VB player - ignorant newbie

[24seven]

Hi all,

I have been busy reading around the forum and the VBUK website and am a little confused still; hopefully someone can provide some more guidance please?


I would like to store my digital music collection on a VB, attach a DAC and connect the DAC to my existing audio system.

Q1) I presume that the Shin Kin DAC available on the VBUK website works well with the VB; is this connected via USB?

I would like to use the player functionality onboard the VB and NOT have another product (i.e. SB Touch etc). Ideally i would then control this using an android device or another remote.

Q2) Simple question, but presumably you can do playlists, random play and the like with the VB player controlled by an android device or another remote?

Q3) Assuming the answer to Q2 is YES, then what exactly does, say a SB Touch, give one additionally?

Q4) With regards to the "another remote", the SB remote is mentioned in many places; is this the remote that comes with a squeezebox or the squeezebox controller (wireless remote) available on the Logitech website?

It seems that you can run VB player with or without squeezebox server (the latter case using MPoD or MPad app).

Q5) What are the pros and cons of bypassing or not the squeezebox server?

Q6) If you bypass the squeezebox server, is there a suitable android app to control VB player?

Q7) If you do not bypass the squeezebox server, which are the best android apps to control VB player?

Finally, sorry for the long list of questions, but the last one:

Q8) Is the above setup simple, reliable and suitable for someone with no linux knowledge and no inclination to get involved in complicated configuration issues?


Thanks in advance for any help received!

[garym]

I can't really address most of your questions, but I can add some thoughts on the use of SB players. I know nothing about linux by the way. As you can see from my signature, I have lots of SB players. The advantages I see:

1. The VBA can be placed in a back closet away from the listening room(s). Only the SB player needs to be near the stereo, not the VBA itself.
2. SB players in different rooms can be synched perfectly (play the same exact audio) or I can play different things in different rooms (at the same time).
3. I can control all my SB players with many different approaches (see sig). My wife prefers some and I prefer others. All my stuff is mostly ithings, but there are SB android control apps I believe.
4. For me, the SB stuff with VBA has been rock solid. My VBA is on 24/7 and works month after month with nary a reboot. Most importantly, my wife can pick up a controller, select the music she wants or internet radio, etc. and it just works. Because of my autosensing amp, she's never more than a click away for everything simply "working".

Of course if you want to put the VBA next to your stereo and you only want one music source (no need for synching/controlling multiple rooms), you may be perfectly good with no SB players at all.

[24seven]

I can't really address most of your questions, but I can add some thoughts on the use of SB players. I know nothing about linux by the way. As you can see from my signature, I have lots of SB players. The advantages I see:

1. The VBA can be placed in a back closet away from the listening room(s). Only the SB player needs to be near the stereo, not the VBA itself.
2. SB players in different rooms can be synched perfectly (play the same exact audio) or I can play different things in different rooms (at the same time).
3. I can control all my SB players with many different approaches (see sig). My wife prefers some and I prefer others. All my stuff is mostly ithings, but there are SB android control apps I believe.
4. For me, the SB stuff with VBA has been rock solid. My VBA is on 24/7 and works month after month with nary a reboot. Most importantly, my wife can pick up a controller, select the music she wants or internet radio, etc. and it just works. Because of my autosensing amp, she's never more than a click away for everything simply "working".

Of course if you want to put the VBA next to your stereo and you only want one music source (no need for synching/controlling multiple rooms), you may be perfectly good with no SB players at all.

Gary, thanks for your thoughts. I don't have anything against SB at this moment, just currently don't have the cash to purchase that as well.

[garym]

Gary, thanks for your thoughts. I don't have anything against SB at this moment, just currently don't have the cash to purchase that as well.

got it. and I'm not pushing SB either, just answering your question about the additional benefits a SB provides. I do read that plenty of people use DACs with VB player, so that probably works fine (I assume via USB connection or S/PDIF). But no knowledge on the control aspect (other than the fact that you can use SbS/LMS to feed the VB player and I do know that the VB Player will show up as a Player on any of the control apps that control SB players).

[mintaudio]

The VB Player can be controlled by any of the squeezebox smartphone/ipad/ipod apps or indeed an old squeezebox duet controller. It behaves just like an old model squeezebox.
The downsides are that not all plugins work with VB Player (Spotify being a notable one, although the similar Deezer service plugin works perfectly).

Pretty simple to set up - no linux knowledge needed, and if you get stuck just post back in here and you will find plenty of help.

[mintaudio]

And USB dac is the way to go. You may need to change the soundcard settings in the VB Player to suit. (If you have the onboard soundcard, then hw:1,0 normally or hw:0,0 if you have disabled the onboard soundcard in the bios)

[Prince Wobblebottom]

The main problem with Vortexbox Player is that it is not gapless and will therefore add gaps where they don't belong. How annoying this is depends on the way you play music and what you listen to. Drove me nuts so I use Squeezeslave. I don't have any Logitech hardware, just VBA, DAC, hifi and laptop or android phone with Squeeze Commander to use as a remote, works fine except for all the annoying updates, but thats a seperate issue.

[mintaudio]

If you use VB Player in mpd mode using something like the MPDroid app to control it, you get gapless playback.

[Ron Olsen]

See How To Install Squeezeslave (http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki-index.php?page=Squeezeslave) for a comparison of VortexBox Player and Squeezeslave.

[24seven]

Thanks all for your useful information - I am a lot clearer now.

One further clarification:

Prince Wobblebottom, your annoying updates; are you referring to the VB or the Squeeze Commander app?

[hifihere]

My vote goes to using MPDroid on your wireless and Gnome on your PC (if needed). You will get direct control of MPD, the core player in VB. This offers the best sound and gapless playback. You will need to initially setup ALSA mixer and device settings to output to your DAC properly. We are happy to guide you here.

[Prince Wobblebottom]

Thanks all for your useful information - I am a lot clearer now.

One further clarification:

Prince Wobblebottom, your annoying updates; are you referring to the VB or the Squeeze Commander app?

Vortexbox updates mainly - specifically updating from 1.10 to 2.0 which you can't do from the GUI. Updates frequently seem to end up causing problems that previously didn't exist in peoples nicely working systems, which would seem to negate the point in updating in the first place. I'm currently sticking with 1.10 as there seem to be a lot of problems with 2.0 looking at this forum and I can't see the gain to me as I have little knowledge of Linux, fedora etc and therefore will wait till everyone else irons out the bumps. I would say Vortexbox is for semi geeks and above not komputer dummies like me:o