Centrally-Controlled Home Music System on a Budget?

akgoatley writes "Recently my technically inept parents bought a new stereo and have expressed a wish to have it connected to a computer for storing large amount of music - a Linux CD jukebox. An example of this would be The Idiot Jukebox, but the solution has to be less complicated than that. I've already written a fairly basic music database in Perl with a web frontend for searching through it from our LAN, and I'm looking for a Linux-based collection of software to run the jukebox. It has to rip CDs when inserted, store them in a directory structure based on the name of the album. Modification of the ID3 tags is not necessary as my database handles that centrally. To complicate matters, it has to be command-line based as I will be SSHing into the jukebox to control it. The solution has to be a simple collection of software that can be easily controlled via SSH. Due to hardware (and budget) constraints the jukebox will be too slow to run X, anyway :( This means programs like Grip will not be usable. What do you Slashdotters out there think? Any good suggestions or pieces of software you would use?"

Comments

solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

you want a solution? hell, i'm having trouble understanding your question!

Re:solution?

[badasscat]

you want a solution? hell, i'm having trouble understanding your question!

He basically wants a music server, and he apparently wants it to be as complicated as possible, and he wants to run it on an 8088.

This isn't the first time the music server question has come up here, and the questioners always seem to want to make it as hard on themselves as possible. They want a text-based interface, they want to be able to rip and burn, they want Linux, and they want to do it all on a hacked HP calculator or something.

I've got a media server that I cobbled together out of old spare parts, combined with a new hard drive and a new case. Whole thing cost me about $200 for the new parts and I've got a reasonably nice machine that hosts my music, movies, and photos. I have it set to auto-logon to Windows XP (with a username and password) and then launch iTunes and Media Portal (an OSS media center clone) with a girder plugin for my remote control. Then I've got a bunch of options. I can access that PC directly through my TV using Media Portal and play music with my remote control. I can carry my laptop anywhere in the house and control that PC through Windows' own remote desktop connection. Or I can use it as a real music server and stream music through iTunes over my wireless LAN, playing it on my laptop or whatever else I'm using.

iTunes will also rip and burn, which was another listed requirement.

My advice to anyone who wants to do this - build or buy a cheap, mostly second-hand PC. Along with whatever new hardware you buy, pick up an OEM copy of Windows XP for cheap at a site like Newegg.com. Install iTunes, install Media Portal, put them both in your startup folder. Import all your music into both apps and enjoy.

Very simple and very powerful. Not expensive either.

Re:solution?

[doofusclam]

Depends. I'd move my desktop and server over to Linux now if there was the equivalent of foobar2000 to play my tunes with.

The list of problems with Linux setups of this time are endless - no gapless playback, spotty compatibility with some codecs, ugly front ends etc etc. I'd love to move over, but this is preventing me.

As an aside, my company makes Linux based hardware for displays in betting shops which generally have 20-30 TVs, all controlled by one box. Most of our hardware is custom, but it's all controlled by the Linux portion. The idea was to be able display mpeg video too, but compatibility/driver availability/etc were so spotty it was pointless.

All these things aren't the fault of Linux itself, but they are problems. I'd go with the bloke who installed XP on a cheapo computer - it's the route i've gone. One day when Linux has more options i'll go with that.

Re:solution?

[AstroDrabb]

I can list a ton of codecs that doesn't have a stable port in Linux. None the other way. And that's only one problem

So why didn't you list them? What mainstream codecs do not work in Linux? I can play MPEG 1/2/4, MP3, OGG, MS Audio/Video, MKV, etc. Give me these "tons" of codecs that don't work in Linux. MPlayer is an excellent media player and has played _everything_ I have tried to play. IMO, MPlayer is much more efficient then MS Windows Media Player and every other media player I have tried under MS Windows. Windows Media Player, PowerDVD and Media Player Classic suck up over 20% CPU to just play a DVD, while using MPlayer under Linux on the SAME HARDWARE only uses maybe 7% CPU.

As for the "tried to lock EVERYTHING", either you don't know how to setup a shared drive with Windows, you are using a funky software (in which case, your bad), or you are just plain lying.

