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Music Media

Turtle Beach Network Audio Appliance 117

Posted by timothy from the devices-I-could-happily-live-with dept.
Polo writes: "I always though it would be cool to create something like this. Here is a look at the 'Audiotron,' a standalone device you hook to your stereo system and that networks with your PC to play MP3 files. This version uses that strange HPNA network standard (sends network data over copper phone wiring without interfering with the phone calls). Future versions will support ethernet and USB. Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams. Obsolesence nears for my 200-disk CD changers ... " Hmm. What happens if you already have HPNA networking? That aside, this looks like a good toy for the MPAA as well.
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Turtle Beach Network Audio Appliance More

Turtle Beach Network Audio Appliance

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  • I know what you are saying about standard colors for pairs but I actually had a guy tell me once while he was making a patch cable for me that the colors HAD to be in this particular order. I told him electrons don't give a shit about colors. heh.
  • "Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00"

    It sounds like the Audiotron is the part that hooks up to the stereo system, and the MP3 files are sent from PC -> Audiotron that's connected to stereo. If you hook up the PC to the stereo, you can do the above cheaper and just use a old terminal (a WYSE or something) with a very long cable hooked to the PC that send your song selection that way. You might want to write a little script to make things easier, but a good terminal can be had for $5 to $10 in surplus shops. The only drawback is that you wind up with more cables.

  • Just get xtend [jabberwocky.com], It lets you assign commands to X10 events like A1 ON and A2 OFF using the CM11A (PC Serial-> Powerline box), Right now i have it set up so that A3 OFF to 'xmms -r' and A3 ON to 'xmms -f' so I can change songs from my bed using the IBM RF X10 Home Director Remote. There's a 3-5 second delay between button pushes and song changes. If you had the big white pad looking remote, you could probably assign different ON/OFF buttons to load playlists, etc. and set volume using aumix or something. Anyways, this worked for me and the remote works everywhere in the house, so I can change songs from anywhere. Hope this helps...

  • Creative Labs did a piss-poor job of quality control on the SB cards pretty much up until the Live! series (which are finally pretty good). I'd suggest you find some other card which you can squeeze linux/windows support out of, if you're going with a PC based mp3 player.

  • Re:You'd think you are kidding... (Score:5)

    by irix ( 22687 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @12:37PM (#1098688) Journal

    Try the preceding few sentences:

    Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright infringement, and a violation of federal law.

    How much more straight-forward can this be?

    If you read http://www.riaa.com/tech/tech_ht.htm, you will also see it says in a couple of places that you are only allowed to make digital copies of music for your own use with certain devices.

    No PC CD-R drives for mixed CDs, no MP3s, just people who make copying hardware (read: audio CD-R) that have paid a royalty to RIAA.

  • At the link [riaa.com] in his post I found:

    Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright infringement, and a violation of federal law. This is true whether the source being copied is analog or digital; whether you are copying an entire album or just one song or even part of a song; or whether you are making a compilation of songs from albums you already own. The same holds true for copying music off the Internet. [Emphasis is mine]

  • last week as a matter of fact. it's a little uh unrefined at the moment, just a motherboard, a network card, an awe64 and a pair of elderly hard drives. Sits in the entertainment center under the rest of my stereo stuff, and plugs right into the reciever. It's running Linux and NFS mounts the shared MP3 directory and cdrom on my main file server. The primary interface is a cheesy little Perl/CGI script I hacked together that scans the directory and lets you select whatever songs you want, then passes that list to mpg123 and off we go! it's real basic and I have no playback control and whenever mpg123 hits a mp3 with errors it vomits and I have to reload the script, but it sounds great and I put it together out of spare parts. I've seen nicer jukebox programs on freshmeat before I'll eventually get one of them installed.

    It's been a fun project to work on and I've got alot of improvements (like building an actual case for it ;->) but the best feature IMO is that it didn't cost anything.
  • Your entirely correct that you coud probably do all that with around $100 bucks. But what about the interface?
    Imagine my techno-phobe artsy-fartsy friends attempting to use an ncurses front end to mpg123?
    When instead they can have something like
    http://www.audiotron.net/images/Audiotron.gif
    That (and the fact that I don't have to hack up an ugly beige molding 486 box so as to make it look respectable) is pretty much worth the 400 dollars to me.
    Just my $.20
  • Uh, isn't it a lot easier to just look at the URL, and where it sayd "threshold=-1" change it to "threshold=-5"

    That only changes it for the one time you're viewing it. The tip you replied to lets you permanently change it for when you log in.

    :wq!

  • Obsolesence nears for my 200-disk CD changers ...

    Am I the only one who prefers CD audio to MP3s? MP3 is a great compression scheme, but it's still lossy and I can still hear the difference. I'll stick with my CD changer for now.

  • Try an early Turtle Beach Daytona, or one of those awful Daytona PCI. Think a SB-16 sounds bad now?? I have bytched time and time again about Creative's soundcards, but the noise from a Daytona PCI (S3 SonicVibes) makes a flatulent walrus in heat three inches fom your ear sound quiet and pleasant.

    And these are the people manufacturing this!

  • Your suggestion on FM micro-transmitters piqued my interest. This is so cool!

    Here's some that I found:
    Mighty's Pirate Radio Site [max-transmitters.com] provides schematics or you can purchase some pricey assembled units [max-transmitters.com].
    This assembled kit [canakit.com] is only $35.

