A "remote control" feature via the Audio Receiver Manager would be cool, where you could select and start streaming your songs from the PC.

Maybe Frank Van Gestel can figure out how to port Displayserver to the Rio Receiver?

Frank, do you read this BBS?

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Tony Fabris

I don't understand why you would want to do this.

The Rio software shares MP3 from the PC's, right? So if you are on the PC - why use it to control the Rio - why not just play the MP3's on the PC?

I'd say that Displayserver on the Rio would be a little more difficult than the empeg - the tunes are on the server side (it's client/server remember).

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

The Rio software shares MP3 from the PC's, right? So if you are on the PC - why use it to control the Rio - why not just play the MP3's on the PC?

Same reasons I'd play the MP3s on the Empeg before I'd play them on the PC:

- Better sound quality (output stage circuitry is better on the player than on the PC).

- In my case, the PC is using a separate audio system than the stereo components. The stereo stuff gets the better amps/speakers. The PC gets the tiny little speakers just for playing games. I realize that in some households, this situation is reversed.

- No RAM or CPU cycles used up on the PC for decoding the MP3 (although in the case of the Receiver, I'm sure there's some of that used for the server software).

- When you use WinAmp to play the MP3s on the PC, then other sounds (e-mail notifications, game sounds, etc.) don't get played because the sound card is in use by WinAmp. Playing your music on a separate device allows you to have the PC sounds still work while you're listening to the music. (This can be worked-around by certain soundcard drivers that allow multiple apps to use the sound card, and it's also fixed in Windows 2000 by default.)

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Tony Fabris

I've just talked to Jeff Mock yesterday, and it seems the display is handled the same way as the empeg, so it looks feasable to run displayserver on the unit, just for remote display/control.

Frank van Gestel

I can't imagine that it's as simple as a recompile here though? Surely the differences in kernel, etc, make this at least a minor recode?

Paul.

--
RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Okay - that makes a lot of sense.

I sort of always imagined that people would use the Rio with their main stereo and have their pc in a seperate room upstairs (or whatever).

Having said that, it's nice to have some music on when playing games, and not every game lets you do that.

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Now that I have a Receiver in my lounge hifi cabinet, I'm totally hooked and want one in every room. Unfortunately it seems I'm expected to actually pay for them! *Doh*

How about trading "those" pictures for Hugo's Rio ?

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Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341 Empeg Looking to add a DELL Reciever

I'd love to see this too, especially if the server had a class for using it with scripting

e.g.

MyRio = CreateObject("Rio.Control")
MyRio.SetPlayers ALL ' Command is intended for ALL players - could be MyRio.Setplayers MyPlayername1 etc
MyRio.Play MyPlaylist.pls, RANDOM ' Play a playlist randomly - alternatively NORANDOM
Set MyRio = Nothing

This would mean that my Home Automation server would be able to control the player. I'd also like to be able to 'broadcast' the same song to all players - Whole house audio on a budget!

I'm just about to look at wireless networking the player which would mean that the bathroom and garden wouldn't be off-limits music wise...

There is so much potential here that I'm bursting to get this sort of thing set up...

Some Command ideas:

SetPlayers
Play,Stop,Pause,Next,Previous
Volume Up,Down
TurnItOn/off
GetCurrentSong
GetCurrentPlaylist
PauseThisTrackPlayAnotherThenResumeFromWherePreviousTrackWasPaused (this would enable announcements)
IsPlaying (is the player playing)
IsPaused
IsOFF
Just some ideas feel free to add your own...

Andy

Edited by AndyP2 on 10/05/01 11:17 AM.

I'll not make the obvious jibe.

Presumably it sounds good on the stereo - what components do you have hooked up to the Rio? What about others?

I'm using all Arcam FMJ stuff, so if the Rio even sounds a little suspect, it'll get amplified nicely.

I guess I'm asking if the Rio is going to sound better or worse than the empeg connected to the home HiFi. Personally I like the empeg output on the home hifi, but it's not as good as I might like.

I'd do a test with .wav to see if it's my MP3's or the empeg, but I can't (at this point).

Does the Rio support wav???

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Surely, you'd want code like this:

Set db = CreateObject("Rio.AudioReceiverDB")

Set fids = db.ExecuteQuery(...)

Set mgr = CreateObject("Rio.AudioReceiverManager")

For Each u In mgr.Receivers

  u.Play fids, RANDOM

Next

Much more natural.

Picking up on one small aspect of your post, synchronising multiple receivers to the same stream is something we'd like to try. It would be cool when moving around the house.