Huh? The locking has NOTHING to do with a shared drive bone head. The MS Media PC uses DRM on everything. It has nothing to do with a "shared" drive or NTFS permissions. It also prevents you from making copies of many shows. For example, HBO sends down a "no-copy-flag" and MS Media PC will not let you record it. Not very useful if you ask me. It is pretty sad that MS prevents Fair Use to make a back up copy of a show to view at a later time. If you record a show with MS Media PC (MS Video format only), burn it to CD/DVD and want to watch it at a friends house, you are out of luck. The DRM in MS Media PC will prevent that.

It looks like your the only one spreading FUD champ.

Idiot Jukebox

[FrenchyinCT]

Are you entirely certain this is a good idea? Aging parents + new technology = unending tech support calls and the increasing likelihood of parricide...

Re:Idiot Jukebox

[erick99]

From experience I can tell you that aging parents + new technology can end up translating into a lot of tech support calls and quite a few visits for some one-on-one help. However, when I watch my 72 year dad getting such enjoyment from learning how to use his computer, surf the web, work on the family genealogy project, etc. it is more than worth it. I am not saying I haven't gritted my teeth more than once, but he's my dad. I hope my two sons will take the same amount of time with me when I am in my 70's and trying to learn something that is new to me but second nature to them.

Re:Idiot Jukebox

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a lot of us actually like helping out friends and family, and especially parents who gave us so much earlier in our lives.

Yes, a lot of us actually enjoy showing others how to use their computers to their full advatange.

Yes, a lot us actually want to fix others' screw-ups so they're not turned-off by computers, so they know they have a person to rely on, so they're not afraid to experiment and become comfortable with computers.

Yes, a lot us actually are patient enough to provide tech support to friends and family, to show them how Opera and Mozilla are better than IE, Mac and Linux are more secure than Windows, how they don't necessarily need to buy everything at twice the price from Best Buy.

Yes, I'm certain I want to help my friends and family. Because they certainly help me when I need them.

Re:Idiot Jukebox

[wondergibbon]

Are you entirely certain this is a good idea? Aging parents + new technology = unending tech support calls and the increasing likelihood of parricide...

As opposed to when you were young, and they were showing you how to do something with technology that was new to you? Like, say, ride a bike? Use a spoon? Walk? How many times did you ask for their help???

Who bought you your first computer?

You have to give back. And instead of it being a chore, you should be grateful you can.

A newbie is a newbie is a newbie - no matter what age.

Re:Idiot Jukebox

[fucksl4shd0t]

Ok, here's what you want to know.

mpg123 is a command line mp3 player. I think the vorbis library comes with a command line vorbis player. If you go to my website and look at the program pyAlarm, you can pull out the magical code that plays music. You could easily write a Python-based media player, if you need to.

Ecasound plays everything under the sun, and more importantly, is a command line player. Just make srue you install lame, ogg vorbis, and anything else you want to play (timidity for midi, mikmod for mod files, etc).

PHP and Python are both well-supported for your web server. Both support syscalls, but you'll have to make sure the user has appropriate rights. The biggest problem you're likely to find is that only certain logged in users can have access to the sound device. Good luck with that, but I couldn't get anything to play from a cronjob.

As for automatically ripping CDs? cdrecord rips, and Grip is a front-end to cdrecord's ripper. transcode also rips, and I think MPlayer will rip too. All three of these are command line applications, but cdrecord is the one most likely to be bundled in your distribution.

Mandrake uses a kernel patch that makes it so that whenever you put a CD in, it watches and then does something. I think you can put something in your fstab for the CD player device that'll let you execute a script or program, and it shouldn't take much for you to throw something together for bash or python or something that'll handle the ripping. You might also find a solution to this problem with a few minutes spent googling.

What else do you need? Ask and you shall receive.

If you're really dead set on doing this yourself, knock yourself out. I might be interested in doing it for you (if you ship me the computer and I'll ship it back) if I can get one of my editors to be interested in the story. Send me an email from my website (linked in my sig) if you're interested.

Idiot Jukebox

[erick99]

The Idiot Jukebox would be great for someone that is a reasonably sophisticated Linux user. I like what the software suite does but it's beyond my technical ability to implement the Idiot Jukebox. Perhaps if someone wrote a detailed "hwow to" it would be more accessible?

here you go:

[geekoid]

Taadaa!

