Re: Options for central audio and lighting

["mark_harrison_uk2" <mph@xxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Duncan J Poxon" <dpoxon@c...>
wrote:
>
> Mark,
> [...]
> I'm really interested in the networked mp3 players. Can you
> point me towards somewhere to get more info on the four that
> you mention? I'm also intrigued whether the audio quality is
> up to the job - what do they use for amplification? Also, how
> do you control them, because I like the wall controllers that
> companies like Opus use (ie a wall controller and an ir
> point for remote control) but as you know, very expensive.

Duncan,

The Rio isn't avaialble any more, except that they come up from time
to time on eBay. The reason the Rio holds my interest is that I have
6 of them :-)

The Audiotron and the Exstreamer are both available from Laser
(www.laser.com). If you look at the MP3 Players section of the Laser
site you'll find reams of info. (If you do decide to buy, Laser is
also a highly-recomended vendor on this list.)

I don't know that much about the SliMP3, other than that quite a few
people on this list have, and swear by them, including some with some
fairly high-end hi-fi, which brings us to sound quality.

I'd put the Rio as less good than my old DVD player (A Pioneer 717).
With MP3s, however, you need to be very careful choosing your
encoding options - there's a lot more difference between a poorly
encoded MP3 and a well encoded MP3 than there is between a well-
encoded MP3 and a good CD.

On the comparative sound quality of the items - see my next post.

For control, I use a mix of Prontos and web browsers. Each has a
different web interface, but pretty much the same functionality.
Control via the emerging connection standards such as xAP
(www.xapautomation.org) is under active development, and we _hope_ to
be showing working xAP control of all four at UKHA2003. Of the four,
the Audiotron is the least developed, since it has the most
proprietary architecture.

Regards,

Mark


http://www.automatedhome.co.uk
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