Arch Linux

thelastknowngod

Member

Registered: 2008-01-11

Posts: 110

Home Stereo with MPD

hey guys. i am planing on setting up a home stereo system.

what im planning on doing is having 2 or 3 zones for the speakers, living room, bedroom, and another set of pc speakers on the desktop itself. id like to be able to turn on or off one of those zones at will.

i would assume this would be handled by pulse or something similar (preferably more stable). im not really sure about the other options for doing this.

currently, i am using irreco and sonata on my n810 to control MPD. it would be great if there is a way i could toggle a zone on or off via the n810.

i would also like to do at least one of the zones with spdif. i know nothing about how well it is supported on linux except that i shouldnt get an x-fi card. right now the card im using is a pci audigy ls. is there a way to use two sound cards at the same time? any recomendations for sound cards?

thanks a lot.

Zariel

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 446

Re: Home Stereo with MPD

You could look at getting a m-audio card which has very good quality and decent linux support (as far as im aware), im not sure about the toggling unless you setup some sort of webcam which detects motion in each room to turn speakers on/off. How are the speakers driven? Sound card -> amp -> long cables?

thelastknowngod

Member

Registered: 2008-01-11

Posts: 110

Re: Home Stereo with MPD

the machine is in the basement. i was thinking of running cable to seperate recievers in each of the rooms.

Zariel

Member

Registered: 2008-10-07

Posts: 446

Re: Home Stereo with MPD

You could try http://www.maudio.co.uk/products/en_gb/ … le192.html, which does SPDIF out (and in) and should work with alsa. I dont know about auto turning speakers on/off as you would need to interface with the reciever. Though I think toofishes has a reciever with serial connection which he programmed to use so you might be able to use that.

thelastknowngod

Member

Registered: 2008-01-11

Posts: 110

Re: Home Stereo with MPD

im not really worried about the reciever switching inputs. it would be nice if i had a reciever that i could do that with but first thing i have to think about is setting up alsa/pulse/dmix and a sound card the right way. ill worry about the reciever(s) when i know if it is possible to get s/pdif out to it.