Re: dedicated cd players versus jukebox software: which is best?

[lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> I was thinking of making images of my cds onto the hard drive and then
> using some jukebox software to play them, but I have now seen that
> Sony sell a cd player that hold 300 discs! What are the
> advantages/disadvantages of each option? Which is best?

Had a sony changer, ditched it for hard disk based for lots of reasons:
- 300 is NOT enough CD's
- CD changing is very slow
- Only one person can listen to your collection at any one time.
- The changers waste a lot of space in a fairly small node0 ;)

Hard disk based means
- Shed loads more music.  Run out of space? just pop in another hard drive
- Changing tracks is very quick.
- You can stream to lots of different rooms simultaneously
- If you get a slimp, you can synchronise them in different rooms to play
the same thing.
- If you get an audiotron, even your granny should be able to use it.
- If you get a showcenter, you HAVE to control it via the TV
- Other options will fall somewhere between these.

If you do go hard drive based, you should do a bit of a pepsi challenge to
see which format you prefer and/or to be onthe safe side, rip everything
as lossless compressed AND the output format of choice so if you ever
decide to switch to a different format, you don't have to re-rip your
entire collection again, just batch convert from the lossless files.

Which is best?  They all are.  none of them are.  It's very subjective....