  • I don't know how low you can go to decompress mp3's on the fly. Buy my 66Mhz 486SX with a 33Mhz Math Coprocessor and 16MB RAM wouldn't even think about trying to do mp3's on the fly
  • Cost of one Audiotron: $499.00

    Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00
    Yeah, but a 486 will look like crap, unless you can find a cheap 486 with a case the size of an Audiotron.

  • http://www.lansonic.com/ [lansonic.com]

    They have a much slicker device, uses Ethernet, has multiple digital and analog inputs, digital and analog output, internal HD, and works with the Windows "Network Neighborhood" Presumably, you could use Samba to get it to work with Linux.

    Downside is that it's $995. :(

  • You have a room without a Linux box? Maybe in stead of too geek, it's not geek enough!
  • I'll be damned I didn't know that. I've been crimping cable for ages and had NEVER heard that. Blame it on the person who taught me. Is that a commonly known fact or something that an engineer would only know? I'll be sure to pay attention to that next time. Is it just on cheaper cable or on all cable? I just bought two 1000ft spools of some high dollar stuff.
  • It was a fun little project.

    Pentium 100MHz, Redhat 6.2, and about 70 gigs of online storage. Dirt cheap, and should hold about 550+ CD's at 256-bit MP3. We wrote a web-based front-end in PHP that lets you select tracks, shuffle, play, stop, skip, and so forth... Then you just connect the sound card to the stereo, and the 10bt to the hub, and you're good to go.

    It's nice in our office environment; no one has to get out of their chair to put on a CD, it would be possible to implement various voting/banning/profiling systems, and, best of all, you don't have to worry about office mates absent-mindedly using your CDs as coasters. ;)

  • Well, I was just joking about the pirate radio concept. I was, of course, thinking along more of the lines of low power transmitters (i.e. a bit more than a Mr. Microphone), which the FCC won't care about because, well, it won't go futher than your home but still has plenty enough power. If no-one complains about interference, the FCC/local fuzz won't know or care about it.

    If you really want to know about what you can/can't do:

    http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/rules/part15/part15- mar99.pdf

    The section you might want (the Doc is rather long) is "Section 15.231 Periodic operation in the band 40.66 - 40.70 MHz and above 70
    MHz.", which is around page 65. The terms listed here are much more drastic and picky than I thought they would be. Like:

    "Except as shown in paragraph (e) of this Section, the intentional
    radiator is restricted to the transmission of a control signal such as those used with alarm systems,
    door openers, remote switches, etc. Radio control of toys is not permitted. Continuous transmissions,
    such as voice or video, and data transmissions are not permitted."

    Then again, there are exceptions to this rule if the power is low, if you care to read the through the legalise. Funny how the AM regulations are much simpler and flexable.

  • Is the turtle beach instrument a device that complies with the audio home recording act?

    How could it be? It is a device that allows the *playback* of MP3 files. It has nothing to do with recording MP3s.

    99%+ of the MP3s in existance out there are created by ripping the mp3 track from a CD. On a home computer. RIAA says this is illegal, plain and simple. That means using this thing is probably illegal too, according to RIAA.

    I think that RIAA can get stuffed - fair use should extend to me being allowed to make personal copies of digital music (CDs) for my own personal use, on whatever device I choose.

    If I decide to put said copies up on an FTP site, then they might have something to complain about. But for my own personal use? Get with the program.

  • The only way you could use one way networking to log a server is if you were to send the logging information out, and have it configured to not recieve a reply signal. Unless it's not truely one-way networking.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Any chance you'd want to post those PHP scripts, etc? C'mon, now - share and share alike... (see Stallman interview below for inspiration ;-)
  • The only way you could use one way networking to log a server is if you were to send the logging information out, and have it configured to not recieve a reply signal.

    Syslog does indeed work this way - it uses port 514 UDP.

  • You might have to go for a low end Pentium to be able to play MP3s correctly, as the 486 is a little bit weak for this.

    Another alternative would be to use an external MP3-doit-yourself project that was listed in the German magazine ct', which can enable an old PC to send the raw MP3-data to the parallelport without requiring CPU-power:

    http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/projekte/mp3player_1/ default.shtml

    ALternatively PumpII:
    http://leute.server.de/peichl/mpegcd.htm

    regards,

    Heiko
  • How could it be? It is a device that allows the *playback* of MP3 files. It has nothing to do with recording MP3s.

    Exactly...

    99%+ of the MP3s in existance out there are created by ripping the mp3 track from a CD. On a home computer. RIAA says this is illegal, plain and simple. That means using this thing is probably illegal too, according to RIAA.

    This is where the problem lies. This device can CERTAINLY be used to legitimately stream mp3s which fit the RIAA's definition of Legal (that is, mp3s which were originally distributed in the mp3 format, for example). And since this device does not apparently encode mp3s in any way shape or form, I can't see how it would be illegal.

  • x10.com is currently selling a wireless mp3 streamer [x10.com].

    For all that people are talking about HPNA being a no brainer and that it uses existing wiring...my house is 100 years old and there is only one phone socket. I could tear out skirting boards and put in more but for me (and, I guess, for many others) wireless networking is a better answer.

    Unfortunately the conspicuous lack of technical specs for the x10 kit means I won't be buying from them... (e.g: what kind of connectors does the kit use? If its audio and the mp3Anywhere contains a codec then I can use this with linux...).

  • they just should have thought things through a little better as far as WHO is going to buy this and WHAT they are going to want to use!

