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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

TiVo

[dreamchaser]

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

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.

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.

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...

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.