How To: Streaming Your Music Online

Yesterday we told you about a cool little project to build your very own Wireless Audio Streamer for under $100 bucks. So once you build your streamer, what do you listen to? You might want to check out this handy "wiki" at Wired.com that shows you how to stream your music online.

The tutorial starts out:

You've spent a lot of time and money collecting digital music. And by now, you have a pretty sweet library of MP3s and AACs to show for the effort.

But let's say you want to take that library to go? Before you start carrying around a huge hard drive, you might want to try streaming your tunes online instead. All it takes to start streaming your music over the internet is a playlist, a server with some storage space, and a software player that can open and play an internet stream.

The steps are:

• Step 1: Host it somewhere
• Step 2: Create a playlist
• 2.1 Extended M3U
• 2.2 XSPF
• 2.3 PLS
• 3 Download Software to Do It For You
• 4 Don't Feed the Lawyers

If you're not sure where to start when you want to stream your own music, this article is a good place to begin.

At howto.wired.com

Review: Four Wi-Fi Radios to Take a Look at

Streaming radio has to be one of our favorite things here at the NetworkingAudioVideo headquarters. When you add a portable device that allows you to stream radio anywhere in the house or office, what more could you want? Since there's quite a few intenet radio devices on the market, where do you start? Well Newsfactor.com has a nice article that looks at these four radios:

• Com one Phoenix
• Roku Soundbridge Radio
• Grace Wireless Internet Radio
• Aluratek Internet Radio Alarm Clock

You'll have to read the article to get the rundown on each device but we will tell you the reviewer's favorite device was the Phoenix because of it rechargeable batteries even though the sound quality way below par. Be sure to check out the complete review.

At NewsFactor.com

Listen to Your Pandora Stations Anywhere in Your Home

Here at NetworkingAudioVideo we're big Pandora Radio fans. If you're not familiar with Pandora, it's a free streaming music service that catagorizes and plays music based on the Music Genome Project. According to Pandora:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome.

Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.

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So image our excitement when we heard there's a new wireless device from Grace Digital Audio to stream our favorite music from Pandora. According to PRWEB:

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) June 24, 2008 -- Grace digital Inc., a leading manufacturer of audio and telephony consumer electronics, announces the integration of Pandora's personalized radio service onto their Grace Digital ITC-IR1000B Wi-Fi Internet radio.

Grace Digital brings to market the first Pandora enabled sub $200 wireless Internet radio to provide personalized radio to the over 65 million active Internet radio listeners. The ITC-IR10000B allows you to play your favorite Internet radio station in any room of your house wirelessly - directly from your broadband router. The set up is simple. Plug your ITC-IR1000B stand alone Internet radio into any power outlet in your home, log on to your wireless broadband connection, and start listening to over 11,000 Internet radio stations with no monthly service charge.

$200 might be a little pricey but we like the retro radio design. We'll try to get a hold of the Pandora Radio and let you know what we think.

At PRWEB

More Details at GraceDigitalAudio

Wow! What a Nice Chumby...I Mean Streaming Internet Device!

The other day I went to a friend of mine's office and he started showing off his Chumby to me. Now as I.........okay that didn't exactly sound right so maybe I better start over. The other day I went to a friend of mine's office and he showed me his Chumby Internet Device. I'd have to say it was pretty impressive and quite unique. We know the Chumby has been out since late last year but this is the first time we actually found someone using it. Basically the Chumby is a wireless internert device that's a tad smaller than your typical alarm clock that streams content to "widgets" on the device.

The device is capable of streaming radio, news, weather and a lot more. I didn't get to spend much time with the device so I'm not quite sure how I'd use it but I'd assume it would set next to my computer and serve as a background tool while using my main computer. The Chumby might also be a great beside table device to keep an eye on your late night Ebay auctions. We'll work on getting a review unit to give you more of a detailed look but we wanted to let you know the Chumby is a pretty cool device.

Here's a few more details from Chumby.com:

What's a chumby?

The Chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, weather, celebrity gossip, webcams, sports scores - using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows - nonstop - what's online that matters to you.

How does it work?

Just plug it in, connect to your wireless network, and use your computer to choose a playlist of "widgets" (the bite-sized applications that run on a chumby - check them out on the Browse Widgets page). And if, say, you want to see news, the surf report, and traffic in the morning, and animations, web cams and eBay auctions at night, you can group widgets in "channels." Watch constantly updated info, or use interactive widgets that take advantage of its touchscreen or motion sensor. You can even share widgets and send ecards to other people's chumbys.

