Cheap Whole-House Audio


Here's one more low cost way to have whole house audio.
Building construction in my house prevented wiring of speakers in my masterbedroom.

I've been been playing around with MPD using Misterhouse along with an fm tuner for areas in my home where I can't wire speakers and don't have a squeezebox. I've been using it for a few years but I really hate having to login to the web gui and queuing up my music while I'm getting ready for work in the morning. It's possible but a little tedious.


MPD and Misterhouse + Shoutcast 

My mpd configuration.

# $Date: 2008-04-24 06:07:17 -0400 (Thu, 24 Apr 2008) $
# $Revision: 1428 $

# An example configuration file for MPD
# See the mpd.conf man page for a more detailed description of each parameter.

######################## REQUIRED PATHS ########################
# You can put symlinks in here, if you like. Make sure that
# the user that mpd runs as (see the 'user' config parameter)
# can read the files in this directory.
music_directory  "/mnt/music"
playlist_directory "/mnt/music/playlists"
db_file   "/usr/local/mh/data/mpd/tag_cache"
log_file  "/usr/local/mh/data/mpd/mpd.log"
error_file  "/usr/local/mh/data/mpd/errors.log"
pid_file  "/usr/local/mh/data/mpd/pid"
################################################################


######################## OPTIONAL PATHS ########################
#
# If specified, MPD will save its current state (playlist,
# current song, playing/paused, etc.) at exit.  This will be
# used to restore the session the next time it is run.
#
state_file  "/usr/local/mh/data/mpd/state"
#
################################################################


######################## DAEMON OPTIONS ########################
#
#
user                            "root"
bind_to_address                 "localhost"
################################################################

########################## AUDIO OUTPUT ########################
#
# MPD supports many audio output types, as well as playing
# through multiple audio outputs at the same time.  You can
# specify one or more here.  If you don't specify any, MPD will
# automatically scan for a usable audio output.
#
audio_output {
       type     "pulse"
       name   "MPD/Pulse"
       server "localhost"
}

audio_output_format             "44100:16:2"
audio_output {
       type                    "shout"
       name                    "Misterhouse Music Stream"
       host                    "localhost"
       port                    "8081"
       mount                   "/mh.ogg"
       password                "mypasshere"
       quality                 "5.0"
       format                  "44100:16:1"
       description             "Sound Stream from the Misterhouse HA Software" # optional
       genre                   "all"                  # optional
       public                  "yes"                    # optional
}
################################################################

############################# MIXER ############################
#
# MPD needs to know what mixer settings to change when you
# adjust the volume.  If you don't specify one here, MPD will
# pick one based on which ones it was compiled with support for.
#
# An example for controlling an ALSA mixer:
#
mixer_type                      "software"
#
################################################################

###################### CHARACTER ENCODINGS #####################
#
# If file or directory names do not display correctly, then you
# may need to change this.  In most cases it should be either
# "ISO-8859-1" or "UTF-8".  You must recreate your database
# after changing this (use mpd --create-db).
#
filesystem_charset              "UTF-8"
#
# The encoding that ID3v1 tags should be converted from.
#
id3v1_encoding                  "UTF-8"
#
################################################################


######################### OTHER OPTIONS ########################
#
# The metadata types MPD will recognize.
#
#metadata_to_use                  "artist,album,title,track,name,genre,date,composer,performer,disc"
#
# Enable this if you wish to use your MPD created playlists in
# other music players.
#
save_absolute_paths_in_playlists "yes"
#
################################################################

Squeezeslave
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezePlay
Squeezeslave is the the headless software Squeezecenter client like Squeezeplay(formerly known as Softsqueeze)

With the squeezeslave running on my squeezecenter server, I can now carry my Duet Remote and change the music. If there was a smaller, cheaper Squeezebox boom I would have one in each room.