Does anyone know what the best music sharing software is... playback of all the file types would be nice but i guess would be serviced by input plugins..

I have a fairly large collection of music on my main machine.. my sister uses her laptop via wifi... of course she can just navigate directories and play (even installed foobar for her which she just about manages to use) but having something with an integrated solution would be great... I own SageTV and its clients which now supports audio (doubt it does other formats yet!??) but i dont want to use that in case she accidently tries to stream tv over wifi (not enough bandwidth) or just messes with my scheduling...

Anyone know!?? i mean manufacturers sell things to do this kind of thing but have we got any good software that just handles it!?!? Cheers

Direct Connect is the best for LANs . . . we could download at 10MBytes/s at Acadia.

http://www.neo-modus.com/

DC++ is better, it's a modified open-source Direct Connect clone. Get that here:
http://dcplusplus.sf.net

Here's how it works:

You download a list of "Hubs" from a web-hosted hub-lists specified in your user settings. Copy and paste this:

This brings up a list of "public hubs" which you can filter by name and description. They only allow users to join that are sharing their share-quota demands.
This way, nobody is "leeching" and everyone is participating in the (often illegal) file sharing.

ahh sorry.. you misunderstand me... at least i think you do...

I dont want a peer2peer file downloading thing... i have network neighbourhood access between machines... what i want is a jukebox setup... with my machine with all its mp3s, mpcs, apes as the server... the laptop as the client... connecting.. and with a nice interface, picking music it wants to play.. and it plays them...

Sorry i wasn't clearer thanks for the advice.. I've tried some of them out in the past... if they do do what i've described above.. tell me and i'll check them out.. i thought they were soly for file transfer

Jim

Just share the music directory and play the files with a player (foobar2k, winamp, ecc.) on the client

If you have the client (your sister's laptop) right-click on the shared folder, one of the options should say something like "Map as a Network Drive." Doing so will that folder appear as though it were a hard drive connected to her computer.

Then use your favorite jukebox-like program to do the rest of the stuff you want.

Thanks... I am starting to think this is probably my only option.. i just wanted to know if there were any products that worked... i used media jukebox a while ago.. its ok... does that have a network client/server mode... i know it had a plugin for MPC... but yeah.. probably will have to do the share folders option

..... So basically you're looking for a player with a playlist, a good randomizer, and a useful interface?

Winamp 2.91 + plugins + your favorite skin should be appropriate, right?

The reason I ask is that if you use the network drive method I just suggested, you only have to go digging through directories once. You put EVERYTHING onto the play list, hit random and just push play. Saving the playlist wouldn't hurt either.

I know that there's overhead associated with Windows Sharing, but it's nominal when you're just streaming (not so if you're trying to transfer large files ASAP though)

yeah ok... what about foobar's database... will that work... its just how long it takes usually to go via network neighbourhood.. and then clicking the drive... it sits and thinks about it for 10-30 seconds and finally lets you in.. this happens only the first time... but still.. what if a program (foobar/winamp) is trying to stream a file... does it get through all this much quicker!? will it just error.. or will it gracefully wait...

Foobar 0.7 would be preferrable for its streaming abilities wouldnt it?! i know that for proper web streaming its improved.. i've seen the buffering option for files over slow networks... this needed?

It should still work. You may experience a slow down when you first start up and again when you start playing after several hours of idle. It has been my experience that programs wait a bit before throwing an error. They expect a certain level of latency. I really don't think you'll have a problem with errors. Try it and let me know if you have. I'll be a bit suprised if it doesn't, since I'm doing almost exactly the same thing in my apartment (I play most of my music on my home theater PC, but the music is kept on my main PC).

You have to remember that when you're streaming, you're keeping a solid connection with a constant flow of data. Windows sharing will keep that connection alive for something like 5-10 minutes after the last of the data has been transferred. Assuming you're playing songs back to back, the only real delay you might experience will be the hard drive seek time on your own computer.

I have no idea whether Foobar 0.7 is better or not. I haven't gotten around to testing it since Foobar 0.667 suits my needs just fine.

If you've got apache running, you can use netjuke, which provides a pretty rich
web interface to a music collection:

netjuke homepage

I suggest making your own Direct Connect Hub (thats what I was trying to get at with my origonal post). Over a LAN it is just as fast as networking, except with a nicer GUI and better features (file searching + more). With DC you can limit connections to certain IPs so only people on your LAN can connect. And I know DC++ is better, in fact it is what I use!! But you need the origonal NeoModus DC to create your own hub.

I play music off my fileserver with foobar2000. It works fine.

lots of options here for NAS.

http://linux-sound.org/netaudio.html

thanks guys i had some success using foobar over straight network with its database... since reinstalled windows so will have to reshare everything again...

I will look into the DC+ stuff if i get trouble.. thanks