playin' mp3s on a stereo questions

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hey y'all. so here's what's happening:

i have a laptop. i have about 30,000 mp3s on an external HD. it's to the point where my "virtual" record collection is nearly as large as my real one. so, i'd like to play it through my receiver. my computer & external HD are in a different room as the stereo.

some possibilities:

(1) have a RCA/headphone cable stretching through two whole rooms, from the laptop to the receiver. kind of a pain, and i don't know that i could get it through the door and still be able to close the door!

(2) just bring my laptop over to the receiver and plug it in. hm, problem is, all of my music is on an external HD which isn't portable. (itunes still doesn't have a convenient way of managing music between two drives, otherwise i'd be fine.)

(3) bluetooth? or something wireless? how would i do this? what would i need: on my receiver, and on my laptop?

(4) burn audio cds of stuff i want to listen to. a pain in the butt, and what do i do with the cdrs? i use mp3s to avoid the fuss of cds.

(5) use my ipod. well, that means i have to decide what small % of my mp3 collection i want to be available to play on the stereo at any given time, or have to spend a lot of time moving stuff on and off of my ipod.

(6) is there something like a standlone mp3 player with 100+ GB that i can plug into my receiver as though it were just another player?

i'm curious how other people deal with this. i would just move my laptop and peripherals closer to my stereo system, but i've got a small flat and i couldn't fit a desk in my living room....

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 October 2006 05:42 (nineteen years ago)

option 1 seems the most sensible.

― electric sound of jim [and why not] (electricsound), Monday, 9 October 2006 05:44 (nineteen years ago)

oh i guess there's (7) just play music on my laptop, but that's crap.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 October 2006 05:53 (nineteen years ago)

#1 shouldn't be that much of a pain. the jack to rca lead i use is pretty flat and could easily fit under a door.

― electric sound of jim [and why not] (electricsound), Monday, 9 October 2006 05:55 (nineteen years ago)

Drill a hole in your wall?

― deekew (deekew), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:05 (nineteen years ago)

drill the upper inside corner of the door and run it along the edge of the ceiling

― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:11 (nineteen years ago)

AirTunes = iTunes + Airport. Should fix you up.

― Ben (crispyben), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:20 (nineteen years ago)

As ben said, AirTunes.
Much more expensive than a single RCA cable, but definitely the best way.

― retaaablo (retaaablo), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:30 (nineteen years ago)

I think

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:35 (nineteen years ago)

HTML screw-up there.

Look, here's the URL:
http://www.slimdevices.com/welcome1.html?gclid=CJKEz7O964cCFRVQQgodTAWeew

Look very good, not sure if it's what you're after.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Monday, 9 October 2006 06:35 (nineteen years ago)

This is what the Roku Soundbridge was made for. Audionerd quality, and it talks to iTunes.

― Shoes say, yeah, no hands clap your good bra. (goodbra), Monday, 9 October 2006 07:09 (nineteen years ago)

Using the RCA/headphone cable - instead of drilling holes through the wall, if you've got a carpet, you should be able to run it under the carpet and the metal carpet rod that sits in the door frame.

Something of a pain, but the easiest and cheapest way of listening, surely?

― Andrew Munro (andyboyo), Monday, 9 October 2006 07:23 (nineteen years ago)

What Jonesey said.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Monday, 9 October 2006 07:54 (nineteen years ago)

Cables?!! As Phil says "Something in the air tonight".

Go for the wireless option, aint you got enough crap on the floor already?

― tolstoy (tolstoy), Monday, 9 October 2006 10:34 (nineteen years ago)

Airport Express, has optical out, and streams music in Apple Lossless format (even if you're playing just mp3s). Plug it in your stereo room, run an optical cable to your receiver and you're good to go.

― 5th dad (daggerlee), Monday, 9 October 2006 12:53 (nineteen years ago)

my receiver doesn't have digital inputs!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 October 2006 12:57 (nineteen years ago)

Seems like it would be key to be able to change music from the listening room as opposed to walking into the other room to sit in front of the computer. So I'd imagine the best option to be one with a remote control that lets you browse your music files. I'm somewhat amazed that this still isn't cheap and easy, considering how quickly everything happens now with digital audio. Guess demand must not be very high.

