost along the way too. Downside? Well, if you stream music to an iPhone while out and about check charges for data downloading.

Google All Access

Just a couple of days ago I read a music industry news letter explaining some numbers associated with the two main US music streaming services, Rdio and Spotify. The article highlighted the difficulty of getting people to move up from a free to a paid service. The service provider has to pay music royalties on all music paid, yet gets revenue from less than 10% of users who splash their cash. It's a tough business and the client churn rate is massive.

Enter Google with their music streaming service, All Access. Watching the announcement yesterday I was struck by how good the interface is (I'm not a fan of the new Spotify nor iTunes default). It's a paid service, no free option beyond a one month trial. So?

First, I believe people like try before you buy, it makes them feel comfortable. Is 30 days enough? Probably it is, given the number of your friends who will tell you how good streaming music is. If you want a longer term trial - opt for Spotify, if you like the style of the system you can then opt for the better provider. Trade up, makes sense.

Second, if I were Spotify I'd stay in bed today, for them this could be the beginning of the end.

If I were Apple I'd have been up extra early, now you have in Google and Amazon two guys who want to eat iTunes Music Store. Where's your streaming option?

International Family Sync

So here's the question - how do you make the following work?

Potential client travels extensively, homes in London and overseas, where members of his family (eight people in total) live, and of course enjoy music. He would like his music collection to be available to everyone, everywhere. They have a mix of iPods and iPhones.

Well my first thought was a cloud service such as Dropbox. That appears on your desktop pretty much as if it were a local drive, so computers in each location could be set up to reference their local version of a central Dropbox folder holding the family music. Two problems came to mind, one being the cost. Not the cost of using a CD ripping service but of buying close on 100 Gb of Dropbox space; but then if you can afford to live internationally I don't suppose the cost of a Dropbox account is a show stopper.

Second, and more significantly, is the fuss of adding more music to the library. A CD would need to be ripped then added to the Dropbox folder, then each local PC would have to reload their PC so that iTunes picks up the latest tracks. Sure you could simply "share" the central library but then the remote iPods won't be able to sync at all.

Having given this some thought the only viable solution I can see is to set up an iTunes Match account. It's around £25 pa, affordable, and you can connect up to 10 devices. Other Macs and PCs can be part of this network and changes made centrally are replicated across the network. Music can be streamed to the iPhones or loaded like an iPod in a sync process. This seems to me to be the most viable solution.

Add Album Art to AIFF Files

Are you one of those searching the internet for a method or maybe software that will embed album art into AIFF music files? If so I can suggest a workaround (in a paragraph or two).

First, why is it an issue? If you run iTunes you can search / add album art, free, if you have an iTunes store account. Dig around the iTunes menu and you'll find a way via Library to find and download album art. Then you'll see it neatly in your iTunes windows. But, suppose you don't use iTunes or you need to transfer tracks to another system. iTunes doesn't embed art into music files so you'll lose all those nice images. Ideally you'd like the little piccies stored safely along with the notes and other data.

Second, I am not ware of any software that will embed album art into AIFF files. We use three of the leading products in this field and none offers this function.

OK, patience repaid, here's the bodge method. If you rip your music CDs as Apple Lossless you'll find loads of programs that will add album art neatly into the right field. Then, use iTunes to convert from Lossless to AIFF, that will bring the cover images along with the music. Delete "source" Apple Lossless and you're done.

If you want to validate Lossless - AIFF against straight AIFF just use both methods and compare file sizes for each track from a couple of albums - will be the same. Simples.

Personalised iPhone Cases

While the number one use for scanned photos seems to be making photo albums we're always looking for innovative ways of using cherished digital images.

How about an iPhone case personalised with one (or more) of your own photos? Yes, photobox does them and not just for Apple's phones, but if you Google "personalised iPhone cover" you'll find a range of suppliers. If you only have printed photos and need digital, we can recommend a good photo scanning service.

CD Ripping & Album Artist Field

They don't always take our advice, and although I'm being paid to do it in a few minutes I have to grind my way through 100+ edits of album data for a client.