    Huh? You mean they forgot to take into account that huge fraction of the population that don't have phone lines in their home? Give me a break. You'd have to custom build a house today to NOT get RJ11 wiring.

    HomePNA is going to be THE standard way of networking devices in homes inside of the next couple years. It works in all existing homes, doesn't need a hub, is a no-brainer to set up, and is fast enough (10Mb) for anything outside of corporate networking requirements.

    I've been networking computers for years, and recently installed this for my home network instead of twisted pair. I did it because wiring my house would have been a pain in the ass, but I'd recommend it now for anyone else.

    You can expect cable modems to be shipping with built in HPNA support this year.

  • Actually, if I remember my history correctly, it was 2400 baud. That is, in fact, the actual limit of analog modems, even today. Your baud rate and bitrate are two different numbers. Baud is the number of distinct signals that can be sent per second. In modern modems, more than one "tone" can be generated, allowing us to send larger values in a single signal. Thus, a 56k modem can generate 24 different "tones" per signal. Even though only 2400 tones are being generated, a data rate of 56k can be achieved. On older phone lines, or lines with longer runs, the distinction between tones and signals can be lost, decreasing your data rate.
    Inside your house, you're not as likely to have the same problems as with the regular telephone network, so the signal rate can be higher. I don't know what the exact number is, but 2400 Hz should be no problem. That's not to say that they're using a totally different signalling technology (which they probably are.) Probably something digital. I don't know, I've never played with one. My house is wired with ethernet, so I'm probably not likely to try one out in the near future.
    The contents of this post are based on old memories, and little technical understanding of telephone systems beyond the fundamentals described above. If you think you know better, you probably do

  • Re:Timothy does it again.. (Score:3)

    by SgtPepper ( 5548 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @11:33AM (#1098712)
    I think the reason Timothy posted it, and if you noticed his added comments at the bottom, is that:

    1) It is cool tech, the idea of streaming MP3s through your phone line without itnterfering /is/ kinda appealing

    2) And this is the important one, It's ANOTHER unlicesened, promoting copying, evil evil thing that the RIAA has to worry about. Another case of bop the mole. This is, IMHO, a good thing, the more MP3 hardware that comes out, the bigger an industry that will be built around it and the harder time the RIAA will have not looking like idiots.

    At least that's what /I/ think :)
  • " Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams."
    Gee, I should get one of these, seeing as how I can't play sound under Linux because my Turtle Beach Montego sound card isn't supported--because Turtle Beach refuses to cooperate with open source people and release their specs. Sure, there's an Open Sound System [opensound.com] version in beta, but only because they reverse engineered the bugger.
  • Almost sounded like a Visa commercial.

    Priceless! :-)
    --
  • Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00

    I'm pretty sure a 486 isn't gonna have enough power to decode mp3s. Unless you plan on having them all at 32kbps or something.

    And a SoundBlaster 16 isn't exactly the highest quality sound card out there.

    Even so, I have toyed with the idea of doing this in my own home, but with a slightly more powerful system. It'd be a great idea, and would definitely be a conversation peice in your living room. Pipe some visual output onto the TV (like Winamp's AVS)...pretty damn cool.
    -----------------
    Kevin Mitchell

  • Re:You'd think you are kidding... (Score:3)

    by irix ( 22687 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @11:46AM (#1098716) Journal
    And if had bothered to look at the link I provided, you'd see that RIAA thinks that making MP3s from your own CDs is illegal, even if it is for your own use.



  • I'm not sure if an icecast type package is even necessary. I stream mp3s here between two computers by simply doing:

    cat lala.mp3 | nc yy.yy.yy.yy xxxx

    on one, and

    nc -lp xxxx | mpg123 -

    on the other. And nc can do udp, so you could probably just use a local multicast or something for more then one player.

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • Nobody said its too late for them to do it.. this is a press release that says they will be offering the product sometime around gift giving time... There are plenty of details to be worked out... write them an e-mail if you feel strongly about it. If enough people write them and suggest such a feature they may include it.
  • I've been planning on doing this for quite a long time, but I'm still not sure what the best hardware/software solution would be. I'd like to do it cheaply, and I'd also like to do it to get the most flexibility out of my "media box".

    I figure a small one or two unit rack mount box would be super... as quiet as possible. For maximum control a TV out and wireless keyboard/mouse would allow maximum playlist creation and navigation, as well as EQ setting. 100mb ethernet is a must, and for maximum sound fidelity I'd probably go with a SB Live. I REALLY REALLY want to use Linux, I think this could be very doable with a 200 Mhz PI-MMX or equivalent. Running XMMS at 640x480 would be a decent display. Choosing between multiple playlists? Adding files to playlists? Maybe there isn't a real easy to use (and pretty) app to do it, but it could easily be done a desktop machine and stored on the server with the mp3s. GMC for picking playlists?

    If I really wanted to get fancy I could hook up an IR port and even a backlit LED for videoless operation.

    This is doable... I guess I really just need to start with the hardware... all of the software already exists, and if any pieces are missing I'm sure I can glue some stuff together.

    So help me out, guys! Where can I find a decent THIN rack case that has room for at 3 expansion slots and can fit an AT motherboard?

    Moe

  • Lot's of people will say "Why not just build a $100 PC and hook up to your stero?".
    The reason the Audiotron (or whatever) is better is because it's not a massive beige case with a ugly monitor and keyboard. You get a nice, modern looking stero component with a remote and a good looking display to put with your kick ass receiver, DVD player, etc.
    I have been looking for something like this for a long time, although I really do wish it was just standard NFS or SMB. Sign me up!

