After several days of transcoding ( Format A to Format B ) and rebuilding databases on my Beosound 5 Encore and my NAS here is my “how to do it” thread so you don’t have to make all the mistakes by yourself.
Hardware used:
iMac running OSX Snow Leo
Western Digital WD Live NAS with Twonky Server
Beosound 5 Encore
Software used:
iTunes for initial rip
XLD for transcoding ( can rip as well )
Problem:
Convert Apple Lossless Files to a Beosound 5 Encore readable format and show everything correct on the Encore
Solution:
Section 1 – Ripping –
Take your physical CD and rip it with the encoder of your choice ( iTunes in my case ) in the highest possible format ( Apple lossless / ALAC in my case )
Once the rip is complete, check all ID3 tags if they meet your expectations, otherwise change them and including the cover artwork ( 500 x 500 pixel works best imho ). Make sure you select all tracks before adding the cover to the files, dragging the picture to the “drag picture here” area sometimes don’t work, I select all files and go into the “Information” tab in the context menu and add it there.
Note that if you listen to a song while editing the ID3 tag the information might not get stored correctly, so never listen to the file you edit!
Genres don’t work for me, so I created my own genres and just named the bands by their starting letter ( e.g. genre for Pink Floyd is “P”, Soundtracks have the genre “Soundtrack” and Compilations are filed as “Sampler” )
Once you have ripped your CD library consider this as your source for everything else and do a backup!
Section 2 – Transcoding –
Since the BS5encore cannot read Apple Lossless files (yes we complained a lot but I guess this won’t change) I decided to transcode my library to the 320 AAC format (Before you ask, I don’t like FLAC….) After testing several formats on my Lab5’s this was to me the format with the best sound/size ratio.
XLD is a free & fantastic tool to transcode large libraries without adding files to your iTunes library. Just do an initial setup, specify the output folder and drag the entire folder you want to transcode onto the XLD symbol.
It has a very good option that shows you the metadata before transcoding, so you can be sure all the information is correct and the cover is added, once you press go, the transcoding starts and from the Apple lossless format the encoding of a song just takes seconds... ( My lib of 16000 songs / 600 GB lossless files took 6 hours on a iMac i7 )
Section 3 – Fill up the NAS -
I use a Western Digital Live NAS which is very easy to setup if and has ( and this is not a standard ) a “power down” feature when not in use.
Since the NAS has an installed Twonky server, just go into the configuration menu of the NAS and stop the Twonky server while filling up the HDD for the first time.
Once this is done, let Twonky create its database by switching the Twonky server feature on, this also takes a while, be patient J
Section 4 – Beosound 5 Setup
Setup the BS5encore to find your access point and/or Twonky server ( explained in the manual ) and the system populates its internal library with all the contents of the Twonky server. This takes some time and some of the Album covers might not show up directly ( depending on the size of your database ) but if its correct in Twonky, it will show up correctly on the BS5e.
That’s about it, you’re done!
Unsolved Issues so far:
- Sorting of bands starting with “The” (e.g. The Beatles), you will find them under “Beatles, The” in the Beosound 5 Encore, as Twonky sorts the bands and ignores the word “the”.
- Legally downloaded mp3 tracks: Even after transcoding and manually changing/adding the ID3 tag information with XLD the files are listed under “Unknown” in the Twonky server and therefore in the BS5e as well.
Comments:
Besides the described issues this workflow worked for me, all the cover art is visible and the bands are grouped where they should.
Any comments welcome …
Stephan