Christmas is coming, it's voucher time.

I’ll admit it, I’ve lost track of time. We’ve been so busy these last few weeks it’s been heads down, nose to the grindstone, backs to the wall. Just didn’t look at the calendar. CD ripping like crazy.

We have several amazing clients but one I think of each year is the lady who has bought a Christmas voucher every year for four years. On Monday she rang to remind me what time of the year it is, yes, it’s voucher time. This year we’ve added a bit of a twist, the chance to secure a 10% discount simply by paying in advance. You can take the discount either by paying that bit less for the voucher or by having an extra 10% of CDs ripped by us. Alternatively we’ll bill you after the project is complete.

Click here to read more about our Christmas vouchers.

NAS plus Wi-Fi Spells Trouble

How time flies, about a year ago we undertook a large CD ripping project for a client, around 600 CDs into AIFF format. He is a teacher, which has nothing to do with the fact that he was planning to put all his music onto a NAS drive. Why a NAS? Mainly because he intended to buy a Sonos system and the NAS would enable him to access his digital music without having to leave his computer on. With young children he's prefer to be able to switch his computer off in the evening so his small children wouldn't be disturbed. He couldn't decide whether to go for a simple single drive NAS or a RAID based system. We decided the best thing to do would be to put his music onto basic USB hard drive, he could then copy that across to the NAS drive when he'd bought it. He rang at the beginning of the week. It's half term and his homework was to copy the music onto the NAS drive. I know its a long delayed project but he'd changed jobs, you know how time flies. Two days in and he was having problems. The NAS drive has a USB port and he'd hoped he'd be able to simply copy back from the USB drive into the NAS. That isn't a facility supported by this unit. Those I've looked at only allow the USB port to be used to copy off the NAS and onto a USB as a backup. I'm sure someone, somewhere, will add this feature but so far as I know not just yet. He'd found that out not just from the manual but by trying to make it work. So on Monday he connected everything up and started the process of copying the contents of the hard drive across. It was going badly. His USB drive was connected to his laptop, which connects wirelessly to his router, and that connects directly to his NAS via an ethernet cable. He felt confident the process would go smoothly as he has a swish router with the latest N level data transfer rate. By late Tuesday he was running out of patience. He'd been forced to abandon several copy runs (just seemed to hang with no observable progress), as the data transfer process got underway there were protests from kids and wife, the task seemed to kill the network. Worst the progress bar, when it moved, did so very slowly. He despaired that he'd actually get all the data across before the half term holiday was over. He rang for help. First thing to have in mind is the amount of data that needs to be transmitted. There's the music, plus the overhead of the many commands and acknowledgements that are built into any network operation. Wirelessly this is much slower than over ethernet, and there's the additional overhead of traffic conflicts, interference with the signal, bodies walking around. Massive data transfer over the airwaves are exceptionally slow. You really need to ditch the Wi-Fi and go with a bit of blue cable. As a rough guide I'd expect a wireless transfer of this amount of data would take around 150 hours. Yes, that's a lot of hours. Valuing domestic harmony, and seeing the horizon of the end of the holiday fast approaching he brought both drives over here and we did it across our network. I set it to run at about 18:30 and it was done before 09:00 the next morning. The first prediction from the progress bar was 14 hours but I think the final stop watch would have been short of that. We used an ancient Belkin router, if we'd done it across the new Apple router that's sat there waiting to be configured I'm sure it would have been faster.

NAS, USB and Wi-Fi

I’m putting up a longer entry on our Blogger site so I’ll be more concise here.

CD ripping can be slow, but nothing compared to the time it takes to get digital music files onto a NAS drive. So, if you’ve got a lot of music be prepared as it is likely to take many hours.

Remember that the published speed of your Wi-Fi was written by the marketing department, in real life data transfer rates are much, much slower. It simply isn’t worth the trouble to try to load a NAS drive over a wireless connection. Too slow, too prone to transmission breaks and you’ll be very unpopular with other network users who will think the internet has died.

Do it across ethernet cables connected to a router. Even consider buying a cheap router, it will save you many hours.

