Embedded Linux In Onkyo's Home Music Server

IrateSurf writes "ExtremeTech has a story about a new use of embedded Linux from Onkyo, which runs a home music server. Their NAS-2.3 has a CD-player as well as an 80GB hard drive for storing music and streaming it to other players on the an Ethernet network. Also check out the web site for the NAS-2.3." If only they would make it record radio, too ...

Comments

they must be rich

[Stanley Feinbaum]

They must be rich if they can afford to have 80gigs worth of legal copies of their music...

if each album takes 80megs about.. then the hd can hold 1000 albums... 1000 albums at 20$ an album is 20,000$ !

Who can afford to spend that much on music?

Re:they must be rich

[StArSkY]

I have about 450 Original CD's, and my two flat mates (combined) would have over 1000. so do they make a version with 150Gb+????

Re:they must be rich

[rednox]

In Canada, it is legal for you to make a copy of someone else's music CDs for your own personal use.

Recording artists and performers are compensated for this by massive levies collected on all blank recording media sold in Canada.

This would be a handy device to take advantage of this law. It might take a few years to borrow and copy 1000 CDs from your friends, though.

Re:they must be rich

[gmhowell]

I see several others have corrected you, let me add a bit more. I'll be 30 in about two weeks. My father's first CD player cost around $500. 1983 or 1984, I believe. At that time, I started buying CD's, and have bought only 3 tapes since. That's just CD's. Most were purchased for around $12 each. I have around 400 CD's. And I don't use some shitty 128k mp3, I use VBR with the r3mix settings. That's why I recently replaced my 60 gig drive.

This also ignores a music collection of my father's on vinyl that begins somewhere in the dark ages, when Buddy Holly was the new thing. Much (most?) of his collection is unobtainable on CD. That will quickly add up when I get around to ripping the vinyl.

Re:they must be rich

[Excarnate]

Hi Oblio!

They must be rich...

There are 3 problems with your post. Working backwards:

Your cost per album estimate came out of your ass and it stinks. $20 per album is way off. Even when I buy new CDs they cost $13 at most (per disc). I buy lots of used discs at typically $8 or less. A rough estimate of an average for my collection is $7 per disc. Replacement cost, now that's something different.

Your estimates on how much music an 80 GB drive can hold don't list your assumptions and thus are useless for use in arguing or making a point. Using a (low) figure of 1 MB = 1 minute, and my collection's average of 52 minutes per disc (and 14 tracks per disc) I get about 1538 albums. I (and it seems many others) record at a higher bit rate, if you use 160/VBS it holds about 1326 of my average albums. Taking the higher bitrate and my averages, that's about $9900 worth of CDs this thing will hold. That's close to your $20,000 for goyim ;-)

The final place you fall down is in your time estimates. You assume that everyone is a loser teen who has to fill the hard drive and fill it today. I'm old enough to have been buying CDs since 1985. And I've got a beautiful wife who has been buying her own CDs for our (instead of "my") collection. And I wouldn't fill the drive with what we have today, but guess what? Shock shock horror horror, we are still adding to our collection and we wouldn't be interested in something without expansion room. With our collection we've spent an average of a bit over $400 per year of which I've spent about 3/4 of that. (And yes, Napster led us to many new bands where we ended up buying the band's CD.)

Oh yes, Onkyo might not care if you don't buy this product. They sell many products aimed at different segments of the market. There are people whose CD collection makes mine look puny. Just because a coat doesn't fit you doesn't mean it shouldn't be for sale. The same for this product. But you have a point, too. I fail to see it, but I'm sure you have one.

Hey, here is an idea for record companies: Give away all music but at a low bit-rate. People can find what they like and what they think sucks a golf ball through 50 feet of garden hose. And the quality will be low enough that they'll want to buy, on CD, what they like.

Why not wireless?

[Metalhead01]

There are a lot of these little guys popping up on the market, yet all of them use a physical connection. Is there some inherent technical problem with using an 802.11b device to stream the music?

Re:why

[YrWrstNtmr]

why do they have to make these so big??

1. space for all the connections in the back

2. power amp cooling. Driving serious power to multiple large speakers takes power. That heat needs to be dissipated.

3. It looks better

PCM Digital Out Though?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the ease of CD's on an HD, but as a semi-audiophile I want something that does uncompressed audio.
The last unit from Integra (Made into an Onkyo brand) also offered digital out but only for MP3s. If you played PCM the digital out turned off! Anyone know if this unit does the same thing?
AFAIK iMerge UK is the only company that has given RIAA the finger and offers PCM digital out, oh, and their players are much cooler but also more expensive.

Recording Radio....

[Penguin2212]

I would question the market viability of a device designed to copy songs from the radio. When you copy a CD that you bought and paid for, you are buying the material on the CD. You are purchasing a copy. When you hear a song on the radio, you are hearing performance of the song. An artist/record company makes money for every copy and performance made. If you buy a CD and copy it (assuming that you don't share it or anything) just to listen to it on a device such as this, you aren't taking any more than what you paid for. But if you copy from the radio, you are. In fact this was the basis for the case against radio stations streaming broadcasts over the internet, because temporary copies of songs were made on the user's hard drive therefore making it a copy. Most of you have probablly heard of that case. Most radio stations have ceased to do so because of this, and are fighting it as well. I'm not trying to defend the RIAA in any way. However, a device that would facilitate copying of music from the radio would definitely come under serious fire from the RIAA, IMHO.

No inherent technical problem...

[toupsie]

Is there some inherent technical problem with using an 802.11b device to stream the music?

No. In fact, there is a product on the market that can stream music in three different wireless paths, 802.11b, 802.11g and bluetooth, along with gigabit ethernet. The system uses an open source operating system, you can address it via http, ssh, X11 or you can roll your own access system, its portable, has a fold-out LCD screen and is so thin, it can fit under a typical AV receiver. You can read more about it here.

Redundant hard drives?

[zerofoo]

Of all the "music server" products i've seen on the market, i've yet to see one that has redundant hard drives. Maybe these things haven't been on the market long enough, but eventually the hard drives in these devices will fail, and when they do, there are going to be some very pissed off consumers out there.

Until recently, audio gear manufacturers never had to worry about the storage media. When you bought the music, you bought a hard copy of that media (cd, record, tape...etc). I understand that these devices still require you to purchase the "hard copy" of the music, but do you want to re-rip 500 CDs just because your hard drive went clunk-clunk?

-ted

Re:does it matter what OS it's running?

[Erik Hollensbe]

What about sharp (the zaurus, makers of various consumer electronics), or the empeg (who didn't make anything prior)? Or TiVO?

Sony DOES use linux on their consoles. In fact, you can get a kit that lets you do development on PS2 hardware.

And, Diamond got their name making video cards. Only later did they start making everything that fits in a PCI slot (this was shortly after they bought Supra).

I just find it hard to believe, that embedded linux has been out for how many years, and we're still cheering about it being licensed?

Lineo (or whoever owns them now) did the world a great service and may have made some money at it, and now linux is everywhere.

But what's next, are we going to hear about the embedded linux that's in the next high tech microwave?

At this point, it's really not the fact that /. posted this -- I'm not surprised at all. It's just that there has to be a point where you guys realize that it's already BEEN accepted in this market.

If you guys masturbate too much, it's just not going to feel good anymore.

The good question is

[Nawak]

Will I have access to source/documentation to customize this linux?
If not, I think this kind of item would be frustrating as I am likely to end up with a dream of doing something totally different with this embedded computer...

You know, some networked remote control for it for instance... arg... must... stop... thinking!