With over 600 widgets across 30 different categories such as weather, social networks, photos, sports, news, entertainment, videos and much more, you'll find lots of stuff you'll love.

The Chumby is bit pricey at just under $200 but with a touchscreen and motion sensor, this just might be a cool little device to have around the house or office.

At Chumby.com

Chumby at Amazon.com

Intempo's New Portable Internet Radio: The Daisy

We have noticed over the past six months or so the increase in companies releasing Internet radio devices and the latest one we have come across is from a company called Intempo. The Daisy is their latest Internet radio to hit the market and it wants to be your portable Internet radio that you can take anywhere. They claim access to thousands of streaming radio stations as well as standard FM radio so you can get your fix of standard terrestrial streaming radio, commercials and all. They claim up to 20 hours of battery life which makes this a great device to have with you in the backyard as you work on your garden or just sip some wine and enjoy the spring weather.

This should be for sale any day now. After all the bad forecasts it looks like Internet radio is still holding on. We love the addition of another device into the mix, especially one that claims use so little power. We hate buying devices that need to be recharged every day. With 20 hours listen time before a recharge you shouldn't have to be plugging this into the recharger too often( unless you decide to go on some wireless remote radio listening binge ). We'll keep you posted on launch date, but be aware that this is slated to retail for just shy of $300. So while it has a lot going for it you really need to love Internet radio and love it wherever you are. Three hundred bucks is pretty steep for a fairly basic radio streamer.

via engadget

D-Link DSM-320 Network Media Streamer: Hands on Review

We have had the D-Link DSM-320 in the office for far too long without doing an in depth review, so we thought it was time to just gather all of our information and share with you our thoughts. How does it stack up to the rest of the market? How does it handle all the new media types? These are questions we have been playing around with and hopeful we will answer them to you satisfaction. We knew going into this that the device had been out for awhile so it wasn't going to be as cutting edge as some of the devices we have seen recently. The DSM-320 is one of D-Links first attempts at a full featured media streamer and for a first attempt they got a lot right. We have been toying with this device for awhile now and if we'll share our thoughts after the jump.

Continue reading: "D-Link DSM-320 Network Media Streamer: Hands on Review"

iRiver UNIT-2: The All in One Kitchen Sink Media Player/Streamer

We have fallen in love with iRiver since they just make the coolest devices around. We bought the iRiver clix2 awhile back and have been in love with it, it does so many things right and makes us forget all about our nasty iPod. They really have spent a lot of time thinking not only about design, but about functionality and have really pushed the innovation of portable music. Well they were at it again at CES with their UNIT-2 announcement. They really have put everything they could think of into this new device. It is hard to fully describe it since it is so many different things in one. It is a standalone boombox with a built in CD/DVD player with two decent sized speakers and a nice 7-inch screen. This will play video and music back from a variety of sources including the CD/DVD drive, the internal 30GB hard drive, Internet radio stations or streamed from a connected computer on your network.

As if this wasn't enough iRiver is claiming that they will have VoIP phone capabilities, with video mind you, as well as the ability to surf the web so it can become the center of so many different areas of your life. Since there has been no actual release date or price set for this we have no idea the time table iRiver is looking at and if they will be able to get all of this functionality crammed into this device for a reasonable price. Time will tell, but if their track record is anything to go by then you should be getting very excited about the coming year for iRiver.

Oh did we mention that the 7" inch screen on the device detaches and can be carried around while you watch streaming movies or surf the web, yeah sorry about that :) Trust us we will scouring the web looking for any more concrete info about this and we'll let you know the minute we have more information.

via ehomeupgrade

Logitech Doesn't Let Us Down: Squeezebox Duet Announced

Logitech recently acquired one of our favorite companies, SlimDevices, and we weren't sure what their fate would be. We actually like Logitech a lot, just when a small company that is committed to making top of the line audio streaming gear gets bought by a big company we tend to fear the worst. We waited the better part of year, waiting for Slimdevices to release their first new product under the Logitech umbrella. Well man were we pleasantly surprised when we saw the Squeezebox Duet.

We had wondered where SlimDevices would go after the Squeezebox 3,a near flawless audio streamer. Well they didn't let us down with the announcement of the Duet. This product seems squarely aimed at competing with the Sonos products. We always felt that Sonos had the leg up in the overall wizbang look and feel. The Sonos remote is very cool and the fact that you can see album art and song information on a nice PDA like remote is very cool. We assumed that Logitech would just release another Harmony remote that added some of this functionality, we never guessed they would build a direct competitor to Sonos.