Try SlimServer from SlimDevices

[montulli]

I would give SlimServer a try. It is web based but would probably suit your needs. You may also like their hardware since you won't need a direct cable connection between the stereo and the computer.

Re:Try SlimServer from SlimDevices

[rograndom]

Or you can try a series 2 Tivo with the Home Media Option

Re:Try SlimServer from SlimDevices

[legomyego]

The SlimServer also has a command-line interface and several programming frameworks are available. Check out their open source server software at http://slimdevices.com/.

Tunez!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny this story was just posted... I've been trying out a couple of these web frontended jukeboxes the last couple of days. I personally like Tunez! the best because I can setup an icecast stream. The installation was fairly simple.

I've also tried Jukebox (which i found difficult to get going - with a icecast stream) and also tried the Andromeda look-alikes.

Airport Express

[dcstimm]

The Apple Airport Express is what I use to stream my music library to my stereo system, its an amazing device which works great with linux considering it uses open standards. Do a good search for Airport express and linux and you will find the howto. I almost cant live with out it. also its a bridge for my exsisting wireless so I get 10x better connectivity in my living room then I did before with my wireless laptop, and it has an extra usb port on it for a wireless printer(which isnt supported in linux) also its a wireless router in its self!

CPU

[GrAfFiT]

You mention : "the jukebox will be too slow to run X"
If you can't get X to run smoothly, how do you expect to encode you CDs ?

Re:CPU

[krymsin01]

He may be confusing running KDE or Gnome with running X. I use fluxbox on my aging laptop and have no problems. Try to runing KDE and the laptop will just sit there churning the hard drive because of lack of memory.

Re:CPU

[barrkel]

Encoding CDs will only take time; it can be done in the background.

Another poster has indicated a doubt as to the possibility of playing without skipping. MP3 playback on 133MHz Win95 systems with 16MB rarely took more than 10% CPU, back in the day.

From what I hear of the requirements to run X, it sounds like it has bloated terribly since the old 486 / 1MB graphics card days.

Get a Mac

[Smokin Goat McGruff]

Seriously.

I have an old iMac that is used for nothing but serving web pages and playing music. It's plugged into my home stereo in the other room. I use Salling Clicker and my bluetooth phone to control iTunes from anywhere in the apartment. And, with iTunes sharing I used it to play music off my PowerBook over my wireless LAN.

low tech solution

[FiReaNGeL]

Buy them a CD rack. Remove CD from CD rack, insert into stereo, play.

Honestly, most new stereo cd players come with a 50 discs capacity... is it worth the trouble? If you have 'low hardware and budget' I doubt you'll have space to rip 500 cds at a good bitrate anyway. Could be a cool project, just for the fun. But it's totally non-practical, in my view.

Re:low tech solution

[Em Ellel]

while I generally agree, some math shows:

Say 1 CD at 192 is about 100MB
so 500CDs= 500 x 100 MB = 50,000MB so about 50GB, given that you can get a 120GB IDE disk for under $90 easy, I think it is safe to say that ripping 500 CDs is more likely limited by ability to find 500 CDs worth ripping, rather than disk capacity.

-Em

Re:low tech solution

[ucblockhead]

Not enough space?

According to du my ogg directory, containing 600 CDs ripped at the highest quality setting, is taking 49Gb of space.

That's gonna cost you what...100 bucks?

There are many things a CD rack won't do. Like, say, shuffle your collection. Or let you create playlists off of a large number of CDs. Or start the stereo from an ssh session in another room.

I've been playing all my music off of a harddrive for years. It's hardly impracticle. I used to have a pile of CDs cluttering up my desk. I used to have to worry about CDs getting scratched. I used to have to work to keep the CDs sorted.

No longer.

Re:low tech solution

[lar]

But what about the mb?

I can't say for sure, but if he is worried about the CPU's ability to run X, then he probably has a pretty old processor and, therefore, motherboard. Old motherboard's cannot handle that kind of storage.

