Cloud computing and streamers
Posted by: El Guapo on 25 August 2011
Will the Uniti, Unitiqute and any following servers be able to access musiuc from a cloud based platform, eg icloud or whatever comes along as well as from a NAS box?
Real-time access to cloud-based music libraries will require some of the same pre-caching that one sees with Apple TV downloads and playback. However, unlike video files which are compressed at point of acquisition, music files have been delivered in data-uncompressed form for years and the expectation would be that access was instantaneous, glitch-free, uncompromised in quality and properly revision-controlled to address library duplicates (if the end user is able to upload into the system).
Various services have promised approximated solutions to this but we are not there yet, as our network infrastructure is still five to ten years off before this is made to be this easy and sensible.
So is that a yes or a no?
The Internet does offer another way of distributing data, it's called multicasting and this where the audio is broadcast to all participating clients. However multicasting has only been quite recently usable on the Internet with the advert of IGMP 2 and 3. However many ISPs would need to upgrade their IPv4 infrastructure, and I suspect most will hold off until IPv6 is rolled out which has multicasting as it's core and many features for optimally support streaming.
I suspect with IPv6 we will see far more cloud media based streaming services for audio and video. Until then it will be mostly on demand session based with moderate bandwidth because of the server session based limitations.
Simon
My question still stands. Will the Uniti/UnitiQute/any other Naim streamer be able to access music from a cloud based platform? Actually the music would not need to be transmitted as music it could just be held as data on a cloud. So the question maybe should be could the Uniti/Unitqute play music that is held on a cloud based server system like iCloud and could it play music held as data on a cloud based server in the same way as it plays music held as data on a NAS box?
Will it? not at the moment
Could it in the future? depends on the service in question (iCloud isn't even out of beta yet)
There's an interesting post here on Computer Audiophile about cloud based services. I agree with him completely - they are DOA. I think having your own NAS provides a lot more value for music you already own. And, its easy to download to an ipod etc what you want to take on the go - I'd argue its easier and higher quality than any current cloud based service. (Note in the CA discussion that at least one of the Google or Amazon services compress the files whether you want it to or not.)
On the other hand, I love MOG (like Spotify) and would be great if it could be included in Naim streamers.
make your own cloud. you probably already have the drive space.
Local "cloud" at home with a shared NAS, and your own real cloud when away from home with PlugPlayer.
Why pay for others to serve lossy crap for you.
If all relevant networks are capable, you can stream hires FLACs from your own cloud to PP. I think you will find MANY weak links though and realize that industry standard of 256-320 kbps is about as good as it gets without dropouts.
Cheers,
Patrick
Note in the CA discussion that at least one of the Google or Amazon services compress the files whether you want it to or not.)
You can send FLACs to the beta Google cloud without compression.... that is if you have days on end to wait for them to upload.
Clouding is weak and just another way for you to feed marketing firms without any real benefit to you.
Simon