Centrally-Controlled Home Music System on a Budget? 287
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?"
solution? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:solution? (Score:2)
Might be a Sunday but come on...
Re:solution? (Score:5, Informative)
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? - How about this for $150 (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:solution? - How about this for $150 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:solution? (Score:3, Informative)
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
My solution: Andromeda (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been out for about 4-5 years, and has received good reviews [turnstyle.com].
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.
Idiot Jukebox (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:2)
No, it's not hard to learn as long as you stay in the habit, but life doesn't always leve you time. Stop learning new things (new, difficult, deep subjects) and you will find that skill atrophys like anything else.
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:3, Insightful)
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 frie
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:2)
How about this, why not just set up a 100 to 400 CD changer and leave it at that? My CD changer reads CD-Text on the songs and the CD title. The slowest part is copying all the pressed CDs so that the CD-Text data can be encoded into them, and that's an easy job in Nero.
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:3, Informative)
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, mik
Re:Idiot Jukebox (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Idiot Jukebox (Score:2, Informative)
here you go: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Oh, you can... (Score:2)
Another option would be an Airport Express. Rip all the music, and store it on their desktop PC. Then, play it via iTunes + Airport Express on their stereo.
If they wanted portability, the iPod could fit nicely into this structure. But, just for home stereo playback, it's not really necessary.
Try SlimServer from SlimDevices (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Try SlimServer from SlimDevices (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Try SlimServer from SlimDevices (Score:2, Informative)
Tunez! (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Airport Express (Score:2)
Open standards? Last I heard, DVD John [nanocrew.net] had to reverse engineer the Airport Express streaming encryption. Hardly an open standard.
That said, they are nice little boxes with excellent audio quality and CHEAP!
CPU (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't get X to run smoothly, how do you expect to encode you CDs ?
Re:CPU (Score:2)
Re:CPU (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:CPU (Score:2)
In btw, I am currently looking at the same jukebox question from a different perspective - to move the picturebook to the car and plug it into the AUX IN on the car stereo. The only problem I have is the interface - how to make it controllable in a safe manner.
Re:CPU (Score:2)
There are tons of resources on the web for doing just this. I did this with an old toshiba Libretto 100 (the one that's a P166 and about the size of a VCR tape, easily stashed under a seat). For driver-friendly control, use a parallel-port LCD display, like this [crystalfontz.com], and a serial port IrMan [evation.com] with a credit card-sized universal remote. I bu
Re:CPU (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:CPU (Score:2)
Re:CPU (Score:2, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2)
Time factor. Take into account that parents are going to be an age where vinyl and tapes were ever so popular. A typical album is typicaly about 45min or so IIRC and should be played in real time if converting it to another format. Let's say there 50 albums in the collection... that would be about 40hours and flipping sides 100 times.
Not to say this wouldn't be a worth while project, but also a very time consuming one.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:low tech solution (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:low tech solution (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Airport Express (Score:2)
If need be, add another hard drive to a PC and have iTunes use that for all the music.
this really is all you need, since you don't seem inclined to make a stereo-side frontend for control too. If you were trying to make a stereo-side frontend, then this would be better...but why do this, especially when you're going to have to support it for someone else?
by all means, though, have fun doing this at home where you (hopefully
Re:Airport Express (Score:2)
just because you may think writing your own frontend is cool now doesn't mean you'll think it's cool when it goes *boom*....i know I said this earlier, but I speak from experience
(so I felt like repeating it).
answer: (Score:2)
It'll read from a network drive, rip CDs, rip DVDs, navigable with a remote, viewable on the TV, and above all, it's easy enough for your mom to use.
Re:answer: (Score:2)
OMG (Score:2, Insightful)
I use gentoo, so my first place is esearch. If I want a ripping program I open up a term and do
. It's that easy. Look what came up!
.
If you don't use gentoo and do
Jinzora (Score:3, Interesting)
music daemon (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:music daemon (Score:2)
XBMC - simple, cheap and works (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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'
Why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why bother? (Score:2)
What I want to do is to create a music server with all of my music connected through a real sound system.
I want to be able to control it from my couch.
iTunes won't work for this...what would really be nice is something like iTunes that ran remotely so that I could control it from my laptop.
Actually, another thing that would be nice is a remote control interface and the ability to run it on a set top box so that I can sit on my couch and select music on my TV screen.
iT
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)
a) convenient
b) a good way to impress chicks.
I highly recommend it to anyone that uses iTunes on a laptop.
Re:Why bother? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why bother? (Score:2, Interesting)
I set my Dad up with a system running Windows XP (Score:2)
I had thought about setting up a Linux system for him but I didn't want to have to train him how to use Linux and h
I am totally enamored with the Squeezebox. (Score:5, Informative)
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. (Score:2)
this is easily the best solution for a home network
I use it to stream mp3s from my 80gig collection to my PDA(802.11b). No hiccups, does bitrate conversion on the fly, itunes, shoutcast, etc
the list goes on...