  • I got stuck with one of those cards (came with a Dell) too. Fortunately, in the "better late then never department":

    linux.aureal.com [aureal.com]

    It still doesn't support all of the nifty features, but it works just fine with my Turtle Beach Montego (RH 6.1 stock kernel).

  • It seems that these two legal decisions are in conflict. The RIAA states:

    Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright infringement, and a violation of federal law.

    At the same time, we have the EFF stating:

    The fair use doctrine allows an individual to make a copy of their lawfully obtained copyrighted work for their own personal use. Allowing people to make a copy of copyrighted music for their personal use provides for enhanced consumer convenience through legitimate and lawful copying. ... As new media present new ways for people to enjoy music, the public's fair use rights accompany them into the electronic frontier. Now, music fans have the right and ability to copy their own music collection onto their own computer storage device and create customized play lists for their own personal use and enjoyment of their music.

    IANAL. Which "law" applies to me?

  • Uh, isn't it a lot easier to just look at the URL, and where it sayd "threshold=-1" change it to "threshold=-5"

    Unless that doesn't work for some reason. I've never tried browsing below -1. Why? There's too much crap at +1.

    (notice me not using my +1 on this. On purpose)
  • None of you people who are complaining about the lack of ethernet have read all of the press releases on the site! One of them talks about an ethernet plugin module being available for people who have their house wired for ethernet.

    Hmm...time for a hub in the livingroom...

    -Pete
  • My 20mhz Sun Sparc can handle decoding MP3s if I use the JointStereo option (Not like a Sun SpeakerBox is stereo, anyhoo) of mpg123.
  • or a person could try the simplest solution: Radio shack sells a device that will broadcast A/V signals between two devices in your home for $99. Simply run you soundcard output to it, and connect the reciever to your stereo. If you want to control it, use the TV out on your vid card, broadcats that through the same device to your TV, and get an IR keyboard and an IR repeater device. Once you've done all that, you've a full interface to your computer in your living room for less than $200., and all of it's wireless.
  • the different twisting rates is to minimize crosstalk. it doesn't matter which color pairs you use. there are no situations where the pair chosen affects anything. none.

    now, if you don't use a single color pair for your corresponding data pair, you might have crosstalk issues. apologies if this was what you were refering to.
  • I saw this box demonstrated at WinHEC last week (don't blame me, only doing my job, but it was a good excuse to go to New Orleans). It is running Win-CE inside so you get to pay the Microsoft tax as well.
  • Ok this isn't as pretty (but I happen to like it). I bought a pentium with 32 megs memory and a 1 gig drive, slapped in a network card, a 20 gig eide hard drive, and my old sound blaster. I had a half burned out 8 yr old View Sonic monitor lying around so I jacked that in. There is only one IDE controller so no cdrom but I loaded FreeBSD off of ftp (RedHat sucks). After a kernel rebuild and getting Samba up and running (I'm a win developer so my primary is a NT box, sorry) I have a network mp3 appliance plugged into my stereo through the video in RCA jacks. For a user interface I'm using cmp3 (curses based) so I can run from anywhere in the world via telnet. Total cost $70 for the computer, $150 for the hard drive at onsale. Even if you have to buy the other cards and stuff the total should still be about $300.
  • Just to make sure everyone is clear.. The pairs can be in any order - electrons don't care what pair they go down. However, each pair(one color one white on 1+2,3+6,4+5,7+8), or at least the two that are used for ethernet, needs to be together, otherwise you will lose the shielding created by twisting the wires around each other which electrons do care about. Now - in a house with relatively short cabling runs and in many situations you may not notice a difference if you split a pair but then again - you may. And they are twisted at different lengths so it is probably an even better idea to make sure the right pairs line up to get the maximum amount of shielding but I don't think this is as important.
  • Why hasn't someone hacked the RIAA site yet with some slogan like "Making sure you can't do jack unless we stand to make a buck"???
  • Before I get flamed, yes I do know Linux and FreeBSD are different OSs but the RedHat ftp install did suck. I gave up and went to FreeBSD (plus the ports collection kicks the crap out of RPM in my view). I also have already have gotten flack for using an EIDE drive on a file server from my friends. The key word here is economy not scalability though. Since this is a 1 person file server EIDE is good enough. Finally NT does suck but it pays the bills so get over it. I think I've hit all the possible flames for my post.

  • When cops show up at my door and arrest me for burning copyies of ripped MP3s, I'll stop.

    Not until then.

  • I know plenty of audio geeks that already have their computer playing sound through their stereos... they play games, mp3s, anything that makes noise, basically. Other than the sort of cool methods they're using to implementing this, is there anything all that different?

  • cost effective solution? (Score:3)

    by cheezus ( 95036 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @10:37AM (#1098736) Homepage
    could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams

    We sort of do this at work already, with a shoutcast server sending streams in office on demand. I'm curious as to how much this device costs, tho. would it really be cost effective to put a unit in every room of those house and have the streams tho? by the same token, you could just setup a low power pentium system with a decent soundcard and a nic and run shoutcast or icecast(if icecast does on demand streams, that is... i haven't checked into that) server on a more powerful system (which it looks like you need for this device anyway). A home built unit could probably be made for a few hundred dollars... and there are a lot of car/home mp3 player software packages that work with mpg123 and the like that could probably be easily modified to work with an on demand streaming server.