He has a substantial number of what iTunes thinks of a compilation CDs. Hotel Costes springs to mind, where a famous DJ puts together a collection of tracks; each one under its own artist attribution but the whole CD is directed by another person. How best to handle this?

My suggestion was to use the field "Album Artist" which we can add during CD ripping. This would result in the album name being what you see on the cover, each track is credited to the right artist but inside the Music file (should you ever need to look) the tracks are filed under that person's name, who can also be searched on and is listed in iTunes. No, this wasn't my clients desired strategy so instead I will need to insert the DJ's name before the name of the album in the album title field.

Had we done it my way the DJ's name would still appear in the Artist column in iTunes, and still be available to search, and the album name would remain untouched. But then the customer is always right (even when he's wrong) and I keep telling myself we are a service business so stick a smile on your face and get on with it.

iTunes Revamp - Time for a Rethink?

I don't know many people who have used iTunes longer than us, nor many who depend on it as part of their business. As I've often said, without Apple, the iPod and of course iTunes we wouldn't have a CD ripping service business.

Over the years I've helped people on iTunes and staunchly defended it against people in love with the latest gee-whiz music player, ripper, music management system or whatever. However even the most ardent Apple fan can't help but notice a sure and rising tide of negative comments about iTunes. Someone derided iTunes a day or two ago by referring to the latest version as a vain attempt to apply lipstick to a pig. That's a phrase that's been rattling round my head all week as I've been using the latest incarnation of iTunes. Hmmmm .....

I still want to try to defend iTunes but the latest tweaks have done nothing to help Apple's cause. Take a simple stat, how many tracks are there in your library? In the past a simple number at the bottom of the screen told you, but not now, it has simply been removed. That little number helped us enormously, particularly in a diagnostic situations, but now its gone. We miss it, why did Apple delete it?

For some reason iTunes reverts to the display which shows all your album covers, not the more detailed album / track / genre display. We don't find this very helpful but there's no way to override Apple's reference. Would that have been hard? Surely not.

Well I could go on - and I'll skip the massive size of the iTunes program - but I'm hoping Apple have recognised the tide has turned against them and us. I'm hoping a completely new iTunes is in the works. Soon, please.

CD Ripping - What 2013 Holds

Welcome to the New Year, and it's hard to believe another year of CD ripping lies ahead. Born of a period of childhood fads there have been times when I've thought people would lose interest in mobile music, or maybe streaming services such as Spotify would render us all pointless; but no, we are still here and looking forward to processing more CDs.

We are resolved to do better. First, we have taken steps to significantly improve throughput. During our first few years order sizes were around 200 - 250 CDs, we could handle this best by working around 9-17 using what has become six PCs. However when we got larger orders, 500+, it was a challenge to get this voulume of music converted in seven days. Over the last couple of years CD collections of over 1,000 discs have become common. We'd like to get those out in a week but it's hard to do that using the previous process of distributed systems. About six months ago we invested in a Nimbie CD ripper. This enables us to load up around 100 CDs and leave those to be ripped in a batch. Add a few evenings of unattended operation and throughput has gone up. For this reason we have another robotic CD ripping system on its way to us and we are hopeful that big collections next year will be ripped as quickly as smaller collections.

Second, we've taken steps to improve the quality of our Data Grooming service. These are very much 'under the hood' but we hope our clients like the results, even though it is a bit frustrating that clients don't normally appreciate just how much better their metadata is than it might have been.

Third, we're gaining more experience at delivering even higher quality music. When we started iTunes Music Store supplied music at 128 Kbps but we opted for twice that level with 256 Kbps AAC files. Today more clients are looking for lossless music which means returning files on DVDs has become unrealistic. So we've been down the USB thumbdrive route into USB connected external drives and into NAS drives. Additionally we're able to supply music on hard drives which can be installed inside a tower style system or in a bay of your NAS unit.

Taking these enhancements we're confident that 2013 will be our biggest and best year yet, and if you become one of our clients, we look forward to meeting you.