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Music As An Afterthought...

J

Joelc

Well-known member
I am interested in K mainly for its Blu-ray/DVD distribution, playback and storage capabilities...

I was, at first, not thinking about K as an audio distribution, playback or storage system as i) I have a SONOS system with 9 zones that works flawlessly and ii) moving to K like system would require "home remodeling" in terms of amplifiers, etc. because of the elegance/simplicity of the SONOS system..

That said, it could make sense to integrate/use the K system for its audio capabilities in my home theatre as well as family room and in this regard I have a few questions for the experts [with much thanks in advance]:

i) My music library is already ripped and stored in lossless format. Is it possible to import this library from my NAS drive to the K system or would I have to reload all of my CDs [and, yes, I have CDs fro every album as I want bit-perfect, high quality rips].

ii) Perhaps a naive question but does K rip CDs in bi-perfect lossless format [i.e. a la dBPoweramp]?

iii) What are K's capabilities regarding high-resolution audio [though this is at present not critical to me as I have very few 96kHz disks]

iv) What file format does K use for ripping and storing CDs.

With much thanks in advance,


Joel
 
Joelc said:
I am interested in K mainly for its Blu-ray/DVD distribution, playback and storage capabilities...

I was, at first, not thinking about K as an audio distribution, playback or storage system as i) I have a SONOS system with 9 zones that works flawlessly and ii) moving to K like system would require "home remodeling" in terms of amplifiers, etc. because of the elegance/simplicity of the SONOS system..

That said, it could make sense to integrate/use the K system for its audio capabilities in my home theatre as well as family room and in this regard I have a few questions for the experts [with much thanks in advance]:

i) My music library is already ripped and stored in lossless format. Is it possible to import this library from my NAS drive to the K system or would I have to reload all of my CDs [and, yes, I have CDs fro every album as I want bit-perfect, high quality rips].

ii) Perhaps a naive question but does K rip CDs in bi-perfect lossless format [i.e. a la dBPoweramp]?

iii) What are K's capabilities regarding high-resolution audio [though this is at present not critical to me as I have very few 96kHz disks]

iv) What file format does K use for ripping and storing CDs.

With much thanks in advance,


Joel
Click to expand...



The Sonos system is owned by many K owners, so take from that what you will. I personally use the K Music Player and distribute to 3 rooms, but yes, there is a Receiver in each room. (You could of course use a distro system.)

At present, you can only get music into the K by importing CDs. You cannot do what you are asking.

K's proprietary software will make an exact, bit-for-bit copy of the importing CD (and DVD). It does apply some processing to help eliminate pops and clicks on some poorly authored or damaged CDs, but it is still an exact duplicate of the original (minus the noise).

The Players decode to 5.1, 48 kHz PCM.

They use their own proprietary software.

Others may have additional info/experiences.:)


Jim
 
cinelife said:
The Sonos system is owned by many K owners, so take from that what you will. I personally use the K Music Player and distribute to 3 rooms, but yes, there is a receiver in each room. (You could of course use a distro system.)
Click to expand...

I can not use a distribution system as the need to i) buy the necessary amplification ii) re-wire portions of the house iii) re-wire the MA racks and iv) etc. make the economics not worthwhile...now, were I starting the process all over again...

There is also the issue that one zones MUST be wireless as it is impossible to get a cable to it...


cinelife said:
At present, you can only get music into the K by importing CDs. You cannot do what you are asking.
Click to expand...

Thanks but obviously too much of a hassle at this point as I already have the music system setup for i) bit perfect copies and ii) operating in a bullet proof fashion...


cinelife said:
K's proprietary software will make an exact, bit-for-bit copy of the importing CD (and DVD). It does apply some processing to help eliminate pops and clicks on some poorly authored or damaged CDs, but it is still an exact duplicate of the original (minus the noise).

The Players decode to 5.1, 48 kHz PCM.

They use their own proprietary software.
Click to expand...

Very helpful for future reference and should I ever get the desire [and approval :) ] to rip open the house once again...


With much thanks,


Joel
 
Joel,


i) My music library is already ripped and stored in lossless format. Is it possible to import this library from my NAS drive to the K system or would I have to reload all of my CDs [and, yes, I have CDs fro every album as I want bit-perfect, high quality rips].

Nope- like Jim said- you have to import via CD. And the MDV doesnt read CDs. This will be a tedious task with a large collection.

ii) Perhaps a naive question but does K rip CDs in bi-perfect lossless format [i.e. a la dBPoweramp]?

From what I can confirm by using a DTS audio CD as a test disc- this would not tolerate being resampled in any way- yes its a bit for bit copy. However, things get a little more complicated with playback. With the older players, on the HDMI output the audio gets resampled to 2 channel but at 48khz. However, using the SPDIF (optical or coax both are fine) gives you a bit accurate output at the native 2 channel 44.1khz. This is also true for the M class players. Using the HDMI gives you a 2 channel, 44.1khz output but inside a 5.1 channel "wrapper" so a surround processor such as mine will only apply 5.1 channel surround modes.

Bottom line: the best way to get audio out of a K movie player is the SPDIF. The music zone player gives bit accurate also over the SPDIF.

iii) What are K's capabilities regarding high-resolution audio [though this is at present not critical to me as I have very few 96kHz disks]

None.

iv) What file format does K use for ripping and storing CDs.

I don't know but I believe they are stored as disk images.

Though you didn't ask- IMHO- K's music capabilities are good; but whereas K is really the very best movie server- by quite a margin so far as I am aware- on music its just a bit more average. If you have something thats working well for you then Id stick with it. The one thing I would say though is K's excellent data protection could be an added benefit to running their music system.
 
Jerry:

Appreciate the feedback and, as always, most helpful...I think that the two key points are as follows:

1. If I have a working system for music that operates in a bullet proof fashion and that everyone knows how to use then there are are few/no advantages in moving to the K-system for music. This is particularly true when one adds in the additional cost I would need to incur in moving to the K-system for music.

2. In terms of the safety/security of the data in the K-system versus my NAS drive I am fairly comfortable with my NAS drive setup...I have am running 4 2 TB drives in a RAID 5 hot swappable configuration with backups occurring at the earlier of i) adding/deleting music or ii) every Sunday at 2:00 AM...the backups are kept off-site [i.e. at my office] in the event of a fire at home so I am feeling pretty good about this setup with the dual redundancy...

Thanks,


Joel
 
Last edited:
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