    ---

  • And since this device does not apparently encode mp3s in any way shape or form, I can't see how it would be illegal.

    Once again you underestimate RIAA. The have sued Diamond Multimedia for the Rio. How could that be? Simple - according to RIAA, these devices aid in the copyright infringement.

  • Thats great until... (Score:5)

    by lalas ( 85981 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @10:31AM (#1098738)
    ... the RIAA decides that streaming mp3's from your bedroom into the living room violates the very foundation of the DCMA.

    Remember, if you want to listen to "your" music in different rooms... you had just better go out and buy 2 CDs. l

  • Don't get me wrong, I think this is a GREAT idea...Now I can use a server program versus an entire computer to do my music serving for me...but this company needed to think about the clinetel it is trying to reach with this device. Most of us (I speak of the nerds that read /. and would buy this) use an ethernet network off of cable or DSL or a LAN or something like that. I personally don't have a telephone system in my house. (You think I'm kidding, I'm not...I use a cell phone for calls.) I would LOVE to have one of these if it did come with some type of RJ45 connector.

    I think this is a great idea, I'll just drop a couple of RJ11s in the wall for this...they just should have thought things through a little better as far as WHO is going to buy this and WHAT they are going to want to use!

    (hee hee, check eBay in about a week for my 200+1 Sony CD changer.... =) )

    ~Animgif
  • Say what?

    Get the $200 MediaGX box mentioned yesterday, a cheap used VGA monitor from a local shop (or just use the TV it will likely be located near), an ISA NIC and a hard drive (or use the 16meg flash). End result will approach $500, time included (unless you're a consultant), and be infinitely customizable.

    Or, buy an I-Opener for $300 (if they ever come to their senses), and add a cheap, small drive to boot from (or again just use the existing flash). Add parallel or USB NIC. Or just run PLIP (cheap).

    Or, look around on Ebay for a swank-looking rackmount Pentium-class computer. Add whatever is needed.

    I'm not sure how you arrive at your $500 figure for a board and CPU. Last computer show I went to, a vendor was selling bare P100 chips for $20, and chips-on-motherboards for $25. Sure, MicroATX and other small-form motherboards are not cheap, but $480? Please.

    The Audiotron *is* pretty, though. And it's fairly small (but I can build one smaller). Convenience? What's convenient about yet-another network interface, *and* a Windows box, just to listen to MP3s? Methinks I'd rather save a few bucks (or spend a few more), and avoid needing to have Windows running whenever I played music in the other room. It will take a little more work to do it myself, but much less so than the otherwise-requisite Redmond timebomb long-term.
  • If record companies didn't sell CD or phonograph copies of artists' works, then people couldn't easily make copies onto tape or whatever, therefore the record companies are the prime facilitators of copyright infringement.
  • anyone else remember a time when the phone company said that 9600 was the highest that anyone could ever expect over home copper? And now, here we are pushing home LAN style bandwidth over that same copper. Yes I know, YMMV, I just find it ironic.

    ...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
  • Take a look at the press release off of the website, it specifically states:
    "users will experience no interference with normal phone calls or DSL Internet connections."
  • We will definitely post everything once it's ready. Never fear.
  • I don't think it interferes. IIRC, POTS is 0 to 4kHz, xDSL is 30kHz to 1.5M Hz and HomePNA is 5.5M Hz to 9.5M Hz.

    That info is from a presentation on AMDtek's website about their Pegasus chip, which is in the 10/100 ethernet adapters and also does HomePNA.

  • Assuming that you are the kind of music person who is happy to just push the play button, you could simply hook up your computer to wireless speakers. This would work with any room in the house. If you want to select from where you are listening, however, you are probably better off with either one of these machines; either that, or a more sophisticated setup arranged from home automation components.

  • But does it interfere? (Score:3)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @10:32AM (#1098747)
    "(sends network data over copper phone wiring without interfering with the phone calls). ". This sounds a lot like DSL/ADSL in that it sends the data down the line at frequencies outside the normal hearing range. British telecomm use a similar system in their Home-highway and cheap second line products (I don't know if there is equivalent technology being used in the US). Does anyone know if the HP system will interfere with these other technologies, besides am I thought all you guys had wired your houses for Ethernet as well. :-)
  • I've been toying with a design for something like this. In my design, you can have a tiny little pin with a transmitter in it. There are sensors, networked to your PC through some means, scattered throughout your house that measure the strength of the signal from your transmitter, and tell your PC to send a proportional volume of your music to the speakers. Sort of Gates-esque. The music would follow you around, so from your point of view the volume would be fairly constant.

  • Home Phone Wiring (Score:5)

    by Ephro ( 90347 ) <ephlind@yahoo.com> on Monday May 01, 2000 @10:48AM (#1098749)
    Many people forget that a house is normally wired with 4 conductor phone line ( green - red | black - yellow ) If you make sure that the black and yellow are connected in all the boxes, and the junction boxes in your house you can effectively have an additional private circut in your house. This is especially useful if you do have to deal with something propritary here. Another fact that most people forget is that RJ-45 is 8 conductor, where orange, orange-white, blue, and blue-white are used, so it is again possible to run an additional ethernet line through the same cable, or as I have done in the past put two analog phone lines down with the ethernet signal. In theory you may run into problems with induction fields, but I have never had a problem. You can also do other useful things, like use the black and yellow wires to run a mono feed of mp3s from your computer to your stereo.

