Suggestions for providing building-wide audio.

Our gymnasium supplies music throughout the building. They have been using a 5 disc CD changer until it recently died.

Having seen my empeg in action, the director asked me to hunt up something similar to do music for the building.

Seeing as it's pretty difficult to get ones hands on a Rio Central these days, I thought I'd query here to see if anyone had any suggestions.

some criteria:
price: Under $1000... preferably under $500
usability: Volunteers (some of them computer illiterate senior citizens) work at the front desk and would be controlling the audio.
feature: Must be able to easily play a chime track on demand...used to dismiss classes on some occasions.

There is at least one computer that remains on constantly, so streaming solutions from that computer's Hard Drive are acceptable, but the control box must be in a separate location from the computer. Wired and wireless networking available.

I'm not entirely opposed to a mini-pc setup if the user interface is simple enough and the cost is low enough.

Right now, a Karma in a dock seems to be a cheap easy solution. The user interface would not be ideal however. Any recommendations or suggestions would be very helpful.

An empeg with a customized html menu structure?

Sounds interesting... care to elaborate?

Are we talking about an empeg tied to a PC using something like CharcoalGray's web interface? (Keep in mind that I'd have to purchase the PC and monitor too).

Edit: Or serve up the HTML from the existing PC over the network to a terminal of some sort. Come to think of it...I have an I-Opener sitting around that could be used.

I was thinking more that you could have an empeg, fully stocked with music, and modify / generate a relatively easy to use html front end that would allow you to stream over the internet or broadcast out of its RCA connections into an existing(?) public address system. I am thinking of CharcoalGray's interface, but modified and streamlined to make it more secure from unauthorized use with customized menus, etc.

Ok...we're thinking on the same page then....

Currently, there is no PC at the front desk though, so I'd have to provide one. The old I-Opener might just do the trick... perhaps with a touchscreen. The problem is that those things have a crappy DSTN screen with abysmal refresh rates. Might be usable enough though.

Any other ideas guys? Streaming?

We had a CD player for our music-on-hold which kept dying and having to be replaced. So one day I got fed up, and replaced it with an old PC running win98 with Winamp in its startup group, pointing to a playlist file. (So if the power went out, it would start playing music again when the power came back on.) Music on hold has been continuous without fail ever since that day. Comes right back up after a power outage.

The only problem became the selection of songs. The CD player had nothing but classical, and when I tried to put some more modern stuff in there, our boss complained and made me change it back to the same stuff that the CD player had been playing. Sigh.

That's exactly what we do for our MOH. Except I'd prefer to have a music player that runs as a service since the box is a Windows 2003 Server.

Maybe something like a Slimp3 Streambox? Keep the music on the computer, let the Slimp3 provide a (hopefully) idiot-proof interface?

Quote:
Except I'd prefer to have a music player that runs as a service

I didn't mention that later the box was upgraded to Windows NT, and now I use FireDaemon to make WinAmp run as a service.

If you don't want to use FireDaemon, I think there is a SRVANY utility on the NT resource kit allowing you to run any program as a service, although it's not nearly as easy to set up as FireDaemon.

Oh, and I'm sure there's MP3 players out there which will run as a service all by themselves, I just don't have any links to them.