Re:I am totally enamored with the Squeezebox. (Score:3, Informative)
XMMS displaying remotely (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
SSH? May I suggest... (Score:2, Interesting)
I risk slashdotting my cable modem but oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, let's see... (Score:5, Informative)
mplay http://freshmeat.net/projects/mplay/ [freshmeat.net] 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? (Score:2, Informative)
MediaMVP by Hauppauge [hauppauge.com]
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TiVo (Score:2)
Console CD Ripping (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, might I suggest using the MusePack [musepack.net] 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 G
Gronk (Score:2)
Re:Gronk (Score:2)
It's even better if you drive it from something with a touchscreen. I've used Sharp Mobilon TriPad PV-6000 for this purpose and it works really well. Yeah, it runs WinCE, but Gronk works fine with the builtin browser, and the touchscreen makes it really nice.
Tools of use (Score:2, Informative)
I think.... (Score:2)
VideoLAN does audio streaming ... (Score:2)
Regarding the ripping, you can rip via any of the myriad of Linux ripper
not sure how much you want to spend (Score:2)
Don't reinvent the jukebox (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Winamp 5 (Score:2)
Globecom Jukebox (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
AudioDBI (Score:2)
Using AudioDBI not only can you store/retrieve metadata from a DBI supported database (well, just PostgreSQL right now but that should be easily overcome), but I designed it to support most any CD you come across. Imagine a CD where each song is by
Live CDs will install to HDD... (Score:2, Informative)
Check out abcde (Score:5, Informative)
Some consoled based rippers (Score:2)
http://jk.yazzy.org/projects/vlorb/ [yazzy.org]
Someone else suggested jack, but was to lazy to provide an URL:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/jack/ [freshmeat.net]
IMHO the most important aspect of an auto-ripper, is its error-handling: what happens if a CD is too scratched to rip? How should it react if someone tries to rip the exact same CD? make a new rip with another name ? silently overwrite the old rip? etc.
One possible solution.. (Score:2)
An Easier & Cheaper Solution (Score:2, Informative)
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
It doesn't meet all your requirements but... (Score:2)
abcde + mpd + mpc + phpmp (Score:2, Informative)
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
Remotely Controlling iTunes (Score:2)
iTunes plus+iMac+OSX is the solution you want. Its cheap and powerful. I bet you can get an iMac with OS X for under $100. Gussy it up with Apple Airtunes and you have multiple rooms with music.
Take note that Airtunes as digital SPDIF i/o!
Part of the solution: 3Com Audreys (Score:2)
The Audrey runs QNX, an embedded version of Unix. A g
sheesh (Score:2)
- suggestions by people who haven't bothered to read the question, just the headline ("ignoring user requirements")
- suggestions by people who have read the question, but haven't understood the scenario ("misinterpreting user requirements")
- suggestions by people who have read the question, but have inserted elements that nobody asked for ("imagining user requirements")
- gloom-and-doom comments by people who predict disas
Computer to slow to run X (Score:2)
I mean what do you need to run X, a 486 with 8 megs of ram and a 2 meg trident vga card? Any machine that doesn't meet those specs is going to spend hours encoding a CDs worth of audio.
Maybe you meant something else when you said it wouldn't be enough computer to run X.
My own solution (Score:2)
I found everything I needed to create a streaming jukebox-like server in the open source world. I use Apache [apache.org] + mod_musicindex [freshmeat.net] to provide an acceptable user interface. The music is streamed via Icecast [icecast.org]. For ripping on the Windows side I prefer Audiograbber [com-us.net] because it will rip directly to ogg. It's not opensource, but it is freeware.
The interface provided by mod_musicindex could use some improvement, but is friendly enough to use and allows for playing or shuffling everything, by artist, and by album, a
use iTunes... (Score:3, Informative)
here is the link [linuxgazette.com].
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.
Front end. (Score:3, Informative)
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
jack & slimserver or mp3blaster/mserve (Score:3, Informative)
* 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? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
It should be possible to use one of the USB harddrive-to-WiFi proxies out there, like this one: Linksys NSLU2 [linksys.com] together with one of the MP3 players that plays from the network, like Creatives: Wireless Player [creative.com] (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 (Score:3, Informative)
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? (Score:3, Informative)
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:Ooooh, that's easy. (Score:2)
linux-based iTunes? (Score:2)
You just haven't seen Media Center [musicex.com] yet then, have you? You're in for a treat [musicex.com].
Of course, seeing as how neither MC nor iTunes is a linux solution we're both thread crapping. But you started it.