  • Audio streams are data,unless you're sending analogue, no? Bluetooth does have an existing spec for headset support, but ...

    A) It's a monophonic headset
    B) It's speak (telephonic) quality audio,using CSVD, not hifi.

    You could try writing your own interface, but you might find that some of the chipsets might not understand what you want to do, if they've built-in enough of the lower levels of protocol. I'm not sure that the bandwidth is there, either.

  • I have my computer hooked up to my stereo in my bedroom. (i just went to Radio Shack and got a converter with a headphone jack on one side for my computer, and the red,white,yellow on the other side) the big advantage of this (from the sound of it) is the fact that you can run multiple ones in different rooms from the same computer.
  • I bought this last week. 50 bucks, works perfectly. There is no client software, so I can run it on Linux. It simply plugs into the sound card. As stated, the remote only works in Windows. I hope it gets popular so some programmer whiz will make XMMS work with and X10 remote.

  • You'd think you are kidding... (Score:4)

    by irix ( 22687 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @10:50AM (#1098753) Journal
    but you aren't [riaa.com].

    I'd imagine that lawsuits will follow for all of these companies, since according to RIAA the only way you can have a legit mp3 is if that was the original format that it was distributed in, or if it is the public domain.

    Of course, RIAA may or may not have heard of something called fair use [eff.org].

  • This sounds a lot like DSL/ADSL in that it sends the data down the line at frequencies outside the normal hearing range. British telecomm use a similar system in their Home-highway and cheap second line products (I don't know if there is equivalent technology being used in the US). Does anyone know if the HP system will interfere with these other technologies, besides am I thought all you guys had wired your houses for Ethernet as well. :-)

    HPNA, POTS, and DSL all use different "channels" of your phone line, so they don't interfere with eachother. Intel's "AnyPoint" home networking thing uses HPNA as well. They have a reasonably good FAQ [intel.com] which explains a bit about how it works, and it says that it works fine with DSL.
  • This sounds like what I'm doing with my iopener hacking [linux-hacker.net], the last pieces I need arrived today :-)

    I'm planning to hook it up to my stereo, have it networked with my other systems via a USB ethernet adapter, and running Linux. Using the CGI client [mp3sb.org] for MP3 Server Box [mp3sb.org] I'll even be able to control the music from any system in my house.

    Since the system will be in the family room, I plan to have a photo-slide show running as the screen saver.

  • So what's with HPNA ? (Score:4)

    by scott@b ( 124781 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @12:08PM (#1098756)
    HPNA is in effect a xDSL. There are HPNA transceivers that replace the normal 10Base transceivers connected to an Ethernet controller chip or port (like some embeddded CPUs have). There's are 1 and 10 mbps versions of HPNA, the 10 is where everything is going. Range is several hundred feet, up to about 500. Coexists with your xDSL drop.

    What's the difference between this and using phone lines or FM radio? With the HPNA interface you're effectively in a 10Base based network, sending the digital form of the data (music) rather that converting to analog and transmitting. It should be a higher quality output at the far end.

    What's the diff between using HPNA and your existing network. Not much, unless you're like most of the general computer using public who don't have cat5 throughout their house but can string phone line.

  • And if had bothered to look at the link I provided, you'd see that RIAA thinks that making MP3s from your own CDs is illegal, even if it is for your own use.
    Where does it say that? This sentence is the only one with "mp3". "While MP3s may be popular, if the artist and record company have not specifically authorized the music to be freely traded on the Net, then posting MP3s to an Internet site or downloading them to your computer hard drive is copyright infringement."
    I don't know where you got that idea from, but obviously not from the link you provided.

    I will agree that the whole section dealing with computer recordings is vague, but no where does it explicitly say "you simply can't posess any mp3's!"

  • If you'd read it as well, you'd see that the reason they don't permit the duplication of digital files on computers is because there isn't a tax in place on computer CD-R's like there is on Audio-only CD-R's. Therefore, what I was saying is still valid. If Turtle Beach has paid a licensing fee/tax then they would indeed be able to sell their hardware.

    From your link:
    The bottom line: the only digital copying of music that is allowed is

    with digital recorders that are covered by and comply with the

    Audio Home Recording Act.

    Is the turtle beach instrument a device that complies with the audio home recording act?

    PS: The only time they ever mentioned MP3 on that page was in connection to downloading songs from the internet.
  • Not only that, but in the eyes of the RIAA, even making copies of CDs using "approved" devices such as compented "Audio" CD recorders, using "Audio" CD-Rs, is also illegal. They just "promise" not to prosecute you if you are using these "approved" methods:
    As long as the copying is done for noncommercial use, the AHRA gives consumers immunity from suit for all analog music copying, and for digital music copying with AHRA covered devices. It is important to note that the AHRA does not say that such copying is lawful; it simply provides an immunity from suit.
    Exerpt from RIAA Soundbyting Propaganda [soundbyting.com]
    --

  • Re:Home Phone Wiring (Score:3)

    by rcw-work ( 30090 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @12:16PM (#1098760)
    Yes, you can run two ethernet connections down the same line, but at 10mbps I've had about 50% luck with this in runs > 50 feet. Especially when you're trying to push traffic through both sides of the cable at once.

    As for putting voice traffic through the spare lines on an ethernet cable, I wouldn't see a problem with that (they're two entirely different frequency ranges), except you might get crosstalk between two voice lines on the same cable.