― Mark (MarkR), Monday, 9 October 2006 12:59 (nineteen years ago)

I had exactly the same problem and eventually opted for option no. 1. The cable is hidden under a rug but is pretty visible, then again my speaker cables are huge and cannot be hidden under anything, so at this point...

― Baaderonixx in the year of the locusts (baaderonixx), Monday, 9 October 2006 13:11 (nineteen years ago)

Get a Squeezebox! Fucking great!

Connect it to your stereo, it connects to your computer either wireless or via ethernet.

If you're computer is off, it can still connect to the internet to stream radio stations, Pandora or whatever RSS feeds you want.

With the computer on, it has a nice bright screen and you sit there and scroll through or search all your playlists and musics...not just iTunes but whatever's in your music folder. For instance, I have exactly ONE WMA file, iTunes can't play it, but I can listen to it on my stereo through the Squeezebox.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 9 October 2006 13:40 (nineteen years ago)

has anyone any experience with usb-powered fm modulators like this?

getting a bit sick and tired of having a cable across the room to connect my laptop to my stereo myself (especially since i have to unplug it each time to connect my cd-player to my stereo).

going wireless/fm seems like a pretty nifty option.

― (jg) ((jg)), Monday, 9 October 2006 14:20 (nineteen years ago)

I think so too although it doesn't really work in London, since there's not any free bandwidth on the radio dial (that isn't already taken up by pirates)

― Euai Kapaui (tracerhand), Monday, 9 October 2006 14:28 (nineteen years ago)

so i guess in the meantime the trick is getting a really, really long cable w/a headphone jack at one end and rca outputs at the other.... or perhaps a rca-to-headphone conversion thing and then a really long rca cable?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 October 2006 21:23 (nineteen years ago)

Your best bet is a really long 1/8" (headphone) cable and the usual 1/8" to RCA splitter.

― Mark (MarkR), Monday, 9 October 2006 21:46 (nineteen years ago)

for the 8th time....

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html

better then the Roku btw.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 9 October 2006 21:56 (nineteen years ago)

Does look nice -- but why not put the display on the remote? Can you read this thing from across the room?

― Mark (MarkR), Monday, 9 October 2006 22:31 (nineteen years ago)

i'm confused re. that squeezebox thing. how does your computer broadcast music to it? would you need some kind of device on your computer? (i have a mac btw.)

and yes, interface problems. how to browse through 2,000 playlists for example??

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 October 2006 22:38 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

I plan to take home of my company's old PCs, hook it up via rca to the living room stereo, store a bunch of music on there and control it wirelessly through remote desktop from my main computer (in my bedroom). Only costs are for the wireless card, rca cable, and maybe a bigger hard drive down the line. The computer will be $15 tops. Should work great for me, only thing missing would be a remote control but it's no big deal.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 15 January 2007 00:03 (nineteen years ago)

I'm using this free software, w/ an airport:
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

― Bobby Peru (Bobby Peru), Monday, 15 January 2007 02:37 (nineteen years ago)

Airfoil costs $25...?

― Hoosteen (Hoosteen), Monday, 15 January 2007 03:29 (nineteen years ago)

If you have an Xbox 360, you can network it to a computer running XP using Windows Media Connect. That software is now built into WMP 11, but there's an older stand-alone version also that I preferred before upgrading to MCE.

If you're running XP Media Center Edition, the Media Center interface will network to your 360. Getting the album art perfect is a BITCH, but it does look great once it's finished.

If you're setting this up as a wireless network, the wireless adapter for the 360 costs an extra $100. You'll need a high end router to stream video.

Vista will have Media Center functionality built into the Home Premium version, I believe. Microsoft also has a new extender coming out for Vista in the near future. I think it's called "Piki". Should be considerably cheaper than a 360.

For the original poster setting this up with a Mac, you might check out Apple's new iTV extender. It goes on sale in February for just under $300. It supports video streaming, too.

All I'm waiting for now is a 5,000 gig hard drive so I can rip and stream my DVD collection all over the house.

― turkey (turkey), Monday, 15 January 2007 08:39 (nineteen years ago)

You might want to jump on this:

http://www.woot.com/

― turkey (turkey), Monday, 15 January 2007 11:17 (nineteen years ago)

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