On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 10:52, Todd Fields wrote: > --- mcai8rw2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > Is it possible to have ONE slimbox in one room, a second SLIM > > box in > > another room, a third slimbox in a third room etc...and to > > have all of > > those devices accessing the same PC in one room. > > Yes, in fact this is the exact architecture the devices were > desinged for. > > > If this IS possible, can each separate box access different > > music at > > the same time, or will each box only cope with one feed. > > You can have each device operate independently so that they are > all playing different music at the same or you can syncronize > them if you wish to control all of them with one box and have > them play the same thing. It's your choice. The one thing I'm > not sure of (I don't syncronize mine) is if you can only > syncronize some of them. For example, I'm not sure that if you > had say five Squeezeboxes and you wanted to syncronize three of > them but have the other two play independently that you could > accomplish that. I'm sure someone else on this list can easily > answer that though.
Mix and match! I only have 3 slimp3s, so I've only been able to try [3 independent, 2 synchronized + 1 other, 3 synchronized] and not two different groups of synchronized players, but I haven't had any trouble with turning synchronization on and off in any of those configurations. > > If all of this is possible anyone know what the limit for > > boxes is? So > > if I had one hundred rooms [and lived in a bavarian castle!] > > could the > > ONE pc cope? > > My understanding is that you are only limited by your hardware. > If your server and bandwidth can handle the workload then you > could have 100 or more devices. I'm not sure of the hardware > spec's it would take to do this. The Slim Devices FAQ only > states that "even a low-end PC can service more than a dozen > Squeezeboxes" so maybe a nice high-end PC could easily service > over 100. This is partially dependent on the number of tracks in your library, the bitrate of the tracks that you're playing (2 low bitrate mp3s are going to require less than 1 FLAC, for instance), the available disk bandwidth and the available network bandwidth. While each track generally doesn't require that much bandwidth, there are some contention issues that may come into play when you get close to your capacity. While streaming a single track doesn't come anywhere close to saturating any reasonable disk drive, playing two tracks requires that the disk heads bounce back and forth between the two files, introducing seek time into the equation, which in turn absolutely ruins the average available disk bandwidth. Caching helps some, but with 100 different tracks playing, you need a whole lot of ram available. You'd also need a fairly robust network to handle multiple tracks. When I got my first 2 slimp3s, I still had a 10 megabit unswitched hub, and there was about a half second delay between the two. Replacing that with a 100 megabit full duplex switch helped tremendously, so that it acts like a much more expensive whole-house system now. I think there is somebody on the list running a resort with a dozen or two slimp3s, but I don't know if he has them all on the same server; last I knew, he still had some concerns about guests in one area interfering with guests in others, and I don't know if he fixed that by hacking the software or by running one server per guest house. -- Stephen Ryan Digital Rights Management is bad for all of us: http://www.bricklin.com/robfuture.htm _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