The Duet has a very simple and yet elegant design. There is the cool looking remote sporting a 2.4 inch color screen to display album art along with song information. A scroll wheel to move through your music collection and a myriad of other buttons for other functionality like jumping to the home screen or adding a song to a playlist. The base unit is a very low profile black rectangle that hooks into your stereo via the standard digital or analog ports. Everything communicates over a 802.11g wireless network. Even the remote uses WiFi allowing you to control your music from anywhere and removing the notion that your remote has to be able to 'see' your base unit.


You can purchase additional base units and hook them up around your house and they can also stream music from the same source. You can configure them to play different songs or all sync up and play the same song. Another new feature that they have rolled into this release is the concept of not needing your computer to be on and running the server software in order to listen to your music. You can either hook directly up to the SqueezeNetwork and listen to Internet Radio stations like Pandora or Rhapsody or you can store music online in a "MP3Tune music locker".

We can't wait to get our geeky hands on this sweet little product. No actual release date has been announced, but they have said that it is going to retail for $399. We will keep you posted when this is actually available and also expect a more in depth review once we get one in house.

OXX ALTO Media Streaming Alarm Clock

One thing has been becoming more and more popular as of late are Internet radio alarm clocks. Waking up to any web station in the world is a nice perk for a lot of people. We just stumbled across another entry into this growing market. The OXX ALTO looks to be a very strong competitor since it not only can stream thousands of Internet radio stations, but also stream music off of a computer on your home network.

It will hook into your network via a wireless connection using WEP or WPA security. It can stream the following formats from your PC:

• RealAudio
• MWA
• MP3
• AAC (unprotected)
• AU
• WAV
• AIFF
• Ogg Vorbis

The idea that you can wake up to a variety of radio stations from around the world is very cool. We have grown tired of the over the air radio that we are subjected to. Internet radio has really shown us that there is more life to radio, you just have to release it from commercial interests and allow us to just hear good music.

We found a good review of it here. From the looks of it this seems to be a great idea if you are looking for a way to grab Internet radio stations or an easy way to listen to music streamed off of your home computer.

available at Amazon

Sony VAIO VGF-WA1/W Wireless Digital Music Streamer

The Sony VAIO WA1 Wireless Music Streamer is another attempt to release a full on music streamer. Sony has gone for portability with this product as it will run on batteries so that you can take it wherever you want. With its built in speakers you now have a portable jukebox that can play all of the music from your server as well as Internet Radio from Live365.

This will play the following formats:

• MP3
• WMA
• AAC
• WAV
• PCM

This device will not play DRM music so if you have a large collection of that this is not for you. What we really like about this is the fact that it is so portable. As long as it can stay connected to your wireless network you can have your music wherever you want. We haven't been able to find any information yet on what wireless security it supports. It seems to suporrt WEP, but we aren't sure if it also supports WPA. Don't worry, we won't go on our typical rant about wireless network security and the inherent flaws in WEP, we'll just leave it to your imagination. We also haven't seen many reviews. If we see any other info we will let you know. From what we can see this looks like a really cool product for someone looking for that portable music solution.

available at Amazon

Solwise DMP-1120w Media Streamer Review

Well if you happen to live across the pond in Europe we have come across a very nice media streamer that might interest you. The DMP-1120w from Solwise seems to be a fully capable media streamer that keeps its basis covered. With the ability to stream video, music and images from your PC to your TV it allows you to kick back on the couch and enjoy your media without having to be crammed around your computer monitor. With the wireless antenna that is built in you never need to worry about running cables throughout your house, you just need to be within range of your wireless router. The DMP-1120w supports a fair amount of video options including:

• MPEG1/MPEG2/MPEG4
• DIVX
• XVID

Audio formats include:

• PCM
• WAV
• MP3
• AC

And for images it looks like your only option is JPEG which is pretty standard and not to big of a deal.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is a HD media streamer though. This is strictly standard definition. There isn't anything wrong with this as the majority of TV owners are still running in standard definition and not HD. Also, this device seems to be targeted at the more entry level crowd so they don't really have to worry about not supporting HD content yet.



