[lug] Ethernet sound card

[luke p]

Hey,
Well these might not exactly be what you want, but both are realitivly the 
same. Basically they're just a piece of ram with power, ethernet 
connectivity and audio out (digital and analog). I know the Audiotron can be 
controlled from a computer, and if all your music is on a Linux system, 
you'll have to hack/tweek them some, so there's the added 'fun' bonus. 
Here's the links:

http://www.slimdevices.com/
http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotron/producthome.asp

I own a audiotron and enjoy it a ton! Though it is not quite as hackable as 
the Slimp3, it works just as it should.

-Luke



>From: "Peter Hutnick" <peter-lists at hutnick.com>
>Reply-To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
>To: <lug at lug.boulder.co.us>
>Subject: [lug] Ethernet sound card
>Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 18:20:40 -0600 (MDT)
>
>I've been knocking a (possibly stupid) idea around in my head.  Like every
>other Joe in town I want to be able to get music from my PC to my stereo.
>I'm not real satisfied with any of the obvious solutions.  I think that
>there is a better way.
>
>Obvious ways and their problems:
>
>1. Plug sound card output into stereo.
>  - Less than ideal quality
>  - Very limited distance between the PC and the stereo
>
>2. USB "sound card"
>  - Not much better run length
>  - Not cheap >a buck and a quarter
>
>3. Component MP3 player
>  - expensive
>  - limited to codecs/data rates/processing power of the box (or serious
>hacking)
>  - limited storage (yes, many are hackable)
>    OR
>  - tied to "server software" on a PC
>
>
>My idea is to build something similar to a USB sound card, but use
>Ethernet as the interface.
>
>Something like:
>
>  You play a song on the PC with your favorite player. (This could be as
>simple as cating a file to the appropriate device file.)
>  The sound driver breaks the audio down into chunks of a fixed size, wraps
>an Ethernet frame around it (with the appropriate MAC) and flings them
>onto the wire (at a fixed rate).
>  The "sound card" grabs all packets with its MAC off the wire (I think
>that this description is technically faulty, but it gets the point
>across), strips the Ethernet frame and dumps the data into a FIFO.
>  The FIFO streams into a DAC, which terminates into a pair of RCAs.
>  If there is a stereo on the other end of the RCAs you get sound!
>
>I am well aware that I have glossed over some non-trivial stuff here . . .
>that's why I'm writing to the list!  Is anybody and EE type that can tell
>me what the big problems with this are?  Is getting the data out of the
>Ethernet controller and into a buffer feasible without using a processor?
>If so I think that this could be build cheap around a DAC out of a broken
>CD player!
>
>-Peter
>
>
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