I am a new owner of the SB M1001. I have yet to even hook it up. Reading this forum I see there are so many choices of software to work with.

I used to own a CD30 network mp3 player if anyone is familiar with that. It just recently broke so I bought a SB. I loved the fact that I could control what was playing on the CD30 with my PC. They had their own program that looked like any other media player with a now playing list. I want that functionality again. Will windows media player 11 do that? Is firefly the best choice for media sharing? VisualMR to control and setup playlists?
Also is anyone familiar with MusicIP mixer? A program that generates custom playlists for you depending on mood. Is there a way to integrate this into the SB in anyway?

What is the best most functional combination of software to install to get the most out of the SB?

Thanks so Much all!

glenn71x wrote:

Will windows media player 11 do that?

You can use WMP to manage your library: Add songs, modify tags, rip CDs, build saved playlists, and use it as your music server (by enabling sharing). So it is the source you can connect your SoundBridge to, but you can't use it to control the SoundBridge directly (play/pause, build now-playing list,...). Therefore you need one of the remote control software solutions available.

glenn71x wrote:

Is firefly the best choice for media sharing?

That probably depends on your needs (and is probably better located in the Roku general section). Personally I like Firefly a lot - its fast and robust (and works on non-windows servers like a NAS server, too). But if you already have WMP11 working with your SoundBridge or you have some DRM-protected WMA it's probably the easiest to start with WMP11 and see if it fits your needs.

glenn71x wrote:

VisualMR to control and setup playlists?

Yes! ... ok, I'm biased
Maybe someone 'neutral' should answer that question
The different applications have different approaches and therefore different feature sets. And the user-interface is always a matter of taste (that's why VisualMR is skinnable)

glenn71x wrote:

What is the best most functional combination of software to install to get the most out of the SB?

I use:
- iTunes for managing my library
- mp3 only (no WMA esp. no DRM)
- Firefly as the server
- (of course ) VisualMR on a PC and PocketPC to control the SB

This combination works great for me But I don't think there is a "best". It really depends on your needs. WMP wasn't an option for me since I wanted a unix-based NAS as a server. And iTunes was the program I started with and works great for managing the library shared by firefly. But as a server I would rather use WMP then iTunes ...

Thorsten