    BTW, you *can* run one-way ethernet with two wires - if you hardwire ARP addresses on one side and the remote machine is only receiving UDP packets (you can't do TCP over such a link). Also you'll only get a link light on the receiving end (this may confuse your transmitting NIC).

    In fact, this could be useful for logging servers :)

  • A nice beige case just doesn't blend in with the rest of my system very well. I'd rather buy a "network audio appliance" from Sony or Pioneer or something though. Heh, Sony should make a slick looking, hackable Linux box with SPDIF and TOSLINK outputs and a big VFD on the front. And maybe hardware DVD decoding and an S-Video output too. Oh well, enough dreaming. You'd probably get a lot of wierd looks, but it'd be really cool to hack a SB Live into a Cobalt RaQ 3i. Anyone have any suggestions on doing that? Hmm. Or maybe I'll cut up a Sony receiver or DVD player or something and stick an Advantech [advantech.com] single board computer in there. Or maybe I'll get back to work before my boss notices me daydreaming. :)
  • The Audiotron and these other audio appliances were posted on memepool [memepool.com] today: The Lansonic device is almost the same as the audiotron, the other two are more standalone radio-type things.
    --

  • Hello? (Score:1)

    by Enahs ( 1606 )
    Wonder how long we can get it working with Linux...

    Hrm, my video card works with linux via X11R6 just fine...but my fine video card DOES NOT run Linux.

    Learn to FUCKING READ before you post next time.

  • Why did you bother replying if you don't like the idea of MP3's?

    Matter of fact, why did you even BOTHER TO CLICK ON THE LINK? JESUS!!! >:^(
  • Hmm...

    Well that makes me wonder if the case against MP3.com was to set a precendent. Looking bac the only charge against MP3.com was: n order to create and offer this service, defendant copied every track from 45,000 commercial audio CDs onto its computer services. All or virtually all of these audio CDs are marked as copyrighted and contain explicit notices prohibiting unauthorized copying. ... Included among these infringing reproductions are copies of thousands of copyrighted sound recordings owned by plaintiffs, none of whom has authorized defendant to make any such reproductions.

    and

    Defendant has willfully and with full knowledge of plaintiffs' copyrights made infringing reproductions of thousands of plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings for the purpose of operating its commercial My.MP3 interactive service.

    So the complaint was not acually about broadcasting the music to users of the service, but just the fact that they converted CDs to MP3s for transmission to users of the service.

    Kinda scarry.

    subsolar

  • Things you find browsing at -1 (or lower):

    1. Lots of First Posts
    2. OOG Posts (well worth the read)
    3. Any negative post about Linux
    4. Any positive post about Microsoft
    5. Following from 3 & 4, any opinion that goes against the prevailing Slashdot winds.
    6. Hot grits

    In short, you tolerate the crap in order to find the interesting posts. Does anyone really think another post proclaiming Open Source as the One True Way deserves to be marked to +5 insightful? The insightful posts are those that fly in the face of popular opinion, and make Slashdot worth reading. It's just a shame that the moderation system delegates those posts to the same level as the "Taco's mom" posts.

  • It's not ugly, it's easier, it probably matches your existing equipment vs. a slimline Dell case.
  • Sorry, Bro; while I do admire Propaganda :^) I do believe this post should have been moderated down to about -5000 for being such an extreme case of FUCKING FLAMEBAIT!
  • Well theres the food room and the human waste room. Other then that, yeah you're right :-)

    Spyky

  • God Bless the RIAA (Score:3)

    by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @04:26PM (#1098773) Homepage
    What interesting tidbits the previously linked page presents!

    As a general rule for CD-Rs, if the CD-R recorder is
    a stand-alone machine designed to copy primarily audio, rather than data or video, then the copying is allowed. If the CD-R recorder is a computer component, or a computer peripheral device designed to be a multi-purpose recorder (in other words, if it will record data and video as well as audio), then copying is not allowed.

    This is remarkable. The fact that my CD-R has the capability to record data and video makes it illegal to use it to copy CDs. However, a completely identical copy, created by a CD-R without the ability to record data and video, is illegal.

    But of course the RIAA has a perfectly understandable explanation for all this!

    Under the Audio Home Recording Act, the manufacturers of some types of digital recorders pay a modest royalty to partially compensate the artists, record companies and music publishers hurt through unauthorized copying.

    I see. So every time I buy a component-based CD-R, I'm putting money in the RIAA's pocket. In that case, if I've already paid them royalties because they assume I'll make illegal copies of CD's, I might as well have something to show for the royalties I've paid. Anything less would shatter the RIAA's implicit expectations.

    These devices also incorporate technology to prevent what is known as serial copying, that is, second and higher generation copies.

    Great, so now if my original is scratched beyond repair, my backup is useless to create further backups.

    The RIAA's message is clear: we'll grant you the "privilege" of fair use, but only on our terms. Read it and weep, because there's nothing you can do about it.

  • Maybe I'm just too geek, but... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I mean, why would anyone want to be any room other than the room with the Linux box? There's no point.
  • I know a lot of people who already have digital music connections from their PC to their stereos, but the concept of running it through existing copper connections is a good one.

    A friend of mine just ordered one of Yamaha's PC Home Theater boxes. It looks pretty neat: it connects via USB and has multiple outputs. But It only comes with software for Win9x.