I'm running a K6-2 400MHz machine, and the best it can do is run a 30GB hard drive (which is actually a 40GB hd jumpered down to 30GB).

So, a $30 60GB hard drive (are they really *that* cheap?!) would probably cost a lot more, considering CPU and MB.

OMG

[Apreche]

I can kind of understand when people are looking for a piece of software that does X, Y and Z and they can't find something for Windows. But for linux there are multiple online, free places where you can search for software that meets your needs.

I use gentoo, so my first place is esearch. If I want a ripping program I open up a term and do

esearch -Sc rip

. It's that easy. Look what came up!

[ N] media-sound/rip (1.07): A command-line based audio CD ripper and mp3 encoder

.

If you don't use gentoo and don't have esearch there are still places you can look. How about sourceforge or freshmeat? How about google?

Once you find the programs that do what you need such as ripping, encoding, playing, etc. You write a bunch of scripts to make it nicely and easily controlled via the command line.

An even better solution is to write scripts that use ncurses or such to make a better interface in the terminal. Then you can use gnu screen to make it even more awesome.

Ask slashdot should be specifically reserved for questions which either cannot be answered by computers easily or questions that take a very long time to research, and it is likely that someone on slashdot knows the answer off the top of their head.

Jinzora

[guycouch]

I'm working on a project with a few others called Jinzora. It's a PHP jukebox for medium to large music collections. Our next release will feature a much enhanced jukebox mode that lets you play your music back from a wide variety of software (xmms,winamp,etc) and also several hardware players like the slimserver. Check it out at www.jinzora.org (and of course it's all GPL)

music daemon

[gregmac]

You'd have to find something else to rip, but Music Player Daemon is a pretty neat little player that has various front-ends (including a web-based one with an API). I use it at work to play music-on-hold over our telephone system, and it can be controlled from our intranet.

XBMC - simple, cheap and works

[Em Ellel]

Ballpark numbers:

Used xbox = $110
Used xbox DVD kit (for remote) = $10
Mod for xbox = $60 (installed)
120GB drive = =$90

Install XBoxMediaCenter. Total cost $270

Additional stations probably do not need the hdd, so they are $180 a piece

Optional $10 for a used component output, which includes optical out.

Done. All you need is some networking gear to connect them and it will do MP3/photos/videos/etc.

Re:XBMC - simple, cheap and works

[Stevyn]

Damn, you beat me to it. XBMC is really good. The interface is very nice and you can configure it to play music from smb shares. I have it set up to play music off my laptop's external drive. It will also play divx movies and dvds, but that's not required for your parents I guess.

If you go this route, find slayer's xbox installer. It will reformat the new hard drive and set it up with new dashboard and xbox media player. Then just ftp into it and copy over xbox media center.

Installing a mod chip isn't difficult either. I'd get a xenium chip with the solderless install. Some people say that's a bad idea because it will come loose. I don't know about that, I've never had problems and I didn't risk making the xbox into a paperweight as with soldering.

Why bother?

[InternationalCow]

OK, I am probably the nth person writing to say this, so mod me redundant... But, why this complicated solution? For a couple hundred bucks you by an iMac (candy colored one) and put in a big hard disk. Connect decent speakers. Use iTunes. And there you are, instant juke box. Why this complicated solution? I mean, you get mega geek points, but as far as simplicity for elderly people is concerned, your way is not the way to go IMHO. My kids have the iMac + speakers solution and it works wonderfully. They use Audion with a nice skin for kids snd have required only very limited explanation of how it works.

Re:Why bother?

[tarth]

That sounds exactly like AirPort Express with AirTunes. I have one in my dorm, and I can tell you it is
a) convenient
b) a good way to impress chicks.

I highly recommend it to anyone that uses iTunes on a laptop.

Re:Why bother?

[InternationalCow]

True. However,for remote control there are third-party solutions available from Belkin and others. If you want to use windows media player, there is a nice remote available from Keyspan ( here). For the TV screen, I wouldn't know. Sounds like you might have wanted Windows XP Media Center, if that weren't a too expensive and platform bound solution.

Re:Why bother?

