I did not -find- any other threads that addeessed this...

Thanks to everyone again for this great forum!

I want to use a few Linux boxes as part of an audio distribution system in my home.

One system will be the master, arbitrarily running any of many possible music/jukebox/streaming program. It will, using an unknown program, transmit the audio in preferably original digital form, alternatively in re-digitized form, to several other Linux systems in diverse locations around the house.

The other Linux systems will remain available for folks to use for web surfing or whatever (they can close the audio app if they chose).

All of these systems already have decent 2.1 or 5.1 speaker systems.

So, when I am entertaining, I can set a playlist or Internet radio station and have it “simulcast” through the whole house. To make this complete, I’ve set aside an old box (the only system that will not be very user-accessible) and stereo to drive some outdoor speakers for the back yard.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

Are you just wanting to be able to play songs (controlled in each room) or are you wanting the music to play all tracks simultaneously (One song everywhere)?

If you are just wanting to play songs or videos you could just share the drives and set the music players on the other systems to use the share for their playlists.

Thank you.

The intent is for all systems to play the same song at the same time... You move through the house and you come in to audio range of one system as you leave the range of the previous system, no one system needing to blast 110db to be heard throughout the house, crushing the heads of those near that system. ;-) doh!

In this setup, though, a user at any computer could take control and listen to whatever the wanted to locally.

The system should distribut audio via Ethernat, some cabled, some 802.11x.

Thank you, I should have made that clear in the origianl question.

I had not even considered that possibility. Would probably like to have all systems setup so the song playing throught the house could be changed from any station as well as giving individuals the ability to stop one station and play their own music in one room.

I'm not sure how to do it but am also now interested

Yes, you have described the intent precisely. It does sound pretty cool and useful, doesn't it?

The task is unlikely to be difficult for someone with experience coding multimedia apps. That is not me (I am a DB/Biz app programmer).

Well, simply capturing and forwarding audio on the master, and receiving and playing on the clients, would be easy. RDP or VNC, etc. could be used to control the master, but would be more universally useful if that could be done with its own app. However, if RDP or VNC is used, then the user is totally free to use whatever music playing application they like on the host.

Furthermore, if the user's preferred music service is Windows-only, they could virtualize Windows as a guest (via VBox or VMWare, etc.) and still use Linux to capture the audio for distribution in-the-home.

Doesn’t it seem likely that someone has already solved this problem? Maybe we just have to find them, or they find us.

Thanks for responding. :-)

What? No more takers on this one? Tartar Sauce!

I sure hope -I- don't haev to write one.. I'm a Windows developer and have atrophied in my VS.NET playground.

Perhaps I overestimate the difficulty of developing Linux apps.

I'll get there eventually.

Oh, a detail that might be necessary for this to work well.

There will probably be audible latency between the master and slave audio devices.

The master system should be able to capture and buffer audio, and delay output to its local speakers by an adjustable amount of time. Perhaps the slaves could also be adjustable in this manner.

The master might be set at 500 ms delay. A fast slave might be set to 450 ms delay, while the puny 233 Mhz PII might be set for 0 MS delay... In this example, the PII takes a full half-second to process the incoming audio packets and get them out its sound card. The master "anticipates" this by waiting to output sound until the PII is ready to output. The faster slave only needs 50 ms. This logic may be flawed, but I think the general concept is sound. (double meaning intentional).

a heartbeat of sorts could be included so the systems were aware of their latency with respect to the server, and the slaves could adjust their delays automatically. The master delay would need to be set high enough so that the slowest slave could output sync'd audio in less-than-or-equal-to that master delay.

Have you looked at icecast? Basically, this can serve up mps or ogg files over your home network, and any computer on that network can tune in. It needs a feed (I usually use ices but I think more modern stuff like amarok can feed it as well) and can support multiple "stations" (basically each station is an independent playlist).

I'm not sure that it can address the latency issue you've brought up as that could be as much a function of network traffic as anything else.

No, but I'll give it a look. Thanks.


If the latency differentials ar eminimal, it will not harm the sound much... It'll have a stadium-like delay-space-making theing... a uber-wide stereo image thing... the small delay... can sound pretty cool... unless it's toooooo big.

I think if you stick to wired connections as much as possible, that should help with the lag. You probably also don't want to have a lot of other services running on the server, particularly network intensive services or torrent programs.

There is a post in another forum that suggests a solution to streaming the audio:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ghlight=stream

The responder (Hacker Supreme) proposes VLC.

It doesn't address remote control of the audio server, but that could be dealt with as a separate problem.

Success!

I was able to do this with Windows as the VLC server. But I have not been able to do it with Linux as teh VLC server.

With Windows as the VLC server, you can use the DirectShow input device with your soundcard slected as audio, "none" selected for video, and with "NoVideo" set as an advanced option.

Yay. This will allow me to use the sound systems attached to the multiple computers in my home to "emulate" a full-in-house-built-in stero system.

It's sweet AND nifty... so, that's... uh... Swifty!