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I'm looking at moving from my Sonos setup to using a Grand Concerto. I want to have 6 zones of audio and the cost of the Sonos approach to that is so high I may as well get the GC.
The thing is that my music listening doesn't match up very well with the main CQC approach to things. For my MP3 needs I just want to be able to choose from a playlist that I've created (m3u) and have it play in whatever zone I want. I'll also have to figure out how to get a tuner playing through the GC so that I can get AM/FM radio, not looking for XM right now.
I have both J River and iTunes and don't have a preference for which one to use. Roughly 3k MP3s and about 30 playlists right now. I just want to be able to pick a playlist and an area to play it.
Whats the best way for me to approach this?
As a side note, if there was a Sonos driver then that would make this all easy for me. I could just keep one Sonos unit as the main MP3 source.
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While I'm not going to be of much help in answering this directly, I do recall Dean talking about playlist support for the iTunes repo. So any of the playlists you created in iTunes would be available to you in CQC. That's the most likely approach I'll take as well. I like to put all of my favorite songs in a playlist and then just browse around that.
On the AM/FM radio part with a Grand - you've got several options. The Nuvo tuner which can have 2 radios in it (no need for XM if you don't want it). That can be controlled easily by the Grand and the keypads (and I think CQC, but can't speak on that). Another option is to find another serial controlled tuner, there are some out there (I think parasound has one, you can check out the a/v receiver serial control thread). The last option is to take an older receiver and control it via IR. Of course you lose the feed back on that, but most people don't have a problem with it.
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make a copy of the songs in your playlists, re-import them into your library and set the albums to be the same. its what i do and it works out great for me. for example, i have a 'playlist' Top 100 of the 80s, so what I did was simply set the genre and album tag for those songs to Top 100 of the 80s. I suppose you could set the genre to Playlist and the album to Top 100 or whatever to make finding them easier.
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wolverines Wrote:On the AM/FM radio part with a Grand - you've got several options. The Nuvo tuner which can have 2 radios in it (no need for XM if you don't want it). That can be controlled easily by the Grand and the keypads (and I think CQC, but can't speak on that). Another option is to find another serial controlled tuner, there are some out there (I think parasound has one, you can check out the a/v receiver serial control thread). The last option is to take an older receiver and control it via IR. Of course you lose the feed back on that, but most people don't have a problem with it.
With the cost of the Nuvo tuner as it is I think I'm going to find a used Denon receiver with serial control. It's more than I need but seems to be less expensive than the other approaches. And, if I do ever want to add on more sources it could be useful as another switch.
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For the playlist, what wolverines mentioned about having it built into the repo would be the best approach for me. Is this currently in there or is it in development?
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Sendero Wrote:With the cost of the Nuvo tuner as it is I think I'm going to find a used Denon receiver with serial control. It's more than I need but seems to be less expensive than the other approaches. And, if I do ever want to add on more sources it could be useful as another switch.
The Nuvo T2 tuner can be found for around $600 on ebay. A used serial Denon around $300. There is a driver for the T2 Tuner (I wrote it). The benefits of the T2 tuner as I see it are:
1) Two tuners
2) Integrated control from keypads via NuvoNet
3) Automatic RDS radio info displayed on the keypads
If you go the Denon route, you have to consider how you will control and get feedback to/from your Denon to/from a Nuvo keypad. While not impossible, it will involve considerable scripting and IR usage. If you feel like you won't use the keypad to control the tuners, but instead use a CQC interface, then it may not be an issue for you. For me, it's much easier to reach over from my office chair and select a radio station via the keypad versus having to go find my nokia or walk to the other room to the CQC touchscreen.
robertmee Wrote:The Nuvo T2 tuner can be found for around $600 on ebay. A used serial Denon around $300. There is a driver for the T2 Tuner (I wrote it). The benefits of the T2 tuner as I see it are:
1) Two tuners
2) Integrated control from keypads via NuvoNet
3) Automatic RDS radio info displayed on the keypads
Robert,
Does your driver support XM functionality as well as AM/FM? I know some Nuvo tuners support XM, some are AM/FM only.
If yes, are points two and three above supported for XM?
Russ
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rdf Wrote:Robert,
Does your driver support XM functionality as well as AM/FM? I know some Nuvo tuners support XM, some are AM/FM only.
If yes, are points two and three above supported for XM?
Russ
Yes, XM is supported in the driver and works the same as AM/FM. You get RDS info, and the channel info. I have the AM/FM/XM unit in my home, however, I've never purchased the XM subscription so all I get is channel 1.
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Sendero Wrote:For the playlist, what wolverines mentioned about having it built into the repo would be the best approach for me. Is this currently in there or is it in development?
I agree 100%. Dynamic playlist creation (with the ability to add, remove, move-up/down tracks as well as saving individual playlist and being able to play them again later) is a MUST, regardless of the repository being used (i.e. universal), but my understanding is that this is not that easy to implement.
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panos_k75 Wrote:I agree 100%. Dynamic playlist creation (with the ability to add, remove, move-up/down tracks as well as saving individual playlist and being able to play them again later) is a MUST, regardless of the repository being used (i.e. universal), but my understanding is that this is not that easy to implement.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on this, but since I've asked this so many different ways I think I understand how this works now.
If you use the CQSL repository you can add/remove names and save playlists. The ability to move tracks up/down is not there yet.
If you use the iTunes repository, right now you cannot access the iTunes playlists, but Dean believes that will be possible in the next update to that driver. You should be able to create a playlist from within CQC using the iTunes repository, but it cannot be saved (basically it works as a jukebox).
If I'm right on that then for my uses the iTunes repository is the way to go. Once I've built a few playlists they are not likely to change much. If I have a party we can do a jukebox mode but no reason to save the list. The key for me will be the ability to access the iTunes playlists (including the smartlists it generates).
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