Music

From Noisebridge
Revision as of 17:27, 26 September 2009 by Mediapathic (talk | contribs) (→‎Summary)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

We've got a nice stereo with 1/8" jack for audio devices, 5x RCA in, 1x SPDIF in, A/B speaker outs. Two Klipsch SB-5 speakers for now; a bit small for the space, but better than a PC laptop speaker.

We did a sound test and the amp can go to -11 (ha!) before you can even hear it outside when the windows are closed.

The sub is sitting under the stairway, on top of a floor tile and one of the unused smelly carpets (for dampening). The sub will shut on/off automatically. To turn the sub up/down, on the receiver press the CH VOL button until SW is displayed on the screen, then press up/down to alter its state. Keep in mind that the shape of the stairway sort of helps to amplify the sound within the space.

The first song played in the space was by Welle:ErdBall from the album Die Wunderwelt der Technik and the song was "23... C=64."

Jukebox

N.B.: Below is inaccurate with the new space. Everything is still a bit TBD ATM

Summary

Pony holds all the music, Zebra accesses the music and plays it on the speakers. The easiest way to control what music Zebra plays is to connect to its web interface at http://pony.noise/juke.

Playing Music

Zebra has a mount to Pony's music directory (pony.noise:/d2/music). MPD scans this directory and builds up a library based off of its contents. Zebra can then play back anything form that library through the speakers at 83c. In order to tell MPD on Zebra what to play, you'll need to interface to it with a client, which is available for many operating systems. Luckily for you a web interface has already been setup on Pony, but if you want more control please look into the clients.

The desktop web interface if relaXX and the mobile is NeoMPC.

If you'd like to play files directly from Zebra and bypass MPD altogether, shell access (user name and password) is posted above the machine (above the window next to the machine). For admin access please poke User:Rubin110.

Getting Music into the Jukebox

Music content lives on Pony, not Zebra. You'll need an account on Pony, using your favorite method of putting files on a different machine please place your music in pony.noise:/d2/music. Once there, refresh the MPD library through your favorite client or the web interface.

AirTunes

AirTunes is a way to stream audio over the network to speakers. This is done with an Apple Airport Express. All internet routing/firewall functionality of the Airport Express have been turned off. The Airport is connected to the network via wifi to the noisebridge SSID.

The Airport is connected to the Jukebox machine via linein. There is no need to change inputs on the receiver/amp! Please keep in mind that audio from both the Jukebox and AirTunes can play at the same time.

To use AirTunes simply select "Nosebridge" from the speakers list at the bottom right of iTunes. If you use something other then iTunes, let's say WinAMP, there are a number of other applications out there to stream music to an AirTunes server. For Windows try JustePort and for Linux there's raop-play.

See AirTunes from Linux if you want to see how to use I have set up AirTunes access from a Linux machine.

Using ESD

The easiest way to play music over the jukebox thing from a GNU system:

$ ESPEAKER=zebra.noise mplayer -ao esd $FILE

.door

At acm.jhu.edu, the computer controlling the mag-stripe card reader that would unlock the door would also play a file in /home/username/.door on the speakers in the room. Ta-da - entrance music!

This should probably be added to the feature requests to be added to our AccessSystem

Old Jukebox Server

This machine is dead, it's been replaced with Zebra. Everything in the home directory has been backed up to Pony.