In a post in the "Add-ons" area, somebody asked (perhaps rhetorically) "How many potential Linux emplode/empeg users could there be?"

Well, I had started to rip/encode mp3s from my CD collection in advance of the unit's arrival using RealJukeBox Plus, which seemed to work well, but seemed to be lacking from a strategic standpoint. What I desired was a networked mp3 store that would feed a few players/modes, a la:

MP3 STORE ----------------> Desktop
|
----------->Empeg (for home/boat)
|
---> Laptop (for travel/airplane)
|
---> Nomad (short trips)

I realized that with RJBP I was creating a bunch of mp3 files with spaces in the names (whoever dreamed that up in Redmond should be taken out back and ...), possibly limiting future flexibility and RJBP didn't to much to organize a file hierarchy that would cut-n-paste to Emplode.

Perhaps I missed some possible workarounds, but the tack I took was to buy a cheap 30GB IDE drive, and add it to an existing Linux box that I updated with a bunch of stuff (Helix and other general things). I then installed cdparanoia, lame, along with grip -- a rip/encode front end. Lastly, I installed MySQL and Digital DJ, a grip playlist add-on. This machine is set up as a Samba server for my Windows desktop and (work) laptop.

I haven't worked with DDJ much yet, but it does seem to work. Grip is set to generate .M3U files and creates a usable artist/album/song directory hierarchy that makes for a simple transfer to Empeg; it also creates (through an add-in, I think) ID3 tags. Functionally, I'm guessing I'll find room for improvements, but overall this is pretty good!

Negatives? Compared to RJBP for default 128Kbps CBR, encoding times in LAME are slow. I am using 112k minimum VBR, though, and am playing with quality settings to see if I can reduce times and file sizes (3.5MB versus 4.5MB matters a lot on that little Nomad). Speed-wise, this is a place where I might be tempted to throw a new 700Mhz P3 at the problem in place of the present 350Mhz K6. No idea how much that would help, though.

Other TO-DOs: get another 30GB drive and an Arco Duplidisk and mirror that music!

Anyhow, it's time to check out the command-line emplode and stay tuned for OpenEmplode; mp3 synchs will certainly go faster if they don't have to transit a Windows/Samba client on their way to the Empeg.

Jim

What I desired was a networked mp3 store that would feed a few players/modes...

Hey, now that's a good idea. Have a central repository for your all your music files. Interesting. You're missing one other thing the network store could do, though:

It could serve up files to a component in your home stereo system. This could be a dedicated player with no storage of its own. It could stream the files from your server via a network connection: Either through ethernet, or through an ethernet-like home networking card that uses standard telephone lines.

Such a player, once its engineering and embedded software was completed, would be dirt-cheap to manufacture and cost only a couple hundred dollars.

What a great idea. Wow, maybe somebody should design one of these?

___________
Tony Fabris

For me the choice is to use the Empeg as the central store of music. Then run icecast to deliver music to other home devices over Ethernet ( maybe wireless in the future )

- --
Rod, UK Mk2 18gig Red S/No.341

MP3 encoding is largely a CPU bound process. Faster CPUs or parallel CPUs will directly speed up your encoding times. However, your CD-ROM has to produce data fast enough to feed that faster encoder. With grip, watch the two thermometer guages for ripping and encoding. If ripping is fast and encoding is slow, then faster CPUs will help you. If the encoder is winning, then you need a faster CD-ROM. Also, keep in mind that lame CBR is about twice as fast as lame VBR.

If your goal is to have the fastest possible MP3 encoding system, get the fastest dual-processor machine you can afford and get a Plextor CD-ROM drive. You can tell grip how many CPUs you've got and it runs that many copies of lame in parallel. Cool stuff.

Grip is really fantastic. The only gripe I have with it is that it doesn't know anything about ID3v2 tags (only ID3v1.1 which has 30-character fixed-length fields which chop off long song titles). However, grip stores the full track information in the MySQL database. You could theoretically hack together a Perl script to read the database and add ID3v2 tags to all your files. The only issue is if you move the files around, they can get out-of-sync with the database.

DDJ is a nice toy, particularly the BPM-o-matic hack, but it needs a whole lot of work before I'd use it on a regular basis. To play music on my Linux box, I've been using FreeAmp, which will scan all your MP3s and build its own database. Still, if you've got an EMPEG, the EMPEG's playlist management stuff is dramatically better than FreeAmp or DDJ. These days, I just have my EMPEG hooked to the home stereo in the next room while working in my office. The only minus with this setup is that I occasionally want to run to the other room to read the track information. I can live with it. :)

Yup, right now I'm CPU bound. I have a Toshiba 40x CDROM, ripping takes ~.5-.75x song length while encoding is about 2x song length. I haven't been able to detect a qualitative difference in the VBR ripping so far, but am sticking with if for the moment over 128 CBR (for now, I set min 96K max 160K to try to keep file sizes down somewhat, but may try some more deliberate listening tests to guide this a bit more).

Agree DDJ is limited. I haven't even figured out how to delete anything through the interface, and it could be easy for stuff to get out of sync (especially if I space out and run grip while su'd -- files not going where I intended!). Still, I thought I'd install it to get the MySQL interface and db spec initialized. Might find some other uses for that database later on as you suggest.

Wish list? Configurable default file directory for grip. A tool to synch DDJ (or other player) playlists with Empeg. A grip option that would "encode only" in batch mode against a specified subdirectory (while adding m3us, tags); that way I could rip while awake, encode while asleep, and avoid spending money I don't have on that new motherboard and CPUs!)

Tony,

Are you hinting at something?

Calvin