Posted by schwarzemann on Thu 10 Nov 2005 at 10:44
For as long as I can remember I have wanted to have music integrated into my home. To me what I wanted was simple, a stereo in just about every room all capable of playing music from a central location as well as independent operation (i.e. volume control and "local" music source).
As time went on, I decided that the best way to facilitate such a dream is to convert my CD collection to a digital form and store them on a central networked computer. This computer, would then stream to other computers located throughout the house.
To date I have settled on a Debian box to act as the music archive and server.
The trick now is to figure out how to stream the music to other boxes throughout my apartment.
So far, I have tried gnump3d, after seeing an article on this site about it, and slimp3.
Both servers were pretty easy to use, slimp3 has the advantage of keeping track of each connected media player (by ip address) and allowing you to control the playlist for each device from any computer.
gnump3d has the advantage of serving both MP3 and OGG Vorbis files.
The one thing missing, from what I can tell so far, is the ability to allow multiple computers to play simultaneously from the same playlist.
Remember the biggest requirement for my full blown system, admittedly still a few years away, is to have all of the computers playing from the same source (i.e. song).
With this in mind, what are some options for streaming music over a home network?
This article can be found online at the Debian Administration website at the following bookmarkable URL (along with associated comments):
This article is copyright 2005 schwarzemann - please ask for permission to republish or translate.