Rob

The Receiver has a better DAC than the car player. The sound quality is absolutely spot on - I think you'll be impressed.

Even the integral amp (Tripath) is exceptionally good, and is capable of driving small-ish hifi speakers in an impressive way. We have some Mission 702e's in the office (small floor standers) which hook up to a Receiver and pump out Toby's excellent psychadelic trance collection (to the annoyance of most other people here).

Rob

What do they use in the MoS Hotel?

I presume that this is some internal speaker system, etc?

Now I'm really looking forward to the Rio - I might even have to re-rip everything...

I'm not saying anything about Psychadelic Trace....

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Agreed, but not everyone here programs - I just wanted to make it as 'understanable' as possible in what I would love to achieve.

Andy

P.S. Since you're picking at my code ;-) you'd need to add

Set db = Nothing
Set fids = Nothing
Set mgr = Nothing

at the end of your code to release the resources...

OOOooooooooooo Yes please!!! I voulenteer to be a guineepig! This is one of THE things that I'd love to see... I konw that streaming from Internet radio stations is something that many people would like but *I* would be more interested is streaming (and as you say syncing) from my MP3 Server machine. coupled with the control desires I have it would make for an excellent route to whole house audio and would create a marketing option in the Home Automation world...

Andy

There was a picture posted of a MoS room, speakers are shown. I wonder if they are powered speakers though ?

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Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341 Empeg Looking to add a DELL Reciever

The hotel uses some fairly cheap small speakers (sourced from Richer Sounds in the UK no less!) driven by the internal amplifier in the Receiver. Apparantly they sound a lot better than their price tag would suggest.

They are in the Ariston MSX series, not sure of the model.

Rob

Didn't see the speakers in the picture - should have looked more closely.

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Oh god not Ariston - those blooming Ariston adverts drove me mad ...

...and on and on and on....!

Paul.

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RioReceiver - Still Waiting for one in the UK.

Nah - end of the block, they'd get released anyway. Or would they? If not, one more reason to not use VB.

Received Reciever yesterday. Copied displayserver, bash and libs to arf file and it works!!! Only the top-half of the display is shown, but it seems pretty simple to make it workable...
You can try the .arf file from http://empeg.dyndns.org/receiver

Frank van Gestel

Top man ! Just got to get mine out of the boxes and give it a go.

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Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341 Empeg 2 x DELL RioReceiver

Not wanting to spoil the party, but you probably need to work out a way to "diff" the arf file and generate a patch (& patch program?).

We're not keen (and I suspect legal people would be considerably less keen) on distribution of our code through other sites - remember the arf file is the equivalent of posting a modified empeg upgrade file, including the player binary.

This may seem a bit heavy, but there are other people who'd like to distribute arf files in a commercial setting who require licence agreements to do this - so we have to be clear about where the line is.

Congratulations on the displayserver hack though, you'll need a surround to make it look like the receiver now :)

Hugo

Sorry, my acting was faster than thinking...
I realised it too after a day or so; I couldn't find any software-updates for the receiver to download...
I'll start looking for a good freeware tar-utility for win32 to patch the file...

Frank van Gestel

Try cygwin

A binary patch should be fairly easy to write; as tar files don't use any absolute positioning (as they're tape archives!) adding files is just a matter of splicing in a tar file header and the actual file data.

Hugo

I use cygwin tar to move data from NFS filesystems to CIFS filesystems. It's capable to perform basic ACL-translations and set the correct owners, which I haven't found in any other tool yet...
I will first see how hard a binary patch would be, else I might try the tar way...

Frank van Gestel

gnu tar (which I suspect is cygwin tar) should work. Owner root on everything is just fine for the receiver :)

Hugo

Will this version of displayserver be available for download as a patch?

Vince, UK (DDAR x 3)

Next week I will put a patch on my website...

Frank van Gestel

Congratulations on the displayserver hack though, you'll need a surround to make it look like the receiver now :)

I took the receiver image from the flash demo at the rio site. I hope this doesn't bring me in legal problems?

Frank van Gestel

I've put a tar file on my website which should be combined with the files in receiver.arf
Use the unix tar-command to combine the two files. I will try to create a win32 patch utility...

Frank van Gestel

Sigh. I'd gotten through all of the "hard" parts of building a VNC server when I discovered displayserver. Now my -immediate- need is met, which means the code will no doubt languish for a few years

Well, not necessarily. The biggest thing I'm having trouble with is hooking the init / player to get my daemon started. But that's for another thread...