Linux Music System

timothias

Hello all, I'm new to Linux, have some mild Ubuntu experience, but in no way an expert. I am looking to build a system to play hosted music through on my stereo system. Essentially, I want to build a computer that will play music stored either on its drive or a network drive into my stereo system. I would like it to have a dedicated front end and be able to be remote controlled. In the best scenario, I would like to control it with a remote control app over Wi-fi from my BlackBerry.

I am wondering if there is anybody who has done such things, and/or if anyone has suggestions on how to achieve this. The OS will need to be fairly light as I have a small budget and will be recycling some older systems together to do this.

I have been looking at MythTV and Mythbuntu as solutions, but i have no need or desire for any of the video aspects of the system, it will be purely audio. Are there any better suited programs available?

Thank you for your input.

kiran.kankipati

Good Question.

Yes you can first experiment with VLC streaming options. For example you can setup a trial setup even at home with VLC.
Here is the deep insight.

Step1: Setup
You can setup a streaming server with VLC player. If you do this, this works much like a broadcasting system (I mean like you have radio stations, and TV broadcasts).

Step2: Content control, logos, titles (overlay content)
You can even show some channel titles, via VLC overlay content. Assume you need to show a message as "myTV", on your VLC streaming, you can set this option in VLC, on top of your videos it should show that text.

Step3: Test VLC streaming players
In other connected laptops, PCs (Windows /Linux systems does not matter), you can view this playback by using VLC streaming player options.

This way you can stream your local stored files (audio, video, AV content), pictures, and so on, CD/DVD content (supported by VLC), files in usb drive.


(attached a picture for big picture).

Suppose if you want intermediate content sharing servers, you can do that too as VLC sharing servers. Something like this:
[Main streaming server]

---

[sharing server 1]

---

(players/users)
\

---

[sharing server 2]

---

(players/users)
\

---

[sharing server 3]

---

(players/users)
(and so on, you can broadcast to 10s and 1000s of users this way and do load sharing)


This way first you can learn and understand limitations, tomorrow if you need to expand and replace this open-source setup with assume PAID proprietary software, you should already understand what you need to buy where you need to invest your money.

Anyway you have to check with licensing terms before you stream movies or audio (basically any copyright content) to a wide audience. Thats it !

Hope this helps you !
Cheers, Kiran Kankipati.

ben

Please consider even these things: ICECAST, SHOUTCAST.
If you plan to integrate all you music media in just one channel you must consider ICECAST as well. It's nice if you'd like to add for example your favorite internet radios or you want to create your own "local radio" for streaming contents across your lan, really useful if you plan to listen it from embedded devices, PDA, smartphones, ...