[Nikker]

Why not, If it was me trying to push an mp3 player on my folks this is what I would do,

• Get a CD ROM with DAE at least 16x

• Write a routine that will start to play the ripped (mpp3/ogg) while the cd is ripping, to make it seem like its doing both at the same time and reduce delay

• Make sure there are as *FEW* buttons as possible(REC, Play, FF, RW, search)

• Try to make an interface using an external 10 line LCD that you could grab at any supply store for cheap and keeps things simple

• If you must use a CRT remember it is *NOT* the graphics and colors, it is the *FONT* that makes the UI

Re:Why bother?

[tickleboy2]

OK, I am probably the nth person writing to say this, so mod me redundant...

Actually you were the nth - 1 person, so you get +5 Insightful instead... ;)

I am totally enamored with the Squeezebox.

[jafo]

I had watched the "SliMP3" hardware player for quite a while, but it's cost and my unfamiliarity with it prevented me from ever getting one. Back in April, they had a sale on the "next generation" verion, the squeezebox, at slimdevices.com, and have since lowered their prices.

I got several of tem when they were on sale, and I've been totally happy with it. They have wifi and ethernet versions, and the best part is that it just worked. I was worried that since I have my music in FLAC format it would be a problem, but their software detected it and just did the right thing. It was super easy to set up.

Want to try it out without buying a device? There are several software projects that can use a regular Linux machine to act as a client. SoftSqueeze, IIRC, is a Java program that accurately emulates the squeezebox.

The hardware devices can be synced together, so they play the same music in sync. That's pretty neat. Or you can unsync them and have different music in different rooms.

I am so happy with the Squeezebox.

Sean

Re:I am totally enamored with the Squeezebox.

[jsc19702]

Ok as a longtime Slimserver/Slimp3 user I'll address your points. a) Support more audio channels? You want support for surround audio? I don't think many people care about this feature. Not much content out there to hear anyways. b) Let's see, you can adjust the volume from the remote, the receiver that the Squeezebox is plugged into or via the web interface. No other solution gives you this many options. c) You get what you pay for. Nothing else out there comes even close to what a Slimserver/Squeezebox combo delivers.

XMMS displaying remotely

[QuasEye]

If you're already SSH/Telneting into the machine, just install the necessary X libraries and run XMMS with a remote display. You don't even have to configure an X server on the machine itself.

I have an old P100 w/ 48MB EDO RAM in it connected to my stereo, and I control it that way. It works just fine, on top of being a Samba server (120 GB HD, where the music lives), and a DNS server.

It's not set up to rip on demand, because I do that from my main desktop machine. I tend to spend a lot of processor time encoding my MP3s (LAME presets standard or extreme), so it already takes long enough on a reasonably powered machine. However, if you were willing to settle for less (or were willing wait a week), it probably wouldn't take much to write a shell script to do it.

MythTV

[jhoger]

I believe MythTV will rip cd's, has a user friendly menuing system, etc.

I risk slashdotting my cable modem but oh well

[t0qer]

Just for kicks I made remote control streaming karaoke jukebox. I used WWWinamp by Justin Frankel. Pick a song, add it to the playlist, then watch it here. You'll need winamp to watch the streaming karaoke video. Kinda cool, kinda on topic, kinda free (well windows isn't but that's another slash discussion)

Well, let's see...

[rusty0101]

AutoRip http://freshmeat.net/projects/autorip/ should take care of the dropping a disk in and ripping it.

mplay http://freshmeat.net/projects/mplay/ should take care of a text mode front end for mplayer.

Obviously you would need to include Mplayer, which will probably want to include the ability to do video playback. As long as you only include a CD player, and don't introduce your folks to VCD's, you should be alright.

Hey, hope this helps...

-Rusty

You are kidding, right?

[jcrash]

Why not just get this:

MediaMVP by Hauppauge

It goes for less than $100 and displays to your TV...comes with a remote, too.

you must like doing things the hard way.

Crip

[staili]

Crip

From the page:

crip is a terminal-based ripper/encoder/tagger tool for creating Ogg Vorbis/FLAC/MP3 files under UNIX/Linux. It is well-suited for anyone (especially the perfectionist) who seeks to make a lot of files from CDs and have them all properly labeled and professional-quality with a minimum of hassle and yet still have flexibility and full control over everything.