Fat 32 Shot in Foot

Typical, late Friday and I'm in a rush as we're off to have a meal with friends. Wanting to clear the decks the final task is to get some digital music from my production platform onto a USB drive for a client. We've done a lot of CD ripping this week so I had nearly 475 Gb of data on my system to be copied across to a USB drive ready to return to our client on Monday. Plug in USB drive, identify folder with clients music, drag and drop onto new USB drive. Shoot off for a curry. Into the hutch this morning, calamity. The folder had been copied but there was a window listing 150 error messages and sub-folders which hadn't been copied over. Tragically simple explanation - my production system runs Windows Vista and the drive is NTFS, which supports long file and folder names, This clients music is mainly classical so we have folder and track names derived from the artist. This is a combination of conductor, soloist and orchestra which generates lost of characters. The USB drive is formatted to FAT 32 with its limitation of much shorter file names. One way round this is to go into each errored folder find the long name then edit it down to a shorter name. This will work but it's hard to be certain you hit every single file. One mistake and you're facing a real mess. The better way to do it is use the Library / Consolidate command from within iTunes to first point from the 'old' NTFS location to the 'new' USB location and let iTunes do the hard work. Which is what the machine is doing now, it's why I am writing this (to remind me to be more careful next time), and why I wasted several hours of processing time last night.

The Word is .....

... streaming. Why? I read two things yesterday, both of which could have a massive impact on our CD ripping business and the way people access music. First, there's a rumour that Apple will soon scrap (or "discontinue") the iPod Classic. This has been the stalwart of the range for years, and it's the device most of our clients use. My prediction has been that it would be upgraded with flash memory to replace that revolving hard drive. Greater capacity, lighter, longer battery life, more reliable. Seems that's not to happen. Second, Amazon launched their iPad alternative, the Fire. It has a new browser called Silk which is incredibly clever. Amazon are pitching this as the device through which you can access all your media (music, photos, films, TV shows) which would be stored on Amazon's massive computing platform. No, not your PC or Mac, not using a sync function such as iTunes. It would all be stored in the cloud. So it just occurred to me that the replacement for the iPod Classic would be a device which would facilitate access to music, films, videos and photos; all of which is held somewhere else. Of course Apple have already announced where that place will be, it will be their implementation of cloud computing. In the case of Amazon and (if it happens) Apple your music and other 'stuff' will arrive via a constant on line delivery mechanism. Streaming.

Home Automation & Technology in Manilla

Every so often clients ask us to visit their home or office to help out with their technology, usually some problem with computers and music, or their network. Typically they are in or around London and frankly there are time when, sitting in traffic, I wish I was far, far, away.

Manila?

Well, being realistic nobody is going to ask me to the Manila just to sort out a music server, specially when there’s a local specialist who can help you better. Looking at Dip’s new website for his team of technology support professionals in Manila.

Digging around on the site I saw a cute little portable music player called Playbutton. It’s a wearable music player, as the name implies, it looks just like a button (as in the American political campaign button) connected to headphones. It’s a great idea, just in America I’d look to customise the surface area - as the site says, the device opens up opportunities in retail and museums.

Manilatech, check them out.

Wireless? Less Hassle?

One of the jobs I’ve been putting off is re-routing the cabling we use to link our CD ripping systems. When we first started we had a couple of PCs, one went through the other and out to the internet via a simple USB modem. Then we got bigger so more machines and a wireless router.

When we left the house and moved out into The Hutch I carried on with using wireless USB dongles. Now we’re wanting faster, more reliable data access so each system is now hard wired into an Apple wireless modem we’re running as a bridge to the main building where our broadband terminates. And all of those cables have to be re-aligned.

What complicates this is the three sets of speakers somehow we’ve picked up along the way and now can’t live without. This has given me an interest in wireless speakers. At the moment there seems to be three options on how to link wireless speakers.

First, Bluetooth. You need to have suitably enabled Bluetooth PCs as a starting point. The laptops are MacBooks so they’re OK but a couple of PCs would need upgrading, eating up a USB port each time. Second, you can use Apple’s Airplay system to send your music (along with data) across your home wireless network. Apple’s isn’t the only wireless method of connecting and streaming but for us (and our clients) it’s the obvious choice.

The third option is to use a proprietary system - one mentioned recently is Kleer - which uses special senders and receivers to make the connection. The worst of each world? Possibly, you need to dedicate a port to a USB dongle style device but you’ll be able to stream more data, more quickly. If you’re looking for the highest quality this may be the route to take.

