[Darth_Hatter]

Hey heres the plan. Im going to be moving into a house next year with a couple of my friends (in the dorms right now) and we want to set up a laptop on our living room or where ever that would be able to take all the music from the computers in the house on the network and play it through some speakers. its not that i want the computer to store the music, just be able to play the music that is on each of the computers. are there any programs that could do this or could i set up some sort of music "server" to do this? it would be pretty sweet. i was looking at slimserver but it seems like it would only work best with the slimdevices stuff. i dont really want to spend a bunch of money on gear considering between the all of us we have lots of extra computer stuff.

any input would be much appreciated.

Rob

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Well, I want to make sure I understand you correctly. Are you asking if you can wire your laptop up to some speakers? Like say wire your laptop up to some speakers that are surround sound to play around the house, or are you asking if you can hook up a stereo system to your laptop? If you are asking if you can hook up a stereo system to your laptop, then the answer is yes. It's possible, but your Stereo has to be USB compatible. Meaning it has to have a USB port on it, so that you can run the USB corb from the stereo to your laptop. Now if you just want to hook up your laptop to some random speakers I doubt it. Now I do believe there are speakers especially made for this, like surround sound speakers for computers that will run sound throughout the house from your laptop, but I believe that can be very pricy to do so. Now I have a stereo system hooked-up via USB from the stereo to my desktop computer, and it works excellently, it also has a Level 2 Surround Sound feature, but I mean I don't think you want to go out and buy an expensive stereo system just to do that, but most things with surround sound are relatively expensive.

Come to think of it, I think you can use a Home Theater System to do what you're asking. I think a lot of the Home Theater Systems are computer compatible. They're a bit pricy aswell, but cheaper then buying a stereo system. The decent brands are usually $200+.

Here's a link:


Digital Home Theater Systems @ Newegg.com

Edited by hayabusa_mike, 04 February 2007 - 01:16 AM.

[h_mike]

Well, I want to make sure I understand you correctly. Are you asking if you can wire your laptop up to some speakers? Like say wire your laptop up to some speakers that are surround sound to play around the house, or are you asking if you can hook up a stereo system to your laptop? If you are asking if you can hook up a stereo system to your laptop, then the answer is yes. It's possible, but your Stereo has to be USB compatible. Meaning it has to have a USB port on it, so that you can run the USB corb from the stereo to your laptop. Now if you just want to hook up your laptop to some random speakers I doubt it. Now I do believe there are speakers especially made for this, like surround sound speakers for computers that will run sound throughout the house from your laptop, but I believe that can be very pricy to do so. Now I have a stereo system hooked-up via USB from the stereo to my desktop computer, and it works excellently, it also has a Level 2 Surround Sound feature, but I mean I don't think you want to go out and buy an expensive stereo system just to do that, but most things with surround sound are relatively expensive.

Come to think of it, I think you can use a Home Theater System to do what you're asking. I think a lot of the Home Theater Systems are computer compatible. They're a bit pricy aswell, but cheaper then buying a stereo system. The decent brands are usually $200+.

Here's a link:


Digital Home Theater Systems @ Newegg.com

Edited by hayabusa_mike, 04 February 2007 - 01:16 AM.

[Darth_Hatter]

Sorry i didnt explain very well. there is a crude picture drawn on a laptop in paint so dont judge my artistic ability.

Hooking up the speakers is no problem. the thing i want to do is have a laptop that can play all the music from the computers throughout the house. Like a jukbox sort of. On the laptop i want it to be able to store all the music in some sort of dynamic play list of sorts that will delete songs from the playlist if one of the computers is shut down, unlike in some players when the file is moved it will just kepp skipping the songs in the playlist and leaves a lot of silence. id also like it to have a search function where you could type in a song or artist that you would like and it could find and display it.

ive been looking at slimserver and softsqueeze (which is a software version of the slimdevices slim squeeze or what ever its called) buts its kinda awkward to search and stuff. id like something like winamp with its search and playlist or itunes even. but if someones computer was turned off so their music was no longer shared it leaves the songs in the list which would get annoying.

its a lot to ask for but there has to be something somewhere. i dont want to spend 200 dollars on a network music player that could be replaced with my laptop some how.

[h_mike]

Well I can't think of anything really further. I would try the hardware section of the forum, and to see if they can help you, I usually just deal with normal applications in this forum. Sorry.

[warriorscot]

As long as you have the music in a shared folder on the other computers the laptop can access and play them from any of the computers you just need to set up the network for file sharing.

[dsenette]

http://www.tigerdire...a...?CatId=197 might want to check some of these out...if you set up a wireless network in the house (which i would imagine you would) you SHOULD be able to use something like this...instead of a single purpose laptop

[h_mike]

Networks can be a pain, messing with routers and stuff, and routers can be expensive as well. You'll probably have to open up some ports too. I do think Warrioscot is right though, .

[Darth_Hatter]

As long as you have the music in a shared folder on the other computers the laptop can access and play them from any of the computers you just need to set up the network for file sharing.

The sharing isn't a problem, its the playlist. For example, if i have winamp or itunes with a library full of the music from lets say 4 computers in the house and one of them tuns off there is a problem. in winamp it would just go through each file checking if its there which leaves a big annoying gap in the music and thousands of unplayable songs and in itunes it comes up with an error and asks if you want to earch for it.

i might have found something that could work for winamp, a plugin called dynamic library but it still lacks in some features

@dsenette

it would be great to buy one of those network music players but i got a laptop for free from my school for some award and id like to use it for the purpose of our music station. and i also have a couple desktops that would also work which have the xfi extreme music sound cards. so id like to not have to buy a 200+ dollars on another piece of equipment.

again the problem isnt with the actual sharing of the music, that is done quite easily.

Im looking for a music application or some sort of plugin for itunes, winamp, or windows media player, or any other player that allows for a dynamic playlist that can tell when a file or multiple files are no longer available (ie when a computer shuts down) and will take those files out of the playlist until the computer is back up. i think it is just a dream but i thought maybe some sort of audiophile geek would be out there somewhere to come to my rescue

thanks for all the responses though.