This week Apple let loose with their cute little function called Airplay. If you haven’t come across this it lets you instantly stream content (movies, photos, video, MP3) from your iPhone, iPad or Touch to a compatible device. What excites me is the compatible device strategy.

Demos and comments I’ve seen show streaming from one Apple device to Apple TV, but other manufacturers are getting involved, including Bowers & Wilkins. If Airplay becomes widely adopted this could be a highly effective challenger to Sonos.

At the moment our “standard” method of returning MP3 music files is on DVD. They provide a safe long term archive and are a proven, reliable means of data transfer. We’ve never had anyone who couldn’t load their music from the DVDs we’ve sent.

For larger volumes of data DVDs have one major shortcoming. You need to load each disc, and if you’ve got a lot of music that in itself is time consuming, a chore many people could do without. Loading instead to a USB hard drive has become more popular, either a unit supplied by the client or one we source locally.

However an effective alternative is emerging in the shape of USB pen or stick drives. As capacities increase they become an option. 8, 16 and 32 Gb USB sticks are available in modest outlets such as WH Smith, the largest capacity I’ve come across is a 64 Gb drive I was able to get via eBay. That has the capacity to be attractive in many settings but it’s incredibly slow. The benefit of all these devices, even if they are slow, is that it avoids the tiresome necessity of slotting 2, 4, 8 or 16 DVDs into and out of your PC. Convenience is what MP3 by Mail is all about.

Ever wondered why the music industry is in the doldrums? Apparently in the last six months (in the USA) just three artists have accounted for 50% of all downloaded music.

Wonder how the rest make a living?

Just love technology but I had to sympathise with the caller who’d had enough of all the hype surrounding Apple’s recently launched iPad device. Does it have to be Apple, is there an alternative?

I did some digging and came across a name I’d almost forgotten about, with a range of video players, music systems and web platforms - Archos. They offer several units, down to a very modest price too, quite a relief compared with Apple’s sky high pricing.

Then later on the TV news Samsung’s new device was covered. This is based on Google’s Android. No price details yet but it seems that Android is going to be a strong challenger to Apple’s unit.

Spent most of today on a clients premises, we’ve ripped a large batch of CDs which we loaded onto a NAS drive. Since then two things have happened, the NAS is installed and the client found some more CDs he wanted ripped. So we ripped the CDs and delivered the digital files, ready to copy them into their music library.

Client has a laptop, connected via a wireless network to his router. The NAS is hard wired to the router. Here’s your question - you have 20GB of data files to load to the NAS. How long will it take?

Gee did I get the answer wrong. The answer turned out to be four hours. Very, very slow and a strain to make small talk all afternoon. At the back of my mind was the question, why? Well, the biggest problem is transmission over the network. The PC has to read the data, get it across the network to the drive; which writes the chunk of the MP3 file to its disk, then returns a message to say send the next chunk of data. Just looking at raw network data rates is misleading, far too optimistic. And a solemn warning for anyone planning to load music files across wireless connections.

Invest in a bit of cable.

CD ripping was on hold yesterday. The weather was good so I reluctantly turned my attention to garden chores I’ve been neglecting. I hardly noticed the sound of my mobile ringing.

Then I could hardly hear who was calling, the noise at the other end was so loud. Not helped by one of the neighbours here arriving and switching on their radio. We ended up having a phone conversation by shouts, a couple of miles closer and we wouldn’t have needed the phones.

So just a small, personal, plea. Sound carries in the summer and as much as I like the Beach Boys turn it down.

CD ripping at home? OK, maybe you’ve go time or just dipping your toe in the water. Do a Google search for CD ripping or CD ripping software and you’ll get a bewildering array of options. Which software should you go for?

First, forget about the more lavish claims made for MP3 CD ripping software. Speed - you’re unlikely to notice any significant difference between any of the options on offer. Hardware features such CPU, CD unit, RAM etc make a bigger contribution to ripping speed. Second, quality - the biggest impact on quality is compression rate. Quite simply the less you compress your digital music files the better the sound.

Our recommendation would be to go with the offerings of the mainstream players, Apple and Microsoft. So if I were ripping music on a Mac I’d opt for iTunes. On a Windows PC you can go for iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Tags: cd ripping,itunes,media player

Heated discussion yesterday. OK, the world of CD ripping doesn’t get very animated so this was unusual.

I was called by an installer who advocated ripping to AAC format for his client. I had previously spoken to his client and said in his circumstances I’d go with MP3. The client is an international person - born in Lebanon, educated in London and Boston, worked in every major financial city, now living in Dubai. He wanted a music format that would travel the world and play now and in the future. For me, that says MP3.

Technically, the installer is right. AAC does carry more data at a given compression rate. In terms of pure sound quality 128 kbps AAC is superior to 128 kbps MP3. Yes, it is possible to convert from AAC to MP3 should the need ever arise. My argument was that this client could put even his 600 CD music collection onto a portable drive so space isn’t the issue. We are talking 320 kbps so sound quality differences are theoretical rather than real, and converting around 10,000 tracks from AAC to MP3 is not a trivial task.

Anyway the client is always right (even when he’s wrong) - MP3 it is.

CD ripping onto music servers - units like Systemline, iMerge and the MusicM8 - demand a slightly different approach compared to iTunes / iPods or systems such as Sonos. The latter happily handle music stored as data files on your PC, these music servers typically are network attached devices and demand a different approach.

We can provide MP3 files compatible with both. You have to transfer the data files we produce onto your music player. This can be done over the network from your computer to your server, or in the case of Systemline you can import directly from a USB connected device such as a portable drive.

One small word of warning, this operation can take time. Recently loading a modest 9 Gb of music onto a Systemline 160 from a USB drive took almost two hours.