Re: [TCLUG:22703] Dedicated MP3 distro project?

[Ben Kochie <ben@nerp.net>]

there are some projects out there allready for this kind of project.. i
saw one on /. the other day.. you are going to need more CPU time for
decoding, especialy if you want to make the system skip-proof.  rumor has
it.. the empeg guys are doing a home-stereo thing.

things you should consider.. 

atleast a p200 CPU or equivilent.. you may want to display output on a TV
set, and consider consumer IR (normal home remotes) for controlers.

there are several web-based playlist managers, that would work for
web-based controls. (and you could do such a thing on the TV set)

depending on what you do.. high end sound cards will cost you a bundle.. I
suggest providing SPIDIF output, PC hardware has too much noise in
it.. when i had a PC attached to my stereo system, i used an optical
cable, and a coax-digital cable from it to play mp3's (optical) and DVD's
(coax) to my yamaha reciver, which has the DAC's in it.. it sounded very
nice, no 60hz buz, or other wierd things.. i've seen a lot of cheap to
expensive soundcards that passthrough CPU noise, drive seeking, network
traffic.. it can be REALLY anoying.

Thank You,
        Ben Kochie (ben@nerp.net)

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 "Unix is user friendly, Its just picky about its friends."

On Mon, 16 Oct 2000, Bill Layer wrote:

> The elegance of the in-dash MP3 player has finally pushed me over the edge, 
> and I feel the need to join the ranks of MP3 listening geeks worldwide. (A 
> personal note, this is extremely irregular for me, I am a dyed-in-the-wool 
> analog nerd - my stereo has 30 vacuum tubes, and NO transistors anywhere... 
> also, no CD player; I still use a magnetic phonograph as my source).
> 
> But I digress....
> 
> I'm looking for a mini-distro that will work as a dedicated MP3 player - 
> kind of an "instant MP3 player, just add your own kernel" approach. I'm 
> initially discounting the UMSDOS approach, as it is generally considered an 
> inferior filesystem - but might there be some speed advantages to using a 
> DOS or FAT32 filesystem for a dedicated MP3 system? What about 
> defragmenting DOS / FAT32 filesystems under linux?
> 
> I would expect the player to be controlled from a simple telnet (or SSH? 
> you tell me the advantages / disadvantages of either approach) and possibly 
> a dumb terminal running on a serial port. In this way, the player could be 
> commanded from any machine on my LAN (read: in my house), or from the 
> terminal. I suppose an IRDA port on the machine, and a generic 
> remote-control might also be a very nice feature to implement...
> 
> So my first questions are, does such a distro already exist? It seems like 
> everything needed would fit on several floppies... What sort of Linux 
> software exists for 'jukebox' type MP3 playing, from the command line? For 
> managing all of the MP3 files? Has someone else already done this, such 
> that I can just focus on my hardware issues and not ask any more questions 
> about software or OS?
> 
> On the subject of hardware, have there been any A/B listening tests of 
> various soundcard's audio quality? Are there any true "high end" soundcards 
> - meaning cards that use film caps instead of electrolytics, low noise / 
> low inductance resistors, low-noise op-amps, extra EMF / RF shielding, 
> decent design & metallurgy in the audio connectors etc ?
> 
> Finally, does anyone have a mini-case upon which I can start the hardware 
> portions of this project? It will need space for a CD-ROM and at least 2 
> ISA slots - to take the soundcard and NIC. Onboard video would be fine. 1 
> Serial port is also a requirement. From what I gather, I should not need 
> more than a 486DX-2/66 with about 8-12MB of RAM to do the job. I have 
> _plenty_ of good stuff to trade for the right case combo. I would 
> appreciate any comments on using a portion of RAM as a RAMdisk to act as a 
> playback 'queue' to prevent drop-outs during disk access.
> 
> Sorry this post got long, thanks for the bandwidth,
> Bill
> 
> 
> 
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