The HEN
This is an exercise to document my HEN (Home Entertainment Network) and a blatant attempt at showing off. Firstly, a simple listing of each of the components -
- Synology DS-107e
- AppleTV Take 2
- Squeezebox Duet
- Mac mini PPC
- Pop Pulse T-amp 77
- Klipsch Synergy F1
- Airport Extreme
- Lousy Samsung LCD TV
- iPhone
The Synology box is a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that has room for a single SATA drive, which I filled with a 750 GB Western Digital HDD. The NAS is attached via USB to a APC 650 VA UPS for automatic shutdown when power becomes low and also has a nice array of ports including 3xUSB, 1xeSATA and Gigabit Ethernet for excellent interconnectivity. The provided software is great and I highly recommend this NAS. The current firmware has an issue and is unfortunately not able to backup to another 750 GB drive I have connected over the eSATA link. Synology is working on a fix for that.
The NAS stores all the digital media – video, audio and all my photos and makes it available on the network via SMB and AFP.
Yea yea, I knew about the Tvix and the Popcorn hour and all the other Taiwanese and Chinese crap out there. None of them as elegant as the AppleTV. Granted it can’t play Full HD, but nor can my LCD TV. I don’t even have HD content and am quite happy with DVD quality for the time being. The AppleTV’s plus points – great integration with the iTunes store, beautiful interface, hackability and essentially, it’s running MacOS. So I’ve hacked it and got the best media center running on it – Boxee. There’s XBMC and nitoTV too, but I only use Boxee for all my playback requirements. Boxee gets all the content via the network from the NAS.
I fell in love with the Duet when I saw it the first time and bought it soon after launch. It basically is my music player. I can also play music through both the AppleTV native interface and through Boxee as well, but the sound quality of the Squeezebox is better, and I have a lot of options to control the playback – Squeezebox controller, iPeng on the iPhone and the Squeezecenter web interface. I can also get the music to play on the computer, iPhone, Squeezebox controller and also have these devices playing music independently or in sync with each other. Quite cool and quite liberating. It can also play music off the web and can do quite a bit more.
I store all my music in iTunes, with the iTunes library and the music residing on the NAS. The Squeezecenter software for the Squeezebox is running on the Mac mini and is picking up the music by looking at the iTunes library and the music files on the NAS.
A friend graciously leased me his unused old PPC Mac mini which I’ve provisioned for running Squeezecenter and Transmission. Again, all data on the NAS, mounted at boot on the Mac mini.
One of my newer acquisitions, this is a great stereo amplifier based on the Tripath 2022 chip. It replaces the Sonic Impact Gen-2 T-amp that was based on the Tripath 2024 chip. I’ve become a big fan of the Tripath chips – the sound is just mindblowing. The Sonic Impact was weak in the bass department, but the T-amp 77 can thump along quite nicely. The sound is still amazingly transparent and the soundstage is nice and big. Vocals sound brilliant and now even a bass kicking track sounds great on the speakers.
Instead of the Synergy F2′s I was hoping to buy, I managed to get a great deal on the F1. One of the speakers was missing the front grille and I got the pair at a throwaway price of Rs. 13,000. What really struck me during the audition was the amazing soundstage and clarity of the vocals. They can’t take too much power (100w max) but the 10w produced by the Sonic Impact and the 35w produced by the Pop Pulse are more than adequate to make it go really loud at even less than full volume. That’s because the speakers are very efficient (93 dB/w). Really lovely speakers.
I wanted to have a speedy network backbone since all of my media was on the NAS. The Apple Airport Extreme was at that time the best 802.11n router. It’s got Gigabit ethernet and 802.11n, which was essential for me. The newer model now has dual-band support for simultaneous 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz operation, mine doesn’t. A rock solid performer – no complaints at all. Not missing DD-WRT on my old Linksys WRT54G either.
Samsung LCD TV
A 24 inch LCD TV that I had picked up for my bedroom is now the main TV. Horrible contrast and totally unworthy of the Samsung name. Worst bit in my setup. Planning to stick with this until OLED LCD’s become mainstream and affordable.
The iPhone is mentioned here because it becomes a great controller for Boxee (free Boxee remote app), Squeezebox (iPeng plugin) and soon thanks to UIRemote will become the universal remote to control the entire setup. Who needs a netbook when there’s one of these?
Future plans -
Currently I have to manually switch audio sources between the AppleTV and the Squeezebox. This is done through a cheap MX 4 port switch that was made for switching between multiple composite AV sources (but I’m using it for just audio). There’s a switch with a remote available on DealExtreme, but I can live with the current setup. Also, the amplifier needs to be switched on and off manually since its remote doesn’t have that function. I’m worried that leaving it on will consume too much power. I could do something like this. I’m also eagerly awaiting UIRemote so that I can use the iPhone as a universal remote. I guess that’s it!
