Over the last few years the UTMT household has become significantly more productive.
This increase in activity is 100% correlated to a decrease in hours spent watching television and an increase in the amount of music we listen to.
Of the TV we do watch, I’d estimate that 99% is done via watching recorded series captured via our old Humax freeview recorder (PVR) or via iPlayer type streaming services. The beauty of this system is that we decide what we watch and when. We never waste time aimlessly flicking through channels searching for entertainment as well as minimising our exposure to advertising.
As big Sam would say…
Television is a bit like marijuana…..it’s nice and relaxing on occasion…..but too much of it will rob you of your ambition.
As our TV watching has decreased, the time spent watching has generally been replaced with listening to music whilst doing something productive. There is something about listening to music that encourages creativity and productivity in me. It might be working, writing, project planning, reading or just conversing but music tends to get the fire in belly going.
The Musical Problem
Over the years I’ve amassed a huge music collection which has been assembled from various formats: vinyl, minidisc, CD, mp3. As the collection grew and the audio formats evolved our listening habits changed over a few years.
Until recently I struggled to get the best out of our extensive music collection.
It wouldn’t all fit on an mp3 player, flicking through so many CDs wasn’t practical and space didn’t allow us to have a ‘music library’ to store it all! In this article I will describe the solution we currently have in place to manage and access our (large) music collection.
The Entertainment Hub (Living Room)
Sitting under our television in the living room is an Apple Mac Mini. This is hard wired to both the TV and a hifi amplifier and speakers. The Mini is controlled via a wireless mouse and keyboard meaning we can easily use it to view free services like iPlayer through our television if required.
Key to the system is the fact that on the mac mini lies my iTunes library. A few years a ago I went through the very laborious process of converting all of my vinyl, minidiscs (remember those?!) and CDs to mp3 format. Over the years the size of my iTunes library has grown to well over over 250gb – it has more than enough music within for me to never get bored.
This set up worked well when we were sitting in the living room and wanted to listen to some music. Controlling iTunes via the TV and a blue tooth mouse/keyboard was ok but wasn’t quite as user friendly as I hoped. The wireless mouse would always get left on and seemed to always be out of batteries.
We needed to find a better way to control which music was being played.
Control
The revelation occurred when we discovered the iOS Remote app. Using the app my wife and I can both control the music output of the mac mini via our smartphones (or an ipad). The app lets you browse your iTunes library all the usual ways (genre, playlists, albums, artists, search etc) and (as is usually the case with apple products) it has a very slick interface that does everything you want in a straightforward and reliable fashion.
As well as accessing your iTunes library you can of course access thousands of internet radio stations through the app. This app is really the thing that made the system incredibly user friendly. Being able to change/skip the song, select a different genre or adjust the volume using our phones made a huge difference to the usability of the system.
The Kitchen/Elsewhere
In the kitchen we have an old Sony DAB radio that I bought about 7 years ago. The sound quality isn’t great (for hifi geeks) but is perfectly adequate to fire out some music and drown out the hum of the extractor fan or rattling pan lids. Until recently this unit was only used to listen to the radio.
In order to connect this radio unit to the mac mini (and the iTunes library) I bought a second hand Airport Express device. This unit simply plugs into a wall socket, then connects to the DAB radios aux socket via a 3.5mm mini jack lead. This enables music to be wirelessly streamed from the mac mini in the living room to the radio in the kitchen.
This is great and enables us to have the same music playing in different rooms around the house. The Airport Express in the kitchen can quickly and easily be plugged in to the alarm radio in the bedroom to allow music to be streamed up there too.
Having a BBQ? No problem. The radio from the kitchen gets taken outside with the airport express and bingo – we’ve got access to the music library in the garden too.
As a bonus the remote app lets you switch on/off the music in each “room” independently. This is handy when I’m in the kitchen cooking and my wife decides to seize the control of the music output!
Remote Access
While the above setup works really well for accessing and playing music around the house I recently improved the system thanks to discovering the Plex Media Server. This freeware helps you organise, display and play your media, primarily videos, films and music.
