audio1;562943 Wrote: > 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.
Yes, a multiple player setup, by nature, requires some sort of 'client/server' protocol. NFS and SMB are going to require a lot more work on the client side: neither addresses the database itself. I see no benefit to such a process other than moving some work from userspace to kernel space.. but the code to serve files is actually HTTP: which is well understood and easy to implement... so whether a file is moved via nfsd or an http socket really makes no difference. And, again, using just NFS/SMB, you have no shared database. > > 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. SBS 7.6 (the current dev snapshot) uses inotify on Linux.. no need to rescan to find things. The kernel sends it an inotify event and SBS knows where to look for the additions/changes. > > 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. > Which is what SBS does (and more, but more on that later). As for not being interested in multiple players: I am sure most people in this forunm said that at one time, and now have several squeezeboxes. I lasted a couple months before I had to get another. > > But this is slightly off-topic to my original question, which related > to the delivery mechanism of the media file to playback device. > No, it's not. there is more to things than delivery mechanism. If that is truly all you care about: the Squeezeboxes make HTTP requests for files that are sent via HTTP. HTTP is a better protocol for "can I have this file?" than either SMB or NFS which are MUCH more complicated and contain code that is entirely irrelevant to simply sending a file. > > 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. If you have s single player and think you can find an off the shelf ARM embedded machine with decent sound output, then go for it. If, however, you ever add a second player.. your method would not scale, It would not allow syncronizing the players, you would have to hobble together your own UI (or have to use a netbook as a remote...) Squeezeboxes don't have that scaling problem. They scale very well, they can be synchronized or not. -- snarlydwarf ------------------------------------------------------------------------ snarlydwarf's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1179 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80521 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
