How I outsmarted Apple, Microsoft and (probably) myself: Or, my awesome new music setup

OK, so if you're not a fan of my gadget-geeky-fanboy tendencies (and yes, that's addressed mainly to my wife), then feel free to tune out now. If, on the other hand, you find that stuff interesting (and yes, that's addressed almost exclusively to Mark V.), then get ready for just your kind of post.

For some time now I've been lamenting the fact that the hundreds and hundreds of CDs I've bought over the years have essentially sat untouched in their cases since I made the switch to iTunes. Compared to simply hitting PLAY on my computer or iPod, the act of finding the CD I want, putting it into the CD player, turning on the stereo and then having to stay in one room to listen to it has just seemed unnecessarily tedious (I'm tired just from typing those steps, let alone doing them).

I'm exaggerating a tad, but we just never listen to our CDs anymore. That said, there are tons of bands and discs collecting dust that I'd actually like to hear. After some consultation with Mark, Smivey, Nels and a few others, I embarked on an ambitious plan. And so, over the last few months, I have gone ahead and converted all (at last count, some 700+) our CDs to mp3s.

"Big fucking deal," you rudely exclaim.

Well, hold on just a second because that's only part of the plan. Jerk.

First of all, I didn't have nearly enough hard drive space on my computer to accommodate all the music. And secondly, I really wanted to have a way to stream the music from my computer to our little-used, but far nicer, stereo setup.

And this is where the geeky tech parts come in. Feel free to skip ahead.

Microsoft has been pimping their Windows Media Center rig for well over a year now. And, despite being a loyal Mac guy, I have to admit that for all the success of the iTunes store and video iPod, I think that Apple is way behind the curve on this one (and yes, I know that the iTV solution is on the way, but it sounds like too little, too late to me). Media Center PCs let you use your computer as both a TiVo-like DVR and a warehouse for your digital media files (the photos, movies and music Mac has sold millions of computers to support). Then, using some sort of hub (or as they call it, an "extender"), media center PCs let you stream said media to your TV/entertainment center.

And guess what, the Xbox 360 is just such a hub/extender. In essence, if you have a Windows Media Center XP computer and an XBox 360, you can connect to your AV setup and start enjoying convergence, rather than just hypothesizing about its eventual arrival. The downside is that you have to actually use a Windows XP computer. Take it easy. Like I said, I'm a longtime Mac aficionado. If I don't take an occasional shot at MSFT I have to turn in my holier-than-thou-Mac-hipster cred.

So, how to connect my sweet MacBook Pro to my sweet Xbox (see, there's some Redmond love)? That's where a nifty little piece of software called Connect360 comes in. As you may have guessed from the name, the software is downloaded onto your Mac and then allows your Xbox 360 to "see" your Mac over a wireless network. Not only that, it allows your iPhoto, iTunes, and (with the latest update) any WMA movies on your Mac to be recognized and streamed through the 360.

OK, so now I have a way to get my newly converted music to my stereo (via an optical audio cable from the 360 to the receiver), but I still have that pesky little problem of too much music for too little hard drive space.

This would seem to be an easily solved problem. In fact, I can hear you screaming, "Buy an external hard drive, dumbass!" OK, fine. You're right. And I did. But wait, how can I have music on my computer and on the new hard drive without causing a problem?

Enter another genius little piece of software called Libra. Libra gets around iTunes' inability (read: unwillingness) to support multiple music libraries. What I did was use Libra and iTunes to rip all the converted mp3's to an external hard drive (in real time). I bought a wicked cheap Lacie 320 GB USB2 hard drive (I was worried about not getting FireWire, but it turned out just fine). Then I used Libra to establish an iTunes library on the Lacie. I imported my existing iTunes collection (the one that lives on my MacBook Pro) to the hard drive and then I set my iTunes preferences to automatically rip any CD I inserted into the Mac onto the Lacie, as an mp3, ejecting it when finished.

Sounds much more complicated than it actually is. Think of Libra as a switch. I can turn on the library that lives on my computer (for when I'm mobile and want to have that smaller sub-collection of music). Or, I can plug in and turn on the Lacie External library and have access to a combined library of nearly 1000 albums. Either way, Connect360 can find the music.

So now I can access our entire music collection from any room of the apartment and rock to the sweet sounds of some newly-unearthed winners like, Windham Hill Guitar Sampler, Big Daddy Kane's Long Live the Kane, and an unlistenable Grateful Dead Demo Outtake Session I once paid WAY too much for at an awesome place in Boise called CD Merchant. The best part was that their price tags had been printed as, "seedy merchant." Nice!

OK, that's it for tech-fest. Suffice it to say that I'm pleased with the new setup. Now I have to run. I have a Battlestar Galactica episode to watch, some Klingon verbs to practice and a lightsaber fight to choreograph, for I am awesome!