Using the Plex web app (via Google Chrome) or the smartphone app (via an iPhone) I can now access my iTunes library (plus any films/video) from anywhere in the world where I have an internet connection (or 3G connection for the phone).
I can sit in the office and listen to our music while I work, or while playing poker at a friends house or while sitting in a hotel room on the other side of the world!
Backup
As is the case with any digital media, backing it up securely is essential.
I currently have two external hard drives that I back up the entire mac mini (including the itunes library) to. One hard drive is stashed away somewhere ‘safe’ in the house and the other is left at my fathers house. Every time I visit Dad I replace the ‘offsite’ hard drive with the most recent backup from the ‘onsite’ safe place drive. This system always ensures I have a reasonably recent backup off site which is key to any successful backup system.
I’ve considered subscribing to a third party online backup service for some time however I’ve yet to feel the need to do so. The additional cost and security risk just don’t seem to outweigh the added benefits.
Cost
The above system was pretty much assembled form existing equipment. For a while we looked at Sonos which would achieve a similar system but at a much higher cost, given that I already owned most of the hardware we currently use.
The mac mini was purchased a few years ago and is our only ‘desktop’ computer in the house. The amplifier is a Cambridge Audio AM10 which at £149.95 is excellent value for money. Likewise the Mission speakers (given to me by a friend) are great quality but low end HiFi products, but more than adequate for my needs.
After converting our CD’s and Minidiscs to mp3 our existing CD and MiniDisc players were sold along with all of the discs themselves (some to specialist websites individually and some in bulk on ebay). The vinyl collection still remains boxed up in the garage and on my to do list 😉
The only real purchases to ‘make’ this music system complete and functional was the second hand Airport Express (£32 via eBay) and the Plex iOS app (£2.99).
The Results
We usually listen to a ‘shuffle’ of random tunes from a particular genre. This ensures a constant stream of suitable music depending on our mood or activity. This enables me to discover hidden gems buried deep in our collection and avoid getting stuck in a rut listening to the same old albums.
Since we pieced together this media system we’re a much more productive household. TV consumption has plummeted and we now spend much more time working on various projects (writing, internet business development, planning diy projects, researching investments, crochet, admin etc) and far less time vegetising in front of the television.
In short both productivity and creativity have increased significantly.
Music is good for the soul. As well as cycling, music helps me to de-stress, reset my mind and keep my brain clear.
If you love music, and already have a substantial collection then I can wholeheartedly recommend a similar set up to the one described above.
What better way to get through a Friday morning hangover at work than pretending I’m on a conference call….slipping on my headset…..and pulling up a chair next to Oscar and The Count…
Have a great weekend!
Kudos for creative invention and lateral thinking there!
streaming systems are brilliant indeed. I use a logitech streaming system running off a NAS which is a little bit lower power than a real ‘puter – in the past I’d used this on a old desktop computer running 24/7 in the garage until I discovered it drew about 50W!!! The NAS is 11W max and < 1W when in sleep mode.
I went lossless FLAC compressed and CD images because storage is cheap now – and I covet something like this from the Naim line now Logitech have end-of-lifed the hardware – it’s run from the same NAS.
I’m sure some folks would look askance at selling the original media in case of a sudden infestation of small print somewhere but what the hell – everyone’s at it. Presumably that’s why CDs are so cheap secondhand these days!
As for the TV, well, it’s only a small further step to outing that bad guy altogether 😉
Ermine,
Crikey – you’ve got me worried about how many watts the mac mini is chewing through now. Is there any easy way to test this?
I’m tempted by FLAC though as far as I’m aware iTunes can’t handle it…what software do you use to organise/browse and play your FLAC music files?
I’ve been giving the TV serious consideration. I’m not sure we quite ready to kiss it goodbye just yet. I am however considering running an experiment to see if we can do without the services provided by the TV Licence. Watch this space!
I use logitech media server, which is plug-ugly but works a treat. The NAS can also share the fiel store, so anything capable of indexing that can use it. That’s how the Naim device works I believe.
The Apple equivalent of FLAC is AAC lossless I believe. I don’t know if that can handle cue files, else your live albums and classical won’t be an exact copy of the CD – gapless is not lossless though in most cases it’s good enough.
