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Ask Slashdot: Overhauling an Amusement Park's Multi-Zone Audio Player?
mcmadman writes "The multi-zone audio player I'm working with uses an almost decade old card/software combo that is prone to crashes and other anomalies. I would like to know if there are open source (read 'free') or other alternatives that would allow multiple simultaneous playlists played through the myriad of audio interfaces out there. The line outs are then plugged into a CobraNet matrix, which handles the distribution of the music/sound to their respective areas. I'm looking at eight channels minimum, timed playlist start/stops, and triggered announcements. So far the only software and hardware I've found are proprietary broadcasting solutions which tend to be a bit heavy on the wallet or meant for home use."
I have no idea what I am talking about but what if you got a Linux box with 8 sound cards, configured 8 instances of Amarok to play, one on each output, and set up your playlists acccordingly?
12:50 - press return.
Bite the bullet and buy a device intended for this use, the Medialon Audio Server. It outputs cobranet directly, is easily integrated into control systems and supports elegant triggering of all sorts. Plays back from SSD drives.
I haven't used it myself, but I've heard nothing but good things about QLab, which is a free download for MacOS/X. You might want to have a look at that.
You might also have a look at Cricket, which is commercial software but not too expensive.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I did AV for a theme park in '99, and have done AV for several themed restaurants since then. When you're talking about putting together a system that's expected to run without a hitch 14 - 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, it's a lot like putting together a server you know will need high availability and reliability. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by getting something mediocre to do the job. The rule of thumb in theme/amusement park AV is to use solid state as much as possible (minimize your downtime to the extreme). My personal gear of choice is Alcorn McBride (alcorn.com). They have an 8 track unit that would to what you need it to do. I've used several of the binloop over the years, and with a near zero issue rate (and what issues I did have were due to a missing firmware update). And as a matter of disclosure, I did become a dealer for them after becoming familiar with their gear on the '99 project.
He's not trying to outfit a house. He's trying to outfit an entire amusement park.
The scale is slightly different.
bend like the reed
When it comes to professional show control you really do get what you pay for. this is an integral part of your park, and it will be used by bozos. find a professional show control system and buy it. it'll cost a few thousand, but it will be far less likely to break if someone presses the wrong button.
First off, I've never done this with FOSS... That being said, I'm 100% certain it can be done..
You need to accept a couple of things when planning to do this with FOSS:
Remote management can be done, but will require someone who understands the way you set it up
You will probably be custom scripting when your playlists start (cron?)
Updates will require manual playlist modification (goes back to understanding how you set it up)
For an amusement park, I think this is a bad idea... Not sure how big of an IT/Tech savvy staff this location has, but while they're looking to save a few dollars today, are they considering business continuity if you leave or if something happens to this custom system? are they planning to have regular backups done? are they planning for future expansion? etc...
My personal advice would be to avoid broadcast software (Way overpriced for this).... What would be more reasonable is digital signage software... it's designed to do this with audio and video, but you don't have to use the video portions (of course, consider that a future expansion option)... If you want to stick with linux based, I know ParkMedia has a decent setup... If you're willing to consider other (windows) options check into CoolSign.... Those are just 2 that I've used for similar setups, but there are tons of options in that field, that do what you want to do, with easy user interfaces for changing/moving stuff around, and the ability to remote manage them... Also they tend to work in a client server setup, so you back up the server regularly and if a client machine fails you just replace it.
Just my 2 cents, hope it helps.
http://www.multizoneaudioplayer.com/
Multi Zone Audio Player is not just another media player. It's a music control center for a whole facility or building with many rooms, halls, corridors or another zones. It' a reply for a need in a real application rather than simply a new idea. It's designed to work in professional and commercial environment, not just to entertain one person behind computer. Multi Room Audio Player is designed to play multiple sound tracks into many audio cards (or zones) simultaneously, with music organized into play-lists and/or play-schedules individually for every zone.
