Quality of audio playback with S3

[kenj]

I am considering upgrading from an S2 to an S3. Among many other factors, one of the considerations is the quality of the music playback. I've thought about setting up a PC with Msoft Media Center and a good audio card to play my ripped .mp3 library through my stereo. How does the S3 playback compare with that ... or with CD quality playback ?

I've looked but I can't find any threads that go into detail on the quality or spec for the audio playback feature. If there is such a thread .. a pointer would be great.

Thanks

[Dan203]

The Series 3 converts MP3 files to 48KHz PCM audio for output via the optical port. This is probably about the same quality as you would get from a MCE PC. However one thing a MCE PC could do that a TiVo can not is play lossless audio. On a PC you could rip your CDs to a lossless format, like FLAC or APE, and then when you played those back it would sound identical to the original CD. TiVos only support MP3, so even if you use my universal audio plug-in to play those formats, the audio still has to be converted to MP3 format first, which will always degrade the quality slightly. Now whether or not you'd notice, of if you'd even be willing to sacrifice the space required to rip all your CDs to a lossless format (they're pretty big compared to MP3s) is another matter.

Dan

[tfofurn]

I've been having issues with skipping, which is why your post drew my interest. I get the impression that the S3 MP3 player doesn't buffer very much of the file, so even the slightest hitch in the network causes a problem. Even when my PC and my S3 are directly connected to the same switch, I get a problem every few minutes. I guess I could try upgrading my PC, but shouldn't a 1.2GHz, 512MB system be good enough for a one-megabyte-per-minute file server? I think I saw mention of adjusting a networking parameter like MTU, but I've already missed if that was an adjustment to the TiVo or the PC.

[Dan203]

If you right click the little TiVo icon in the tray and pick properties a dialog will pop up. On the performance tab try changing the activity level and see if it helps your performance at all. If not you may also want to make sure there are no other network related tasks running on the PC which could be hogging the network during these glitches. I have personally listened to TiVo music for hours at a time and never had a single glitch via my wired network, so I know it's not an inherent problem with the TiVo itself.

Dan