In article , housetrained
wrote:
Hi Is this the newsgroup to advise on living room [quiet] media players
- basically a HDD containing my music files connected to my DAC by
digital coax [or optical] with a window where I can see what's playing
and a remote? Don't need visual [i.e. TV out or HDMI] at all. Any
recommendations? TIA

I can't comment on dedicated 'media player' devices. I just use two
computers for this sort of task.

One is a Shuttle with a large diameter fan and a large heatsink. I
disconnected the fan and replaced the standard HD with a solid state one.
Then feed the output to a DACMagic. Runs Ubuntu 9.04 and lets me play
almost any type of file, fetch net radio, BBC iPlayer etc.

The other is an Acer laptop (Xubuntu 9.04) again with a solid state disc
and with an optical spdif output. This I feed to various DACs depending on
which room it is in at the time and what else I am doing. If you 90% close
the lid the screen goes off and the batteries then last a long time before
a recharge if you are just playing audio.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf wrote:

The other is an Acer laptop (Xubuntu 9.04) again with a solid state
disc and with an optical spdif output. This I feed to various DACs
depending on which room it is in at the time and what else I am
doing. If you 90% close the lid the screen goes off and the batteries
then last a long time before a recharge if you are just playing audio.

Jim,

Does XUbuntu demand much CPU grunt or many system resources ? I have an old
discarded laptop that I was considering pressing into service as an audio
storage machine. No SSD but it is fairly quiet.

In article , TonyL
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

The other is an Acer laptop (Xubuntu 9.04) again with a solid state
disc and with an optical spdif output. This I feed to various DACs
depending on which room it is in at the time and what else I am doing.
If you 90% close the lid the screen goes off and the batteries then
last a long time before a recharge if you are just playing audio.

Jim,

Does XUbuntu demand much CPU grunt or many system resources ? I have an
old discarded laptop that I was considering pressing into service as an
audio storage machine. No SSD but it is fairly quiet.

Xubuntu is a lot lighter than Ubuntu.

The above comment was about a new laptop that is fairly powerful and has
bags of RAM, etc. However...

My old laptop has just 192MB of RAM and the CPU type made about 8 years
ago. In tests it runs at about a fifth of the speed of my newer laptop.

It will run Xubuntu and I initially used it with that and the ROX desktop
'on top' of Xubuntu. That would do things like let me play audio files or
use FireFox to listen to the BBC iPlayer OK.

Above comments for Ubuntu/Xubuntu 9.04. I haven't tried 9.10 so can't say
about them for sure, but I assume they will be similar.

More recently I installed Crunchbang Lite Linux instead. That is even
easier to run on an old small machine. Only uses about 80MB of RAM.

If you can still find a copy, the issue of 'Linux Format' cover-dated April
has over half a dozen 'light' distros of Linux on its cover DVD. These let
you try a 'live' version of many of them. i.e. you don't need to lose your
existing OS, etc. I tried Puppy Linux as it is small and comes with a cut
down version of ROX. But I found it wasn't very good. So I then tried
Crunchbang.

Crunchbang is a cut down and tweaked version of Ubuntu that is (IMHO) even
lighter, quicker, and easier than Xubuntu. One nice feature if you try it
on an old machine is that is displays on the desktop 'wallpaper' a
continually updated list of things like RAM usage/spare, CPU loading
percentage, and swap useage. That means you can try it 'live' and quickly
see if the machine has enough space, CPU power, etc, for what you try to
do. It comes with a media player, etc.

If you like Crunchbang you can then install other apps from the same
repositories as Xubuntu. Only limit being the hardware you have.

So I'd suggest giving Xubuntu and/or Crunchbang a go as a 'live' install
first and see if they work OK. Then, depending how cautious you are, try
making them dual boot with something else, or install them if happy.

During the last few days I've been concentrating my 'computing' on getting
rpcemu (an emulator for a RiscOS machine) running on my newer laptop. But
when I get a chance I'll drag the older laptop out of its dark corner, run
it, and tell you some of the memory/cpu values I get for normal use.

There are some Linux distros which I think are specially aimed at 'media'
uses. But they may well be aimed at video as well, so need more in the way
of hardware. Can't say as I've never tried them.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On 04 Apr, wrote:
In article , TonyL
wrote:


During the last few days I've been concentrating my 'computing' on
getting rpcemu (an emulator for a RiscOS machine) running on my newer
laptop. But when I get a chance I'll drag the older laptop out of its
dark corner, run it, and tell you some of the memory/cpu values I get
for normal use.

Now done that. Results as follows

1) Boot up into the default Crunchbang lite system, but with ROX added on
top of openbox for the desktop. RAM used = 58 MB, CPU when not doing
anything = 3 percent load.

2) Start up FireFox and play 'Jazz Record Requests' using the BBC iPlayer.
RAM used now up to 122 MB, CPU now 15 percent loading

3) Quit FireFox and start VLC (Media Player). Play a 44/16 LPCM Wave file
taken from an audio CD. RAM used now 89MB, CPU 9 percent.

I can't recall all the CPU details but it is an Intel 2GHz single core
laptop type that they sold 7-8 years ago,

I tended to get similar results with Xubuntu 9.04. But if you just want to
play music files and use the iPlayer I'd say Crunchbang lite is a bit
lighter and does the job.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf writes:

On 04 Apr, wrote:
snip

I tended to get similar results with Xubuntu 9.04. But if you just want to
play music files and use the iPlayer I'd say Crunchbang lite is a bit
lighter and does the job.

Crunchbang has been my production system at home for over a year
now. It works like charm as far as I am concerned. My computer is a
six or so years old Shuttle. I don't use it as a media center so
I can't say anything on that subject.

/Martin

Jim Lesurf wrote:
On 04 Apr, wrote:
In article , TonyL
wrote:


During the last few days I've been concentrating my 'computing' on
getting rpcemu (an emulator for a RiscOS machine) running on my newer
laptop. But when I get a chance I'll drag the older laptop out of its
dark corner, run it, and tell you some of the memory/cpu values I get
for normal use.

Now done that. Results as follows


Thanks Jim, much appreciated. I'll dig out the old machine and load up
Crunchbang Linux for starters...see what it can do.