Use what you got

[AvitarX]

It shouldn't be too hard to modify your front end to run a command line MP3 player (relative to what you have donr so far I mean, I couldn't do it, but I couldn't do the database either). For ripping it looks like

crip http://bach.dynet.com/crip/ could be used aloing with an expect script to work non interactivle and get what you need.

It also looks like tagging the files will be easier then getting the tags seperatly, but I am sure there is a perl library for using cddb (there is at least a python one).

TiVo

[dreamchaser]

I play all of my MP3's via my home network and my TiVo. It's painfully easy to setup.

Console CD Ripping

[paranoos]

I've written a scripting tool for ripping, encoding, taging and naming CDs in Bash. You can find it here.

Also, might I suggest using the MusePack audio format, as it produces higher quality encodes, and is faster than mp3 (both for encoding and decoding), which would be nice for your low-spec machine. However, all the players I know that can use it are X-based (other than the command-line decoder). Is it really an issue to run an X session that opens XMMS? You can use the built-in twm window manager, no Gnome/KDE nonsense.

Tools of use

[Qerub]

cdde + abcde

Don't reinvent the jukebox

[Doc Ruby]

Why store the music in directories based on the album name? Just dump it anywhere it can be quickly retrieved. Keep the name/directory lookup in the database in Perl - the filesystem is a crappy database management system. It's too subset oriented to reflect the relationships among the music data, like bands/solo, compilations, live sit-ins, nonunique titles like "Greatest Hits", etc. Use a unique namespace generated for storing your data, and lookup in the DB when retrieving.

And why write a database in Perl, when you can use Perl DBI::[MySQL, Postgres]? Adding features will be a lot faster/easier, including using other people's code; not to mention the possibility of higher quality code from an open source process. You don't want your stereo to crash during a party.

Globecom Jukebox

[jalewis]

http://gjukebox.sourceforge.net/

Development is pretty much dead, but it is a mix of perl, php and mysql. I have been using it for years and love it.

Web gui, cmd line if you know perl, auto rips cds, stores mp3s logically, in general it is nice.

Live CDs will install to HDD...

[vettemph]

Try the list of live CDs at frozentech. I believe there are about 5-10 media versions that can be installed to HDD. Some will rip a CD when inserted. They try to have small foot print (disk space wise) knowing that you will use a "spare" box. I'm not sure about the system requirements seeing how most of them will play DVDs. If one of these will work your life will be much easier.

Check out abcde

[DarkKnightRadick]

Check out a tool called abcde. It's a shell script frontend that rips and encodes all in one shot. It supports various formats, makes directories based on a predefined set of variables that you can set up as you wish and many other lovely features. It's completely command line based and, of course, GPL'd.

An Easier & Cheaper Solution

[Prototerm]

OK, I have a completely different solution for you. Other than ripping and burning, it doesn't involve using a computer at all. It's fast, easy to use, and has an interface they're already familiar with.

For less than $100 you can get a progressive scan DVD player. Many of these will play back MP3 files from a data DVD (a friend of mine got one at Sam's Club for about $49). Some will even show the MP3 tag info on the TV as each song is being played. You don't get playlists here, but if you're careful with what you put on each DVD, and use the player's randomize function, you prob. won't need it. 4.7 GB is a lot of jukebox.

Why bother a non-geek with a computer solution when a simpler answer is available.

abcde + mpd + mpc + phpmp

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you need, right there.

The Music Player Daemon (mpd) takes care of the database and playlists: http://musicpd.sourceforge.net/

That site has links to all kinds of clients for the damon, including the command-line bash-friendly 'mpc' client, as well as the web-based php client, which can run on any webserver that can connect to the music server running mpd.

