Thomas Hitchcock Wrote: > I am soliciting advice on what would be the optimum operating platform > for a server to route music files to 10 to 20 rooms or more > simultaneously. I have used FLAC files on my two wireless SB2 units at > home with great success! I would assume that wired SB3 units would be > optimal and cheaper for this type of project. Could a single Linux box > serve FLAC files to 10 to 20 rooms simultaneously, or would another > music file format be preferable for this application to lower bandwidth > requirements? Bandwidth likely wouldn't be your bottleneck - more likely, if you see any problems, they would be in response times to remote commands. You might stream mp3 to reduce network bandwidth, but only if the files are also stored in mp3. Transcoding from FLAC or some other format to mp3 will only increase CPU usage, which is more likely to be a bottleneck when SlimServer is serving 20 streams.
> I would prefer to stick with FLAC files if possible for quality reasons, > but I was not sure if a single computer could handle that many > simultaneous FLAC requests. In that scenario there's no transcoding, just file-serving. I think the a single SlimServer of adequate power would have little trouble keeping the streams filled. > What specs would the server/network need to handle that many lines > simultaneously? Can Slimserver make use of multiple processors in > servers? Could there be any possibility of future expansion to add > more rooms if necessary? If it became necessary, by using MySQL as the database, you could configure more than one SlimServer access the same database. It wouldn't be an ideal load-balancing system, but it would probably suffice. > Also wondering if Slimserver has any features to allow logins from > individual rooms that would control access to portions of the music > database. No. This has been discussed many times, but it seems little if any actual software development is being done to address the issue. > My thinking was that we would ideally only allow each room to access the > portions of the music that someone working in the room actually owns. > My assumption is that we would be technically breaking copyright rules > to allow everyone unlimited access to the entire collective database. That assumption would probably be correct, although you can probably get a license to allow you to play anything you like. > My plan was to allow surgeons or staff in the rooms to bring in CDs they > own to be added to the server in different directories, and then allow > customized playlists for individual surgeons or staff members that > would access only their own music. One other problem is that surgeons > and staff do not always work in the same room every day, so we would > need a way of controlling access to their own music in various rooms > with different SB3 units every day. Can this be done with the basic > Slimserver setup or any available Plugins? I saw in the WIKI the > reference to running multiple Slim Server instances, and this sounds > like what I was thinking of. That's currently your only option, but the process of taking a Squeezebox and disconnecting from one server and then connecting to another isn't very convenient. > If this can only be done with Linux then that may determine the platform > needs for the server. The operating system platform shouldn't matter. Linux may give you more headroom on the same hardware, which would give you more power in the same box, but other than that, SlimServer won't really care. -- JJZolx Jim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JJZolx's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18903 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
