Philip Fibiger

I had been looking for a couple of years for a home music solution that would let me play my mp3 collection through my stereo without having computer(s) turned on. My ideal solution involved a NAS (network attached storage device) attached to my network, so that any of the computers in my network could manage the collection through a local copy of iTunes pointed to the server.

My initial research led me to the Turtle Beach Audiotron. It is/was the only the only digital audio receiver that could read files directly off a NAS via Samba. This was key, but the big hangup was that it can’t handle iTunes playlists (oh, and it’s discontinued, but there are still some units floating around ebay). It didn’t do wireless either, but that can be fixed with a ethernet->802.11b bridge.

After some more looking, and some posts to the Roku Forums, the solution seemed to be a Roku Soundbridge M1000 (or any uPnP media server at that point, but the choice of the Roku becomes important later), a Linksys NSLU2 NAS device, a USB2 hard drive, and a piece of software called the Twonkyvision UPnP Media Server.

The NSLU2 runs linux, and can be loaded with modified firmware to free up some memory space to allow you to load other software on it. The package is called UNSLUNG, and it’s relatively easy to set up.

Twonkyvision works ok w/ the NSLU2, but the features of the media server and the Roku aren’t as robust as the Roku and iTunes. It turns out Ron Pedde has written a full-featured DAAP (the iTunes audio rendezvous protocol) clone called mt-daapd that runs on the NSLU2. It doesn’t have iTunes playlist support yet, but Ron is actively working on it and mt-daapd will parse iTunes playlists in the next couple weeks.

So right now my PC runs iTunes to administer the collection and to create playlists. All iTunes data (mp3s as well as the xml playlist file) is stored via the network on the USB2 hard disk connected to the NSLU2. My computer can be shut off, and the Roku sees mt-daapd as an iTunes install ready to serve music.

I wrote up some instructions on how to get these particular pieces to work together. Here is the NSLU2 & mt-daapd HOWTO.