A Better CD Encoder (abcde) is a command-line CD ripper/encoder that is *hugely* flexible. It can rip to mp3, ogg, flac, and something else I can't remember. You can pass it any options to the encoder you need, and you can set up a filter for how it names the encoded files, so you can get rid of spaces and capital letters if you like (as I do). You can also set up your music DB structure easily - ${GENRE}/${ARTIST}/${ALBUMNAME}/${TRACKTITLE}, for example. http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/

I'm currently running mpd on two boxes in my house, one which plays music upstairs, and the other downstairs. (So I can play different things if I want.) The downstairs machine reads my music database via a wireless nfs mount, which I don't recommend. (I've switched to shfs for now, but it still hangs the mpd process in disk-sleep after a few hours.) So streaming the music files wirelessly sucks and I will be adding a usb-based external drive to give the box the storage it needs to handle my music collection.

Oh. I guess mpd also supports esd, so I could/should try that before I give up. (Then I'd run mpd upstairs and stream the actual audio packets wirelessly to my basement.) Maybe.

And that downstairs machine is an AMD K62 running at 266. It only has 1.2G of disk space, so no X or anything else. It's all command-line access to that box itself, + the web-based mpd client running on another server on my network. It works like a charm other than the w/l nfs/shfs problems.

use iTunes...

[imsmith]

you can set up an streaming server / music repository on a Linux box that doesn't have to have X running on it or even a CD-Rom that you can then use from any iTunes client and if you really want to, you might be able to get it to stream from the repository to a stereo via an AirPort Express.

here is the link.

Furthermore, you can still have the songs available for other streaming servers, and you get to bury it in a closet or the garage or something and SSH to the command line so you don't have to listen to the fan.

Re:use iTunes...

[cjwl]

You can also get a USB remote control for iTunes on Windows, see www.streamzap.com

My solution: Andromeda

[turnstyle]

I hope it's ok to mention my own software, Andromeda.

It's been out for about 4-5 years, and has received good reviews.

I've coded ASP and PHP versions, and it works on Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X boxes.

Basically, you just drag in the one script file, and it turns your folders of MP3s into a complete streaming site -- whenever you add new files, the site is always automatically up-to-date.

You can use it over your LAN, or (bandwidth permitting) over the Internet.

Front end.

[saintlupus]

I use an Audrey as a front end for my own setup (check out www.audreyhacking.com if you like). All of my CDs come into the house, get ripped on the Mac using iTunes, the mp3s are copied over onto the NFS server by a daily crontab, and they show up in the Audrey playlist.

If your parents are bright enough to put a CD in the drive and click on a "rip" button, something similar might work. And the Audrey is a simple, simple, simple touchscreen interface that even my parents were able to figure out.

--saint

Re:solution? - How about this for $150

[Anonymous Coward]

I just picked up a D-Link Media Server for $150 yesterday.

It's got wired and wireless network. Audio outputs Optical/Coax/Composite. Video Outputs S-Video/Composite/Component (anything I could imagine hooking to my stereo or tv)...

I've got my MP3s, MPEGs, and JPGs on a server downstairs, and can play most everything in my living room. Handy remote control blends in with the rest on the cofffee table, and the unit itself is the smallest thing in the AV console. (It's only about an inch and a half high).

It's about what I've been looking for, and for a lot less money than any I've seen the last few years. It won't rip/burn CD's like this guy wants to, but that's really not something I need to do in my living room anyways.

$150, and about 10 minutes to get it to talk to my wireless network, and it's done...

Don't Hate me...

[tpillon]

I know everyone will hate me for saying this, and I know you specifically want to use Linux, but I'm going to suggest it anyway...

I use an old Compaq 466 P.O.S. running Windows 98 and Winamp3. I have it on my network, rip the music on my Slackware or XP box and just copy it over. I have a keyboad with the "play, stop, pause, etc." hotkeys painted on it and I also use VNC to control it when my main system is on. The system is on pretty much 24/7 and it has worked well for me...