    I had a question that mabye some one can answer for me, I have just recently been lookinginto Bluetooth, and was wondering can it just transmit data or can it also transmit audio streams (and mabye video)? that's what I need a wireless house. No Phone lines, no cable lines, no extra audio cables. Perfect.


    flatrabbit,
    peripheral visionary

  • Timothy does it again.. (Score:4)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @11:17AM (#1098777) Homepage
    Cost of one Audiotron: $499.00

    Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00

    One requires a proprietary driver and takes orders from Winblows 2K.

    The other peacefully coexists with other machines on your network, is accessable from a variety of platforms instead of just one, can be upgraded, repaired if necessary, and replaced easilly. Did I mention it runs Linux, can perform more functions than simply an MP3 server, and can download new MP3's while you sleep?



    Bowie J. Poag

  • Why use phone lines? Use radio waves... (Score:5)

    by SydBarrett ( 65592 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @11:19AM (#1098780)
    Unless you get two of these things, you might be better off with a good FM transmitter. Just make sure there's a spot of your FM dial that's blank. You can build one yourself or get a cheap one. All Electronics has a little battery powered one that has a jack for plugging into your sound card for about $15, and runs on AAAs. If you have multiple boxes that can handle MP3 or some other format, and have enough empty space on the dial, you can have a transmitter for each, and select a "stream" by tuning the dial. And since all of the stuff would be under one roof, the signal should be plenty strong.

    Then again, maybe copper wire could produce better sound than radio waves?

    Hey, what the hell. Boost up the signal and make your own pirate station! :) Well, as long as you use a good filter to kill harmonics, which is the way most pirates get busted. The harmonics from the signal bleed over police/fire channels, which doesn't make them too happy. Then the FCC looks for ya....

  • Thanks to Rev. Null for this tip, go to Customise Comments [slashdot.org] and save the page as HTML. Find the FORM tag and change the action to point to http://slashdot.org/users.pl, and then look down for the "SELECT name=uthreshold" tag. Under that, find the "OPTION selected value=-1" tag and change the -1 to a -5.

    Save the page, load it in your browser, set your threshold to -1 in the list and submit it. Lo and behold, you can now see comments all the way down to -5. The /. censorhip is defeated :)

  • Re:Timothy does it again.. (Score:3)

    by pdp8 ( 71497 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @12:19PM (#1098785) Homepage
    > Cost of one Audiotron: $499.00

    > Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16,
    > some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00

    While I may not be willing to pay $500 for an audiotron, I think this analysis misses a few points:

    It is not clear if the the typical 486 can
    decompress mp3 in real time

    A 50' CAT-5 cable may only be few $, but
    installation can run quite a bit more

    My guess is the 486 is going to have a
    noisy hard drive and power supply, if the
    Turtle Beach guys know what they are doing
    the audiotron won't

    It is proably safe to assume that the
    audiotron has better acoustics than the
    486-SB16 combo (SB Live might
    do better if you use the digital out, the
    inside of a computer case is an awful
    place to do audio electronics)

    The $80 486 won't have the built in
    dispaly and remote control

    The 486 is proably larger

    Most of this comes down to if you build a computer to do only one thing, you can optimize it in ways people don't optimize PC, in this particuar case audio quality, noise, and size (heat proably too).
  • The live! fares poorly as a professional quality sound card, but it's at least fairly quiet as consumer-gamer-hobbyist cards go.
  • Running two signals on the same line generates a lot of RFI. This is effective only for short runs, and then only at 10mbps.

    I know it's kind of anal to point this out, but I'm trying to save people who made the mistake of wiring their house on this premise a lot of work. I learned the hard way - "Two terminals next to each other? Oh easy I'll just share the cable!"

    NO! :P

    --
  • Cost of a Pentium 100 (the minimum to decode MP3s w/o downsampling, it's in the spec) that's anywhere near as compact as the Audiotron: easily over $500 for the CPU & motherboard alone.

    Admit it, this box is way prettier, smaller, and more convenient than something you can cobble together at home. That makes it worth $499.

    --

  • IANAL either, but I believe that is the issue before various courts now. Which interpretation of the law is correct?

    The RIAA says that the DCMA gives them the right to dictate terms with regards to fair use. The EFF thinks otherwise.

    If you read some of what the EFF [eff.org] is saying, them seem to expect some sort of landmark case along the lines of Sony vs. Universal Studios in 1984 that said fair use allows us to record TV broadcasts on tape and replay them later for personal use.

  • MPAA? (Score:2)

    by rwade ( 131726 )
    Does this thing play dvds too? I think you mean RIAA.

  • X10 already has a wireless solution (Score:4)

    by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Monday May 01, 2000 @11:28AM (#1098798) Homepage
    X10 [x10.com], the makers of the great home-automation products, already sell a wireless version of something similar. Specifically, it is merely an audio sender/receiver that can plug into the back of your stereo. They market it as "MP3-Anywhere", but could obviously be used for anything. For the windows users in the crowd, it comes with plugin's for some of the popular mp3 players so you can control it remotely using an X10 remote as well.
  • Actually that figure was never meant to apply to the copper wiring within the house, but for the long lengths of line and bandwidth-limiting* switches that the signal must travel through to get to another modem. While it is true that depending on your line quality you can get between 2 and 6 times this 'upper limit' of 9600 baud, the higher speed POTS connections (ISDN, ADSL) have very different switching from voice service (to the point where you can use DSL and voice simultaneously on the same copper line).

    * bandwidth in the original and literal sense of how wide the band is (in hz) rather than the slight extention of that term meaning "how many bits can we cram through the pipe".

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