Playing music across a network

[meeja]

OK, here's the plan.....

I am planning to install a CAT5 network thoughout our new house (moving in hopefully in Novemnber).... one of the uses will be to play my music collection (which is stupidly huge) in any room in the house.

The server will be housed either in the attic, or in the garage (probably garage).... but what options do I have to actually play the music in each room?

I'm thinking along the lines of a miniture PC with Network capabilities, and a decent soundcard, and just use media player.

Does any kit like this already exist, or do I have to build small PC's to do the job?

[pmanson]

You can buy little boxes that plug into your hifi which allow youto stream music from your server.

You can use something like this

Try looking in What HiFi etc!


www.hometoys.com/htinews/oct03/articles/pragmatic/mp3.htm

[Bodo]

does this one fit?

www.netgear.com/products/details/MP101.php

[fatsteve]

Meeja,

You really can't go wrong with slim device's squeezebox

www.slimdevices.com

Very cheap compared to Yamaha's MusicCast and alike.

You don't really need much oomph to stream music around either. I'm running a lowly P200 with a 250Gb HD as the server and streaming it wirelessly (only 11mb).

Certainly a lot nicer than having a PC in your living room.

Quality-wise it's superb, I'm actually streaming WAV files around (transcoded from FLAC), the squeezebox is connected via digital optical to my amp, so it's arguably CD quality.

Steve

[Mr E]

Yup. A mate has a squeeze box and it's most cool.

[Bodo]

That squeezebox looks indeed very interesting ... FLAC and Ogg Vorbis support

[jig]

Another vote here for the Squeezebox... they've just upgraded the display, so they look even better. Originally they were wireless LAN and utp, but they now do a wired only version which brings the cost down a bit.

The server software supports Windoze and Linux, too. They support streaming radio and the functionality can be expanded if you know Perl.

If you're doing the rewiring, you might like to consider something like a Russound multi room setup... I think they do a version which can use your cat5 to distribute the audio around the house and then choose different sources remotely. Very cool!

[Bodo]

Just bought a Squeezebox because I discovered that there is server software for Linux as well. playing out of the box

[meeja]

jig said:

If you're doing the rewiring, you might like to consider something like a Russound multi room setup... I think they do a version which can use your cat5 to distribute the audio around the house and then choose different sources remotely. Very cool!

The house doesn't need re-wiring, but it does need total redecoration (hence taking the opportunity to put Cat 5 in.....)

And there is going to be ALOT of Cat 5 cabling.... trying to future proof things!

[arcturus]

I use the Netgear MP101 to deliver my music from the server to the hi-fi and can thoroughly recommend it. You can use it wired or wireless and it will play mp3 or wma. It also gives you access to internet radio stations around the world.

[fatsteve]

Bodo said:

Just bought a Squeezebox because I discovered that there is server software for Linux as well. playing out of the box

Oh yes, mine runs on RH. Do you honestly think I could get away with running Windoze streaming on a crappy P200!!. LOL!!

The Xnix version is the way to go.

WRT to Ogg and FLAC, the Slimserver software supports pretty much any codec, and if your server is up to it you can transcode on the fly (ie FLAC->MP3, or MP3-MP3 downsampling), this is great for streaming over BB where even a most 128kbps can be achived with minimal dropouts.

Steve