This seems to be a fairly solid entry level media streamer that would be great for anyone who is fairly experienced with computers. You will need to install a media streaming server on your pC if you dont' plan to use Windows Media Player 11. There are a lot of good options out there and their website has a full list of all the compatible server software that works with their device. Looking over the list of streamers they seem to have test a fair amount of the popular options out there so it is sure to fit in with whatever you have running. For only £83.30 it seems to be a no brainer if you are looking for a streamer. If any of you folks across the pond already own one of these bad boys we would love to get some feedback on what you think of it.

Available at Amazon

Revo Blik WiFi Internet Radio Review

Amidst all the craziness that has surrounded Black Friday around here we almost missed a very cool review of a great Internet radio streamer. The Blik Wifi from Revo is the type of product that we love around here. They picked one thing and tried to do it the best they could. That isn't to say the multi-function devices aren't good, it's just more often then not they try to do too much and muddy the whole product up.

The Blik is a very simple, stylish Internet radio that also allows you to wirelessly stream audio from a computer on your network. Like the rest of the Internet radios out there this one has a nice display on the front that will show you which station you are on. You can connect to thousands of different stations from all over the world. They have a central server that caches all the radio stations they offer and can update your player so you always have the most up to date listing of stations on your device.

This device also ships with a remote control so you can enjoy just vegging out on your couch while you surf the stations of the world. When you aren't using it as radio streamer it can function as a standard alarm clock. You also have the option to plug an iPod into the device via a line in jack and listen to your iPod over the units speakers. OK, so they didn't really pick one thing, but rather a bunch, but we like that it is all audio streaming. No wasted tech on having to decode video or render images. Thats all we were driving at, if you think about it.( Thanks Brian Regan )

The only downsides to the product that we can see is that it only supports MP3 and WMA for its streaming. That seems to be a very limited selection of audio formats these days. It isn't a deal breaker, but we know lots of people that keep their music in a bunch of different formats so this would really piss them off. :) All in all it looks to be a pretty solid product, and for $205 not to expensive that you couldn't put this under the tree this year for someone that has been very good.

via Engadget and advancedmp3players

Intempo GX01 Budget Audio and Internet Radio Streamer Review

The GX01 from Intempo is an entry level audio streamer that puts a heavy focus on Internet radio streaming. This device looks similar to a radio from the 50's but packs all the bells and whistles of a modern day Internet radio. With its one front speaker and large tuning dial this would fit anywhere in your home and not look out of place. It has a small backlit display that will show you the relevant information regarding your radio selection and other pertinent information.

The device is very easy to configure and get connected to your network which is not something most home networked devices can boast these days. The GX01 comes with both wireless and wired hookups so it can work anywhere you want. They have included support for both WEP and WPA allowing greater flexibility when setting it up. To many products these days don't include WPA and we find that to be a major strike against the product. We are happy to see Intempo add WPA to their specs and embrace a more secure connection then the outdated WEP spec.

So basically what the GX01 offers you is access to over 5000 Internet radio stations at the touch of a button in a fairly attractive package. Also thrown in is the ability to stream music from your PC using Windows Media Player or any other UPnP server you might have running on your home network. This is currently only for sale in the UK so if you live across the pond you are in luck. If there are any Brits reading this and own this little guy please drop us a line and let us know what you think, we would love to get your impressions.

at Amazon UK

Philips WAC3500D Streamium Wireless Audio Center Reviewed

We have been seeing more and more boom boxes come out as of late that have added the ability to stream music from your home network from anywhere in your house. The WAC2500D acts as a normal boom box with FM tuner, CD player and the like. It even adds the common new addition of having an iPod hookup. Where the WAC2500D sets itself apart from most other players is that it has a USB hookup, an internal 80GB hard drive as well as the ability to stream music from your PC either via a wired connection or wirelessly. With the addition of the USB ports you can keep all your music on external USB drives and never run out of space for your music collection. You can just take the WAC2500D and the drive wherever you go and you have a very nice sounding entertainment center on the go.

The addition of letting people stream music from their home netowrk to WAC2500D really opens things up. Now you don't need to modify that huge collection of digital files you have on your home server. Just stream them to the boom box like you would any other media streamer. We are very excited to see companies allowing us to stream our audio on more and more devices. When we first got into streaming media we had to search out products that could accomplish this for us. These days you can't go a day without finding another product has been released that will allow you to stream some sort of media.

Well enough of our rambling, read on for more specs.

Continue reading: "Philips WAC3500D Streamium Wireless Audio Center Reviewed"