[Telix]

For quite some time now I have been frustrated with listening to music at work. I'm very much attached to rating my songs via iTunes, because I have so much music that ratings are pretty much the only way I am able to continually manage the music on my iPod, and I just like doing it. Thus the best solution I have had for listening to music away from home has been using my various iPods and rating songs on the go, and when they sync the ratings transfer to the library.

This is annoying for a few reasons - 1) I am stuck listening to what is on my iPod instead of my entire music library, 2) it means I'm stuck with the iPod's DAC and can't upgrade to something superior.

I am looking for a solution that would allow me to do the following:
- listen to my music at home via my computer at work
- allow me to rate the songs in my itunes library
- not do any lossy transcoding or compressing to stream the music

I've used various solutions for doing this, but none allow rating songs (Orb, Jinzora, SimplifyMedia, etc) The most recent thing I have seen that even seems to have some sort of iTunes rating/play count integration is the SqueezeCenter, but I haven't been able to make this work correctly on the remote end. Is the audio that is transmitted over Remote Desktop compressed? I have thought about simply trying that as well.

 

[obobskivich]

the issue you've got is bandwidth, streaming data in like that will impact your home internet connection and your work line quite a bit (requires a lot of upload/download speed)

if thats a non-issue (i.e: your work has a good data line and you have cable internet at home), theres a lot of solutions, but you're going to be ultimately limited by bandwidth and the capabilities of your terminal

the "smarter route" imho, would be an LOD and amplifier, or get a small portable PC that you can connect a USB or FireWire device to

 

[Telix]

I work at a university and have seen 8mb/sec downstream, and have 350k/sec max at home, so streaming MP3 bandwidth isn't an issue. What are the many solutions you know of? What do you mean by LOD? Line-out-dock? I have one of those, as my sig says. I'd like to move to a better DAC, although I believe I'd be tied to a USB signal as I don't think the iMac has a digital out. I could get an external audio processor like an e-mu, I suppose.

 

[obobskivich]

I thought iMac had S/PDIF output, an optical connector? then again, theres about 4 generations of them, and who knows which one you have, compared to which one I'm used to

theres a lot of remote desktop/remote access solutions, most of them let you pass data back and forth, along with the audio solutions you've listed already

if you could establish a VPN of sorts between your work system and your home system (we assume both have itunes, and better yet, both are mac) you could probably setup one of those distributed itunes libraries (I just know its a feature Apple was yaking about with AppleTV and whatnot for shared itunes libraries, however I don't use itunes, so I can't give you specifics on implementation), I believe there should be some sort of in-built remote desktop software in OS X, I recall seeing it some time ago, you should be able to connect via that to your home 'mac (if you have a mac at home), and possibly just rig the itunes solution up to run over that

...this is why I love having a netbook (no offense)

 

[Telix]

I connect to my home machine via Remote Desktop all the time, I just wasn't sure if the audio would somehow be modified (compressed) on it's way to my work machine.

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telix /img/forum/go_quote.gif I connect to my home machine via Remote Desktop all the time, I just wasn't sure if the audio would somehow be modified (compressed) on it's way to my work machine.

it may very well be, try it, if you can't hear a difference, who cares whats actually happening?