Internet Radio (1 Viewer)

[Scott Andrew]

Ok so I just bought a Pioneer 1014 and I have a wireless network in my home for both my PC and my Laptop. What I want to do is be able to play my internet radio stations through my reciever... what is the cheapest and easiest way to do achive this?

Thanks

 

[Joe Casey]

I stream internet radio and uncompressed ripped music to two separate systems in my house using Apple's Airport Express (one Airport Express per system). I use the Toslink output of the Airport Express to a digital input. My home wifi consists of 3 desktops and a laptop which are all networked together, allowing me to stream content (ripped music) from (for example) my basement desktop via my living room laptop to the living room system.

Other manufacturers that make wireless media interfaces are the Squeezebox and Roku. All have different feature sets and pro's and cons.

 

[Scott Andrew]

why did you choose the Airport Express over the Roku or Squeezebox??

 

[eddieZEN]

Cheapest way: get a Y-adapter cable, plug it into the back of your PC (I'm assuming you have a PCI soundcard or at least an output plug for an onboard soundcard) and run an RCA cable (a very long one, as needed) between that and your receiver. You'll have to have the PC on in order to tune in, of course.

My Dell has pretty crappy onboard sound so I just used an external USB soundcard (Creative Soundblaster, $40 from Amazon shipped)---the advantage over an internal soundcard is it requires no software to be installed so won't take any system resources other than USB which you'd only noticed if you had tons of USB devices running at the same time. The external soundcard also has an optical output, though I just use the RCAs since it's a 2.1 powered speaker system that I have it hooked up to. I think they do have multichannel external sound cards now too, though many multichanel receivers now can convert stereo sound into multi.

 

[Kenneth Harden]

I don't get what the big deal is.

I use the digital coax out on my motherboard and run it to my receiver.

Done.

 

[eddieZEN]

> I use the digital coax out on my motherboard and run it to my receiver.

Ah, you are a fortunate man. My Dell's mobo just has one lousy RCA-mono output jack.

 

[Kenneth Harden]

No, just a smart one who bought each piece of my computer seperatly.

Got EXACTLY what I wanted.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

I have an archived MP3 collection of about 100,000 songs- and would like access in most if not all rooms of my house. I originally did consider running a pc in every room to run playback but it is expensive, heavy on power consumption and not very user friendly.

A nice streamlined box like like sqeezebox gives me all the functionality of the PC playback for mp3 or streaming media- in a smaller, more energy effecient and more "stereo-like" integration.

-V

 

[Angelo.M]

I use the Roku Soundbridge. Nice piece of gear, particularly if you use iTunes.