Hi all!

I've searched the FAQ, I've searched the site, and I've done a few hesitant Googles, but I can't find what I want. I'm going to pick your brains because you people know best...

What I want is a thing similar to the Rio Receiver. Basically it has to be able to select and play music from a remote server via ethernet. Optionally it could tie in with the FM tuner card I have to provide streamed radio. The server can either be *nix or Windows as long as it's easy to use and not expensive. The whole unit must be small, unobtrusive, power its own speakers and/or provide line out, and easy to use. I'm not afraid of building my own PC from parts, but I don't want to be hacking source code (much, anyway).

What is there around? What do other people use?

Have fun,

Paul

(P.S. More mixes soon, my droogies.)

http://www.slimp3.com/

i just recently got one and can't recommend it enough. It did for my home music listening habits what my empeg did for my car listening habits. Here's my post about it from earlier.

God, I can't stop drooling! (at least it's drool...)

If I wasn't paying off a loan for my travel I'd have already ordered two. Compared to the $1400AU for a proprietary Yamaha Advanced Music Server ($4200AU for the server!) it's a snap! Even with the current exchange rate it's still cheaper than the audio client mini-PC I was going to build...

Thanks a million, Loren, now I have a new product to lust over! Yippee!

Paul

Keep your eye on ebay, and contact the company via email (it's actually a very small outfit of a few people whom are extremely nice) and see if they have any refurb units. . . You might be able to get a deal. I picked mine up on ebay for a pretty good price.

The web radio streaming and browsing rocks, the plugins that are available rock, and there's a pretty tight nit community around it that is pretty good. I just wish they had a forum like this as opposed to yahoo groups (blech).

My only problem with the slimp3 is that it is mp3 only - uses a hardware decoder. No ogg, flac...

Yeah, that's a show stopper for some. Though it does do on the fly re-coding for ogg, flac, and others. So as long as your server is fast enough it's not a problem. But i never plan on re-ripping my entire library to another format, so it's perfect for me.

In reply to:

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it does do on the fly re-coding for ogg, flac, and others

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Re-encoding! Blechh!

In reply to:

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i never plan on re-ripping my entire library to another format, so it's perfect for me.

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Well, I'm in the process of re-doing everything into FLAC (onto a 1.2 Tb RAID) - won't have to re-rip that, until I get more stuff on DVD-A

Well, if you're encoding to flac, then reencoding shouldn't be a problem, other than CPU wastage.

Re-encoding! Blechh!

Agree. After I took my one quality hit, that's it.

I just purchased a Turtlebeach Audiotron and just love it. It replaced the Rio Receiver I had hooked up to my living room stereo system. The audiotron doesn't power it's own speakers but sounds just great through a home system....it streams internet radio easily and works very well with my wireless setup (took a bit of tweaking to get there however). The price isn't prohibitive either.

There's also this:

http://www.barix.com/exstreamer/

which has a wireless option too.

Regards

Mark

Oooo... That's pretty cool.

Great thread. I really, really want to get one of these guys for my home stereo system. The Audiotron was my frontrunner for a while (the only three I considered were the SlimP3, Prismiq, and the Audiotron), but then I found out about the XBox Media Player (http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/newweb/news_latest.php).
There's a few things going against it...er...it's illegal or at the very least, shady, requires a mod chip, and a bit of tinkering. It would, however, be awesome for mp3 playing, DivX and digital picture viewing, and I would love to get a MAME port running.

I'm just debating how much time I want to dedicate to yet another electronics/geek toy project.

-Mark

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in here.

I JUST got done building one of these for myself. I used an old castoff PC, loaded it with Linux, installed glirnath (a PHP based web jukebox), put some Harman Kardon speakers on it with a wireless ethernet card and I now have a portable digital jukebox, browseable and available from anywhere in the house. I can trundle it outside and put it on the picnic table or leave it in my office. No wires except for the power cord, local interface with a web browser or accessible from any of my PC's on my home network as well.

I also have it set up to autorip and encode CD's and add them to my local music, and can sync to my empeg directly from the box to transfer any new stuff I want. I'm QUITE happy with it.

Total price was next to nothing... bought an 80 gig hard drive at fry's and a new wireless NIC, then used an old castoff PC. Linux supports streaming audio as well, and there is plenty of support for FM tuner cards so I can either browse one of the billion or so icecast streaming radio sites (I have it connected to the internet through my firewall) or l can slap an FM tuner card in and use that... or alternatively when I get a TV capture card I can set up a Tivo clone using Freevo.

I'd be more than happy to give people pointers on how to do this, it was pretty painless.

-- Gary F.

(P.S. More mixes soon, my droogies.)

Woohoo...

Creative have just launched one - 802.11b plus a 900Mhz wireless link to a remote which has the display on it (so the unit can be totally hidden). Quite cute, $250.

Hugo

Link

Skimpy on the details. I wanna see the remote interfaces...

Great idea though, plug the unit into your amp/receiver and use the interface on the remote where most people would use it.

See http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=249038&sku=M975-1036 .

Sku M975-1036 . Last I heard they were still shipping Black Dell units with Rio stickers over the Dell logo and no PNA adapter.