Cloud Streaming?

Yesterday I came across a video giving a sneak preview of iTunes Match, Apple's cloud based music storage facility. I posted a link to it on the podServe Facebook page. The video appeared to show how this new service will both store and stream your music direct from the cloud to a portable music player with web access (iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch).

Today I saw another video which if correct "proves" that at least at the prototype stage Match does not stream music. Instead tracks are downloaded to the device and played from there.

Which is correct? I don't know. Does it matter? Well, yes. Let me give you one example.

We run a CD ripping service and naturally clients ask us which is the best music player? Our clients typically have very large music collections so the obvious choice would be the iPod Classic. Big internal hard drive, just dying to be loaded with as much music as possible. But beyond that, not a great deal of use. Compare that with the iPod Touch which allows you to access the internet and also has a better range of games; or the iPhone, one of the best smartphones, which is used by many of our clients already.

Well I'd say if iTunes Match actually streams music the better option is to go with the iPhone or iPod Touch. That way, via mobile web access, you'll be able to play all your music and tackle many other tasks. No streaming, well back to the iPod Classic as our preferred iPod.

How many MP3s on a CD?

One of our clients asked a simple question - how many MP3s can I get on a CD?

He has a new car and the stereo will play digital music direct from a CD. So, how many can he put on each disc? Shouldn’t be too hard to answer.

OK, a standard CD with music, such as you used to buy in HMV, stores just over an hour, say 70 minutes. However in data terms that’s around 750 Mb.

MP3 music is in data file format so the roundabout answer is as much music as will take up 750 Mb. As a CD ripping service we rip at 256 kbps into AAC format, the equivalent in MP3 would be 320 kbps. In our format you’d get much more music in digital format, around 7 CDs worth. As MP3 files the answer would be around 5 CDs worth. Roughly.

You could get more if you dropped the quality setting, so the music files are more compressed. The quality is worse, but that may not be a problem if the in car sound system is less than top notch. You could go down to 128 kbps for music and the sound might be acceptable.

If you were recording spoken voice (such as audio books) you can drop as low as 64 kbps and the quality will be acceptable, there just isn’t so much data in a speech compared to a symphony.

So, how many MP3s can you get on a CD? This CD ripping service says 5,7 music CDs or 12 CDs worth of spoken voice.

CD & DVD Copyright - Sense at Last

As the owner of the UK's first CD ripping service I've felt the force of the music industry. They were upset and made their feelings known. They were the powers that be and they were going to close us down, forthwith. Letters and meetings followed, and quite a few threats too.

Eventually it all calmed down. The PRS issued a statement saying nobody would be prosecuted for CD ripping provided it was for personal use. And Apple sold a few more million iPods, along with the train loads of other MP3 players, quite a crowded market a few years ago. In all these years I don't believe either our activity or that of any iPod owner has significantly impacted on the issue of file sharing or music piracy. How did anyone think that all those iPods got their music, other than from CD ripping?

Now, faced with the undeniable fact that everyone has been ripping CDs, the Uk government is planning to allow "format shifting" for CDs and DVDs. That's to say, if you own a plastic disc with music or film you will be allowed to rip those into a digital format, provided it's for your own use. Given that everybody is, and has been, doing this it's a recognition that even if this practice is frowned upon it's unprosecutable.

We moved into DVD ripping. Our clients demanded this and we gave in to requests. At the outset we were mainly ripping home movies and from that we got into converting video tapes into DVDs and computer files. People wanted several things. First, the greater ease of use of the DVD compared to a video tape (even for those who still had a working camcorder); second the ability to edit footage given the greater power of PCs and good software; and thirdly the better availability of film at home via video streaming technology.

Today we are in the position that music and film is better, from virtually every perspective, as a digital file rather than a plastic disc. It is a recognition of the inevitable. It's a dose of legal fresh air in what had become a rather stuffy room.

As a small footnote, and maybe an example of clever timing, action is being taken against two solicitors who zealously initiated procedings against alleged file sharers. I don't have any sympathy with people who steal games and movies, but solicitors sending letters simply demanding large sums of money to avoid prosecution is simply wrong. It was employing the weight and more importantly the cost of legal procedings to scare people into paying.

Today's announcement will bring a much needed dose of common sense to this area.