[Leaplist] spreading music throughout the house via Linux

[Danny W. Burdick]

Would it be acceptable to run 70v distributed speakers out to all the rooms
the 70v amps can be had on ebay for less than 50-75$
and the speakers are also cheap.  Of course anything can be made to be
expensive depending on how high-end you want everything.

Feed it with Linux and distribute it out using 70v hardware.....
you know muzak style....

burdicda


Mark W. Alexander wrote:
> On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 05:46:43PM -0400, Dan Cherry wrote:
>   
>> After several years of procrastination, I'm going to take another shot at 
>> delivering music to several rooms (5 including porch and garage) using Linux.
>>
>> Amarok is currently handling the files, and I've got a line out splitter going 
>> to one other room (although the distance taints the signal, so not a good way 
>> to go, in general).  There's wireless in the house, and cat5 would be a pain, 
>> but not out of the question.
>>
>> Powered computer speakers are acceptable quality in most of the rooms, but 
>> buying a pc for each room would be pretty pricey and the size might be a show 
>> stopper unless I use laptops or VERY small footprint boxes. 
>>
>> I'd be interested in what others are doing to accomplish this.  Any 
>> suggestions for a cost effective way to get there - both hardware and 
>> software - would be welcome.
>>     
>
> I've got both a Roku (http://www.roku.com/) SoundBridge and a SoundBridge
> Radio. The SoundBridge has great sound using decent PC speakers. The Radio has
> radio-like sound but also has a sleep timer and alarm. If I had to do it over,
> I'd get a second SoundBridge. I already scripted a sleep timer (although you
> had to go to a PC to use it) and a alarm would not be too difficult.
>
> There are a lot of 802.11 media devices with prices all over the map. You can
> start here: 
>
>  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wireless+media&x=0&y=0
>
> I selected the SoundBridge primarily because it was the only one that didn't
> look like a something from a bad 1950's sci-fi movie. It looks nice most
> anywhere and I am very pleased with the audio quality. And, it turns out that
> it's fairly open. I've written a python module that encapsulates their Roku
> Control Protocol (RCP) so anything you can do with the remote can be done in a
> script.  Unfortunately, that does not include fine-grained track positioning,
> fast forward or rewind, so...
>
> Where you're going to having fun is synchronizing sound between clients, if
> you're looking for the "Whole House Experience." There's big $$ solutions that
> I'm not even thinking about trying
> (http://www.sonos.com/products/how_sonos_works.htm). There's got to be ways,
> but I haven't found them in my limited googling time. I suppose you could have
> a script that controls starting each track in the playlist at the same time on
> all clients so you'd be close but I doubt you'd be close enought if more than
> one client was in hearing range.
>
> If you don't care about synchronizing, the SoundBridge is easy to grab and take
> with you to another room. You'll want powered speakers so if you cart them all
> you'll want a basket to carry the 2-3 speakers, the unit and the power
> adapters. I just set up one set of speakers upstairs and another downstairs so
> the only thing that moves is the SoundBridge.
>
> On the server side, I use mt-daapd (apt-get-able) aka Firefly Media server
> (http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/) running on an NSLU2. Amarok sees and plays
> from the server just fine as well. Since it's light enough to run on a teeny
> ARM, I doubt you'd notice it running on any box that is always on. I've started
> ripping tracks in FLAC format and mt-daap transcodes them to mp3 on-demand so I
> get high-quality music archives that still play easily on most any client.
>
> Another popular option is SlimServer... Oops.. looks like it's SqueezeCenter
> now, and bought by Logitech:
>
>  http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html
>
> When I got it originally, it was a time-limited demo then pay for a license.
> Don't know if that's still the case, but I had problems with it hanging anyway.
> That, plus FireFly using standard DAAP (aka iTunes) protocol means just about
> anything can discover it and play media from it. When I was looking for what to
> set up, a lot of people swore by slimserver. I just found mt-daapd easier to
> get and keep running, GPL, a standard protocol, and it did what I want.
>
> mwa
>