Audio streaming to the Internet radio IP-dio mini by dnt - A Review
Written by Ingo in computers , technology , tags: Internet radio , IP-dio
The IP-dio has various childhood diseases, but also plays the formats WAV and Real
Recently, I got this Internet radio. However, the possibility was being able to hear tens of thousands of radio stations, only one of the reasons why I grew me such a device. I was looking nd ¤ Mlich also an opportunity to play on the stereo in the living room the entire music library on the hard drive of my PC, which is in a basement - that the so-called audio streaming over a network.
The idea should be clear: Soon you will probably want to have all your music, videos / films, photos and other files on a central hard drive, and this on different players from different areas of access. This is of course with any other PC or my laptop around with the Netbook , but on the other hand you may not want the notebook next to the stereo system will have constantly, sometimes just listening to radio or can. And as Internet radios are so over wireless or cable network (LAN) to the Internet - and with the home network - connected, it should be possible for music files with them such access. That was the theory ...
The practice
First, I realized that, although almost all Internet radio stations seem to control this audio-streaming, but even at the supported file formats appeared the first problem: most can play MP3 and WMA music, my music is mostly in the non-compressed WAV format (why would you want to also reduce disk ripped CDs in the quality?). WAV and can apparently only a few - such as the various models dnt the German manufacturer.
Their IP-dio style but fell away again, as it has no line-out jack, so as to connect the stereo system (take this, the headphone output, you start to an unnecessary loss of sound and noise).
But it did - with a price of 94, - € for Conrad - even better IP-dio mini this, but it has only a small speaker, so that it reproduced music can be heard only mono (which when connected to the stereo plant but no matter).
The start-up was simple in principle: supply (AC adapter, line out switch if necessary), ...
This IP dio mini found my Wi-Fi and asked for the associated password (this way, is case sensitive (upper / lower case), I had to find out after I repeatedly typed the password by using the letters as I dial from an alphabetical list selected).
The reception of radio stations was not a problem. These can be washed from a list sorted by location or genre ¤ hlt. The sound on the built-in speaker is pretty decent for its size. That way almost all Internet radio stations so "loud and mushy" sound is not used in data compression (usually MP3 128 kb / s), but on the dynamics of compression, with every transmitter tries, louder than his competitors sound like.
Now for the audio streaming, the IP-dio mini offers two modes: first direct network access to shared PC and its folder to another on UPnP server, so PCs on which a music administration software such as MS Media Player 11 is running, the playback equipment zuspielt music.
I tried it first with the first mode. First big problem: My notebook has been indeed found, but not the PC with the music in my basement. This hurdle has previously not really take, but I have now found out that the PC is found, if your wireless access point acts as a DHCP server - a role that usually takes over my DSL router. However, "losing" it to the PC often, when the notebook was turned around.
Has found the PC, you can see a list of shared folders. If we choose a to - for example, my "Music" folder - so ... crashing the machine - every time! Apparently it comes with the large amount of files in turn, a large amount of subfolders (on several levels according to the scheme / Artist / Album /) can not cope - but that's life now plays - one just has not only 50 songs but perhaps hundreds of CDs or albums!
So I tried it with smaller bites: Then it fell off, although not, and found all the songs, but it was not the subfolders, so all songs were in one long list. In addition, the titles were not in alphabetical order, but in seemingly random. More than impractical!
In this direction ultimately nothing really worked. So I tried the second mode (UPnP Server), which I TwonkyMedia software on my PC installed the. In this mode, the PC will be found, and all songs can be classified by artist, album or playlist, or select the folder structure of the PC as a view. So it's fun and I finally had what I wanted.
Some permanent (minor) criticism:
- You can skip to the Skip buttons from song to song, but you can not rewind it (fast forward / rewind). This feature is completely missing!
- The remote looks very robust and, according to Amazon reviews soon will break.
- The navigation through various menus using the Back button is cumbersome, sometimes not to get directly to where you want.
But when you consider that some devices cost significantly more, the IP-dio mini to me is still in order. Especially if you want to formats such as WAV or Real Audio playback, this device is far ahead.
Ultimately, it may be that will gradually remove all the criticisms by firmware updates, which brings the device from a network. The hotline is the way to reach and I spoke directly with a technician who was very knowledgeable and helpful.
More info and reviews can be found eg Amazon, where you can reach directly via the following link:
