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Build a Multi-Output MP3 Server?

Posted by Cliff on from the tunes-in-every-room dept.

z80 asks: "I'm rebuilding my house and I am thinking about fitting speakers in every room of the house and pulling some massive amount of cables in the walls. I also want to control and send the output to each set of speakers from the same source, and was thinking that a PC, with 4-6 soundcards, would do the trick, and there are of course a couple of questions I have. What kind of hardware would be required to be able to stream up to six different MP3's through six soundcards at the same time ? Can it even be done? What kind of software can be used to do it? Which OS? How can it be remotely controlled? With respect to the last question, I'm thinking about mounting a couple of flat displays around the house connected to old PC's that run some sort of connection (VNC maybe) to the mp3 server." This is a topic Ask Slashdot tackled three years ago. Now, with applications like Ardour showing off the power of Open Source frameworks like JACK, it seems like building such a machine might not be as hard as it once was. For those of you who have managed to build something like this, what did you do and what hurdles did you have to navigate before things were working? How would you set up a machine to run independent audio to 4 or more rooms?

3 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Heh. by bl1st3r · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I'd be happy just to get this peice of shit Compaq to work. In the old days, comp companies built their computers like fucking tanks. How horrible. Below is my current PC company banlist:

    Dell
    Compaq
    HP
    Gateway

    --
    hrrm.
  2. Re:AVScience Forum by aksuur · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?"

    "Regarding your .sig : I would say you have failed. Because you have failed to achieve your goal of failing."


    You misinterpreted the sig. They're saying that if I try to fail a test and succeed in failing it, what have I done? I find the question creative, but whoever thought of it did not realize that there exists a definite answer. It's creative in all of the success and failure being the same thing and whatever. There is an answer, though, and that is that you have done both. You have succeded to fail. It's not contradictory because the success refers to the successful attempt to fail. The failing refers to whatever action you were trying not to complete. It is not simply success either, because although you have succeded your goal of failing, you still failed.

  3. Re:SHUT THE FUCK UP HEBREW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I love Jesus. Even though I am not catholic, I will sneak up to their communion just to taste him.