MPD? (was Re: Plug Computers for whole-home audio)

[Derek Atkins]

Joshua,

Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com> writes:

> I've setup multicast RTP with latency-matching across all nodes
> in the network; I have only one `channel' right now (in the radio-tuner
> or input-switching sense, not in the `mono vs. stereo' sense), but it's
> possible to define multiple channels/sources by giving them separate
> multicast addresses, and then switch a given receiver to another channel
> just by changing the multicast address on which that receiver listens.
>
> Because of the latency-matching, multiple receiver-nodes, to the
> extent that the ear can tell, all have their playback perfectly
> *time-synced* such that there's no `echo' or `reverb' effect
> when standing between two adjacent rooms with separate receivers.
>
> I actually compared this against how well two (different) FM radios
> in adjacent rooms sync to the same radio station, and the RTP system
> did better. :)
>
> (multicast RTP over ethernet + dynamic resampling-algorithms
>  with latency-analysis on pentium-class CPUs with network time-sync...
>  provides quite a convincing emulation of speaker-wire!)
>
> That it's MPD-based means that I can have a single playback- and
> playlist-control server for the entire house, accessible from anywhere
> on the network; in other words, I have multiple `single points of control'--
> client UIs are available for desktop and laptop computers of all OSes,
> Android devices, my friends' Apple iThings, etc. There's even
> a central volume-control.
>
> Using MPD *also* means that I can use all of the tools/plugins that exist
> for MPD--like last.fm/audioscrobbler support, gmpc, and the `mpdjay'
> autojockey that I'm now running on my NanoNote (actually, I originally
> wrote that to deploy in the whole-house system, and it didn't even occur
> to me that I could run it on the NanoNote until my wife said, `OMG it's
> so awesome! Can you make me a portable version‽'). And MPD does gapless
> playback, with ReplayGain to automatically adjust for differences
> in overall volume between different tracks/albums, etc.

Okay, I'll bite...

Could you give more details on how you set this up?  I'd not heard of
MPD until this email, so I just looked it up.  It certainly exists in
Fedora 12 (my current desktop -- yeah, yeah, I know) and from my minimal
reading it sounds pretty cool.

What I'm more interested in learning about is how you set up MPD to
perform your multiple room synchronization, what clients you use, and
how/where you store your music and playlists on the network?

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available