It's simple for everyday use (just smack the Bill Gates picture on the side to bring it out of standby and hit 'X') but has easy access to the full winamp EQ, volume controls etc... I don't have to see a windows logo, start menu or anything, just the winamp interface (main screen, EQ, playlist editor, Media library).

jack & slimserver or mp3blaster/mserve

[LinuxHam]

There have been plenty of suggestions here for automatically ripping CDs, but for command line software to run on a server

* jack from http://jack.sf.net, mentioned previously as a highly configurable excellent ripper in a python script
* slimserver from http://slimdevices.com, mentioned 1,000 times but no one mentioned all in one posting that the server software is freely downloadable, you can point any streaming client at it, like winamp, and that the slimserver has its own internal web server; if the article submitter doesn't know how to port forward over SSH, well..
* mp3blaster with mserve - I haven't seen this little beauty mentioned once. Check THIS out.. the server is console-mode full-screen (use 'screen' to log out of a box and keep a full-screen app running), but the real beauty is that everyone loads a tiny agent in windows, and everyone gets to rate whatever song is currently playing. Then the system keeps track of everyone's preferences and *dynamically* updates the playlist so that only songs everyone likes are queued up (well, everyone who's currently logged in).

Originally intended for small offices with music throughout, mp3blaster is a console mode app that kicks off mp3s one at at time through a player of your choice, so it can use mpg123 or xmms or whatever. It can even use netcat "nc" to send the play command to your slimserver. As an aside, if I don't feel like using the Shoutcast plugin on my Slimp3, I use an older copy of Streamtuner, configured to use netcat to tune into Shoutcast streams.

Remember, you can do all of the Slimserver stuff we talk about totally for free and just buy whatever Slimdevice you decide you want, when you want it or can afford it. Put the infrastructure in place now! There's even a java emulator of the squeezebox and another of the remote!! Finally, I gave my father-in-law a Squeezebox as a thanks for replacing my hot water heater after it exploded on a Sunday afternoon, and he loves it. He bought wireless speakers for poolside and a PC off eBay to dedicate to the server and music library. We have collected 55GB so far and the box has 180GB capacity. We also do rsync replication between our homes.

Suggestions?

[daemonc]

"Any good suggestions...?"

1. Move out of your parents basement. Sure, the rent is cheap, but you will pay for it in free tech support.

2. Get a real job, then you can tell them you are too busy.

Without the PC?

[erixtark]

Has anyone tried setting up a harddrive based MP3-player without a PC?
It should be possible to use one of the USB harddrive-to-WiFi proxies out there, like this one: Linksys NSLU2 together with one of the MP3 players that plays from the network, like Creatives: Wireless Player (although that one requires a server running some software).
Then you'd have USB harddrive -> WiFi Proxy -> Mp3 player without the hassle, power consumption, noise and ugliness of a PC.

My Solution

[SlipJig]

I wrote a little system that does some of what he's looking for, but not all. Mine doesn't rip CDs (plenty of better tools for that), and mine has a GUI for setting up playlists and starting jobs. It's written in Java and uses an SWT interface, and supports MP3 and Ogg. Of course it won't run on ancient hardware, but that's fine with me.

None of that is especially interesting, but the cool part (to me) is that I wrote it as three separate apps - a server, player, and controller. The server runs wherever the music is stored. The player resides on a machine connected to a stereo or speakers. The controller can be on a third machine, and is what the user interacts with. One controller can set up multiple jobs streaming different music to different players, and you can shut down the controller once the jobs are running. All three pieces discover each other on the local network via broadcast.

In my house, I have the server on a Windows machine downstairs in my office, the player on a Linux box in my living room connected to the stereo, and the controller on both my Linux laptop and my wife's Windows XP box in the kitchen.

I'm thinking of open-sourcing the app (it's basically alpha/beta quality right now - usable, but needs more features and a little rework)... if anyone's interested in looking at it, let me know (msimpson at abelsolutions dot com).

Why reinvent the wheel?

[PhunkySchtuff]

Simply get one iMac or eMac, add in a good dose of iTunes and an AirPort Card. Hang an AirPort Express off the back of the stereo.
Set iTunes' preferences to "On CD Insert: Import CD and Eject" to handle the ripping automatically, it will also connect to CDDB to get album and track names, and encode all the ID3 tags correctly. Down the bottom of the iTunes window, select the name of the AirPort Express Base Station. Hit Play.
If you can't be arsed selecting music, there's an excellent party shuffle, where you can see what's coming up, and what's been played, as well as queue music up to add to the shuffle, without distrupting it.
Plus, and this is the a big plus, it's easy enough for pretty much anyone to use.

Re:solution? - How about this for $150

[scotch]

Some really bad reviews of this - I don't own one.