Thanks for your comments snarlydwarf and funkstar, As I look towards updating my music playback system in the near future, I want to thoroughly understand the fundamental configuration options. It appears to me that central to the choice of hardware/software/configuration is whether you want a single player or multiple players.
snarlydwarf;562690 Wrote: > if the player is sufficiently fat, it could make its own index by > scanning files. Yes, the major Linux audio player applications do create their own databases. Amarok2 uses MySQL for example, while Banshee uses SQLite, and Exaile uses a unique database format. A shortcoming of this is that the databases are not dynamic; they must be refreshed manually. I'm not interested in multiple players, but if I was, it's possible to configure multiple players (assuming they're all the same type) to share a common database/configuration directory on the network, making the database common to all players. snarlydwarf;562690 Wrote: > there is no NFS or SMB API for "please show me all the tracks with genre > 'Foo'". Likewise, there is no streaming API for "please show me all the tracks with genre 'Foo'". But this is slightly off-topic to my original question, which related to the delivery mechanism of the media file to playback device. snarlydwarf;562690 Wrote: > if you only have one client, why even bother with NFS: just attach the > hard drive directly to the "player". Yes, I take your point that it's somewhat overcomplicated to have a single player access its music store over a network. The reason I mention network connectivity within a single-player environment is that I envisage using a "lightweight" computer for playback duty in the lounge room - maybe a small Atom machine, or ARM embedded device, or even Android tablet, but I envisage using a conventional personal computer in the study or bedroom as the ripping/acquisition machine. Obviously one of these devices would have the music storage drive connected locally, and the other would access this drive over the network. Wait ... there's a third scenario - a separate NAS which is accessed by both the ripping computer and playback computer. In the 2 scenarios where my (single) playback computer is NOT connected directly to the music storage drive, I continue to wonder about the technical merit of generating an audio stream. -- audio1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ audio1's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=39326 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80521 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
