Streaming IP audio on my Onkyo TX-NR900

Folks

I can barely hide my excitement. Wanted to share with you that I finally managed to execute my plan for buying the Onkyo tx-nr900 receiver and it works fantastically. Some of you may know that this receiver has an ethernet port. So you can stream all your MP3, WMA and WAV files stored on PC disks around the house (assuming your house is Ethernet wired; mine is :-)) and also play internet radio (thousands of cool stations in the world) - both without having a single CD next to the receiver!

Being the disorganized person that I am with regards to my CDs, this is revolution of sorts. Here is how it works: all my music is stored on my PC on 1st floor (around 700 CDs have been converted to digital - it only took a day). I used apple itunes for encoding at 192 kbps. I have a router-cum-switch downstairs with 4 ports. I also have this tx-nr900 monster in my living room. All these rooms have ethernet ports built-in when I built my house. So all I do is plug in my 1st floor PC to its ethernet jack in the wall next to it and the downstairs receiver to the ethernet jack in the wall next to it and they both can obviously talk using the router. I connected them all last night (with a lot of apprehension in my heart on whether it would work) and Viola, it worked!!! I only have to feed into my receiver either the artist name/album name/track name/genre name/my own playlists and it streams them all from my PC over the ethernet and renders them through my sonodyne speakers at a quality that will truly surprise most of you. I was shocked to hear the mp3 quality on my receiver - it was so good ! So what this means is there is no source CD player next to my receiver. I just walk in and key in (using my remote control)the album/artist/track name on the receiver and there you go !!! It is fantastic and I thought I will share it with all of you. The receiver has 2 zones, so I will soon wire another room/garden and use the amp's power for for that - it is ek ticket me do khel !! By the way it is possible to connect 12 mini-receivers called NC-500 in multiple rooms (assuming they all have an ethernet jack) and exploit the combined power of the monster called NR900+PC!

I am trying out the internet radio on the reciever and I will get it running in a day (need to run a proxy on my PC).

For all those who have a large digital music collection, this is a god-sent receiver. Onkyo have NR 900,901,1000 etc (1000 costs a fortune at a few lakhs)!!

I will give u more updates as I experiment more with this new toy.

Thanks
Manish

PS As I wrote before, I have sonodyne towers and the sub and is working well with the above-mentioned set up, atleast for my pre-dominantly large rock collection