Build a Multi-Output MP3 Server?

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?

Comments

Which OS?

[jbardell]

Hahaha you asked 'Which OS?' on /. I guess you weren't looking for an unbiased opinion :P

hurdles

[kp833]

what did you do and what hurdles did you have to navigate before things were working?
My Wife.

Re:go wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the tablet PC's have to be gold-plated or will silver do?

Is it just me,,,

[zazylawy]

or does anyone else find it strange that sometimes Slashdot editors remember a story being posted 3 years ago, yet other times post the same story twice (or more) in a single day!?!?

Re:Is it just me,,,

[telstar]

It's just their version of TiVo ... Constanty trying out that great rewind feature...

Re:AVScience Forum

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people can afford to go out and buy Pocket PCs to replace their remote controls?

The same people who replace their cheese graters with new Apple G5's.

Re:But...

[Read Icculus]

The concept of multiple people listening to different music all throughout a nice large house is a bit tough to grasp for us basement-dwelling lonely ./ reading geeks. An honest mistake I'm sure.

You have too much money

[Wobbly Bob]

You should donate to the EFF or some other charity.

Re:I contacted a company in the past

[SEWilco]

I thought it would be great to have multiple outputs on soundcards.

The companies which sell multiple-output soundcards agree with you that is great.

So all of a sudden

[Loco3KGT]

you're too good for two cups and a string for audio? *hrmph*