As for the power drain, Apple’s spec on the Mac Mini indicates 85W max 😉 Computers are oddballs, varying power usage by what they are doing, but I’d guess probably about 50-30W static. Apples aren’t so fundamentally different to PCs in how the work under the hood.
At 20p per unit (1000Wh), 1W on 24/7 costs you 24*365*1(W)*0.2/1000=£1.75-ish. £100 p.a. isn’t a terrible price to pay for the utility. OTOH the Synology NAS is £150 from Amazon, it’s pushing four years old and at a difference in power of 70W I’m about £340 in the money and counting – it doesn’t owe me anything now.
You can measure power drain using one of those plug-in monitor things, they’re sub-£10 these days. Many local libraries will lend these out gratis to people to help chase power hogs. eg
http://www.greensuffolk.org/at-home/energy/#monitor
Ermine,
Thanks for the info. The difference in power consumption is significant. I might look at the NAS solution in more detail as I also have a large video media collection that has recently grown out of its 2TB external drive. I have no real need to have that accessible 24/7 like the music but throwing more USB external drives at a collection likely to grow at a faster rate in the future (HD media) doesn’t seem like a particularly elegant solution.
As an interim measure I’ve just been researching how to set up a schedule to turn the mini on/off automatically at certain times. By doing this at least it won’t be draining the national grid and making the lights in Ermine Towers flicker during the dead of night when it’s not needed. After all, my days of all night long house parties are well and truly over!
Firstly, let me congratulate you on your superb music choices, I have almost all of them myself. The Nina Simone Baltimore album is a true favourite which I have on Vinyl and sadly, as I haven’t digitalised my collection haven’t heard for ages. Thanks for the treat! I have a Bose wave with a complicated Iplayer set up and it’s just too damn fiddly to switch wires etc so I just listen via earphones mostly if I’m not listening to the rAdio. I thought about the Sonos system, when I move into a new home I might just get one. Speaking of radio, have you listened to the new London finance station called Share radio? It’s quite an interesting station, awful news reading and not enough content, lots of replays and gaps in the broadcasting but strangely very listenable. I would think they would be quite happy to interview you if you are up for it. : )
Minikins,
First off I’m glad you liked the selection…I was waiting with baited breath for some feedback/agreement/criticism in the comments section concerning my musical tastes!
Sonos looks nice but are quite expensive for what they are and then you’re tied into buying their kit if you want to expand/upgrade the set-up in the future. The set up described above gives me almost the same functionality with he flexibility.
I’ve not heard of Share radio – thanks for the tip, I’m off to find them on google now 😉
just get spotify – job done.. plus this way you can expand your music collection as fast as your brain and ears can manage – it is really good
on the diy front – you should prob run a new raspberry pi and xbmc rather than a mac – much cheaper, prob lower wattage and most importantly, very british..
The Rhino,
I can’t handle the adverts on Spotify and I just worked out a lifetime subscription (based on my self diagnosed life expectancy) would cost me nearly £7,000 at today’s prices. I can’t justify that price when I already own such a large collection.
DIY – I definitely need to investigate the Pi/XBMC solution more. I know it’s a bit excessive to have a mac sat there for what should be a simple job…i’ll stick it on the to do list 😉
hmm – it could be worth it though if it inspires productivity and creativity, potentially a very good return on the £7000 invested?
you could be cost neutral (actually you would save a little) if you ditched the tv and went with the music subscription. You could keep a big monitor, ditch your tv tuners and then just watch on internet catchup if you still want a visual fix?
what do you think you would pay to have access to the worlds record collection
would you pay £5 per month? (rather than the £10 advertised)
how much would you say you spent on your collection?
do you still buy music? how much might that cost? (if you don’t then why have you stopped?)
Its difficult to value this sort of thing – maybe you should go for a 3 month free trial and reassess after that period?
Rhino,
All good/valid points you’re making. I have a couple of friends that used it, found it really good for a few weeks then just ended up regressing and listening to ‘their’ music that they already owned. Maybe I need a lengthy trial like you’ve suggested!