I can hardly be called a music buff. I do not understand the intricacies of Jazz, do not hold fanatical view on punk or metal. But I like the feeling of notes gently dissolving into the daily drudgery of life, easing its monotony, making it more palatable.
To that end I got myself an amp and two decent speakers and hooked them to my DVD /music player. Once I had the basic set up I started looking at building a collection. There was a great deal on Yahoo Music and I ended up subscribing to it. The music was good and in a matter of hours I got hooked. I heard all the songs I grew up with and then I heard them again. Over a period of time I got introduced to new ones and got to like them.
It was all great but I was constrained by the fact that I could listen to my (Yahoo Music) songs only on my laptop. If I connected the laptop to my amp I could not work on the laptop as the Y connector required that I keep the laptop close to the system. And so I started looking around for alternatives.
I was looking for following
- To be able to store all my songs in one place instead of managing the CDs. Being lazy I did not want to go and change the CD every time I wanted to listen to something
- I wanted to be able to play Yahoo Music on my Amp without having to give up my laptop in the bargain
After some researching I figured these devices called Network Music/Media players that offer that freedom. There are several such boxes available D-Link has a few, Slim devices has one. For Apple worshippers there is Airport Express. I personally bought Roku. It allowed me to play DRM protected WMA songs which Airport Express does not. But then Airport Express is cheaper by $50 too.
Roku M1001 came with a display and a remote that allowed me to browse the song collection on my Laptop through the remote. I placed it right over my Amp and connected it to Amps input. I then configured Roku to talk to my Wireless network and I was good to go.
Last week I bought an external drive to store my personal CDs and connected it to my laptop. I ripped my CDs in WMA lossless format and created a 10 GB repository of songs. I arranged them and created playlists and now I'm able to browse, search and play songs from my Laptop wirelessly on my Amp through Roku and feeling ecstatic about it.
Another great feature Roku has is Internet Radio. It has thousands of preconfigured stations that I can browse and play. Great thing is I do not need to keep my laptop on. Roku connects directly to the Internet and plays stations. I can browse through the stations with my remote and play them just I would for any FM Tuner. Great thing is I can tune in to all the Bollywood stations just as I would in India :)
I'm also loving Winamp 5.5 It allows me to browse and play my songs on the web. Its like having my music library available to me anywhere anytime. I can also share my songs with others. My friends can stream music from my PC without owning my mp3. I hope thats legal though :) as they do not have a copy of the song, its just a stream.
Anyhow, I'm amazed how things have changed over the years. I still remember playing tapes, recording and re-recording them. Having boxes of Tapes and CDs under my bed and almost no radio as FM wasn't available at that time(Only Vividh Bharathi ). Its cool how tech has shaped our lives and enriched it.
There was a post I wrote on how Internet Music will replace satellite radio about 2 years ago. How prophetic ;)
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