With Multi Zone Audio Player, You can:
create as many zones as required, limited only by PC capacity;
assign every zone to a corresponding sound output device;
add tracks to zone playlist, open/save/merge playlists;
full-featured media library and automatic playlist generator;
music library for easy indexing and search through your music collection;
flexible playlist generator with possibility to add advertisements, rotation and jingles;
separate equalizer for every zone;
events scheduler for each zone;
instant jingle hotkeys;
repeat all, repeat one, shuffle options;
drag & drop interface;
customize the windows layout for Your needs and specifics;
control every zone individually or all together at once.
I got the impression that the CobraNet end was fine and operational, but the head end was buggy. Once the audio hits the line out, the job is finished. He needs multiple audio feeds which can be overridden with alternate audio (?) at regular intervals (park tours are beginning at the visitors center), and an option to override with alternate audio, either pre-recorded (boat to the mainland leaves the dock at 1900 hours) or real-time (emergency everybody-run-for-your-life-the-T-Rex-is-loose), on all or a selectable number of channels simultaneously.
Sounds like a real programming job!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
and *you're
.. bad day for me :(
RAIN = Redundant Array of Ipod Nanos (or Inexpensive Nanos, since you'll be running off AC power you can buy the cheap ones from ebay with dead batteries instead of buy new)
Buy more than 8 nanos... you need 8 just for background music for each zone. Other nanos do nothing but squirt out a single announcement one time when play is hit. Feed into big ole mixer. All done.
Reprogramming by the end user is not much of a challenge assuming there exists at least one apple fanboy carnie. Another question that depends on your contract, are you trying to encourage substantial "long term support" or discourage substantial "long term support". A bunch of ipod nanos is not going to require much IT guy time, which is either a huge bonus or a huge epic fail, depending on your financial compensation plan.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Don't forget liability when the s$#! hits the fan and a lost child or evacuation announcement has to be made and the PA override fails. Rolling your own sounds penny wise pound foolish.
Linux eh? Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
and no Paging override, like he mentioned was needed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am always amused at the "i need an open source (read:free) solution" requests by folks who want to use it for their business. This is for an amusement park. I assume the park charges people for admission. They also charge for food, and to play the games, and so on. Yet, this guy doesn't want to pay for a solution to address his audio distribution needs. WTF?
I got the impression that the CobraNet end was fine and operational, but the head end was buggy. Once the audio hits the line out, the job is finished. He needs multiple audio feeds which can be overridden with alternate audio (?) at regular intervals (park tours are beginning at the visitors center), and an option to override with alternate audio, either pre-recorded (boat to the mainland leaves the dock at 1900 hours) or real-time (emergency everybody-run-for-your-life-the-T-Rex-is-loose), on all or a selectable number of channels simultaneously.
Sounds like a real programming job!
You nailed it. The live 'emergency' paging is actually done in cobranet so only pre-recorded messages are required to play on trigger.
I know you were trying to be a little funny, it doesn't sound like a real programming job, unless you consider configuring cron to be "programming."
Instead, it sounds like a job for an Ashly Protea, or a Soundweb, or some other dedicated DSP hardware with simple digital IO (Peavey and QSC also come to mind) and decent configurability.
And, since it's already running over CobraNet, chances are very good indeed that an appropriate DSP is already in place, and therefore free.
So, for this project (as described by the Asker), here's what I'd do: Just throw Linux at it with some contact closures to signal the DSP box to switch modes, set up cron to do so and also play sound sound files, add audio outputs as appropriate (and no, I know of no OSS CobraNet software), and call it done.
Additional geek credit can be earned by talking to the DSP over IP and changing modes and values that way, but I don't see the point: It just adds a lot of time to the project, and only saves the expense of few relays and some way to turn them on and off (PCI parallel port cards are both cheap and well-supported for this role using OSS).
KISS. Wire's cheap.
Kid-proof tablet..
Dude, Whoosh! Seriously.
Go watch the original Jurassic Park again.