Spotify!!!!!

JamesOK:

Anyone know if Spotify are planning a remote control app for iPhone?

JohnDuncan:

JamesOK:

Anyone know if Spotify are planning a remote control app for iPhone?

Search for remoteless in the app store. Only really works on Windows though, couldn't get the Mac beta to do anything.

Thanks John, will give it a go.  Although I need the Mac one really.  Does say the Mac one is in Beta though, so fingers crossed a proper version will come out.

After reading these posts - and I do often - I really think I'm missing a trick here....

Yes & no PP. Spotify 'lite' sounds abysmal through my laptop via mini-jack-to-phono lead into my amp, so that I could never for a second consider listening to it as a method of listening to music.

... However... It's a great tool for checking out artists before I part with my cold, hard, cash.

If and it's a big if, they have the artist |I wish to listen to on their books.

It does - can't remember whether I had beta 1 or 2, but I couldn't get my iPhone to find the Mac at all, so fell at the first hurdle.

In the meantime, I use a VNC client on my iPhone to view the Mac's desktop, and work with it like that. Kludgy but effective.

JohnDuncan:

I use a VNC client on my iPhone to view the Mac's desktop, and work with it like that. Kludgy but effective.

VNC is now available on iPhone!?  As in RealVNC?

Fantastic, I'll have a look for that too.  I believe you have to pay for it nowadays, I have an old free version, but worth it I think.

I have 'VNC Lite' which was free I think.

Spotify has been the single biggest influence on my music listening. Without it, no Scandinavian Prog Rock, American Post Rock, a large amount of modern Prog Rock and modern Jazz. Radio, even John Peel has not had the same influence in finding new music to listen to and love. I also see far more bands now as Spotify allows you access to lesser know bands who can be seen for £10 to £15 at smaller venues.

Thanks to Spotify I have seen Scandinavian Prog with  Efterklang, Slarafenland, Modern Prog with Oceansize and Tunng, American Post rock with Grails and next up ASIWYFA.

idc:

Spotify has been the single biggest influence on my music listening. Without it, no Scandinavian Prog Rock, American Post Rock, a large amount of modern Prog Rock and modern Jazz. Radio, even John Peel has not had the same influence in finding new music to listen to and love. I also see far more bands now as Spotify allows you access to lesser know bands who can be seen for £10 to £15 at smaller venues.

Thanks to Spotify I have seen Scandinavian Prog with  Efterklang, Slarafenland, Modern Prog with Oceansize and Tunng, American Post rock with Grails and next up ASIWYFA.

 Perhaps a trip to the 'Purple Turtle' in Camden on Saturday 11th December to see the mighty Designs Of Chaos is on the cards Ian?

Could you get yourself onto Spotify Chris? It would interesting to see how it works.

I do watch out for your gig dates, I need one to match with getting to London and back again.

I am thinking of upgrading to the Premium service too. I want to run at 320kbps (I think that is correct?) from laptop into my cyrus pre/power.

What is the best way of putting through the system for sound quality? I am right in thinking an Arcam rDock?

Cheers

You are correct with the bit rate and you will need a DAC, laptop to DAC via USB or digital optical/coax (USB is the most common) and then phono from DAC to the amp. So it would be the rDAC not the rDock.

Thanks for the info. I will have to try out the r-dac.

I was typing and thinking (should not multi-task !!) about my iphone not the laptop.

I'm a recent music streaming convert.

I used to have the free version of spotify untill the adverts got too much for me and I upgraded to unlimited.

I loved sitting with the mrs, thinking of songs and/or artists from the past, searching for them and playing them there and then.

Only problem was I used to listen to it on either the internal speakers
of my mac or even worse on the internal speaker of my windows laptop. What I needed was to get the sound to my stereo speakers.

The solution for me was to buy a sonos zp90 and upgrade to spotify premium.

I also thought I would buy a NAS and copy all my cd's to the NAS, so I can access either my own music library or tracks on spotify and play either through my stereo amp/speakers.

There were teething problems to begin with (before I bought the NAS), sonos was accessing my itunes library from my mac upstairs wirelessly and kept skipping/stopping.  It turns out sonos don't support wireless connections to your music library source.

I bought a NAS and the dbpoweramp software (oh and a new router with more ethernet ports)  and I am 90% of the way through ripping all my CD's to FLAC and accessing them via Sonos.  As an iphone owner I downloaded the free sonos app and it looks and sounds great.

There were (and still are to a lesser degree) some teething problems between sonos and spotify where tracks would stop & skip before getting a spotify error message (well reported on sonos and spotify forum pages).  But it happems less and less now and I am sure it will be eradicated completely very soon.

The free sonos iphone app isnt as good as the spotifty application but it does the job.  Again I am sure it will improve in time.

But I love the way it all hangs together.  Last night I put together a halloween playlist for a halloween party we are having tommorow night.

In fact I love it so much that I bought a black sonos S5 when I was at the manchester show.  I was promising myself one for xmas but the 12.5% discount was too good to pass up on.  Although my mrs couldnt understand why I needed yet another box.

All I need now are the beatles on spotify.  Oh ...and maybe an arcam rdac!

Yes, Spotify is great - it even has some of the more bizarre comedy 78s from when I used to collect them as a student. Check out Leslie Sarony........

I tried the 'Remoteless' app for Mac last weekend, but it only worked sporadically.  As a result, I added Airfoil to my (work) Macbook so I can stream from that instead of my iMac in the other room.  It was a bit irritating to have to keep going backwards and forwards!

Drummerman - you're right about the SQ of Spotify Premium.  It's very pleasing indeed, but 'with the edges knocked off'.  There's not quite as much resolution, but the sound is a little more mellow - which is sometimes an advantage.  I was pleasantly surprised with the improvement to everything, but especially the soundstage, when I added my DAC last week.

 As an aside, I'm a secondary school music teacher, so you can imagine how Spotify has transformed my ability to respond to kids' interests or follow spontaneous trains of discussion about music.  It's also full of top quality karaoke tracks which I find very handy. (Just thought I'd mention that in case if any of you lot get the urge to try out the old vocal chords!!!)

Spotify shmotify. Grooveshark's where it's going to be at soon...