Wireless music

March 22, 2009 8:42 AM

I have a computer hooked up to my entertainment system, and I'd like to stream music to it from my laptop. Help!

I thought about buying an Airport Express, but if I can do this with tools I already have, I'd rather save the $100. Basically, I have a Windows box hooked into my entertainment system, and I'd like to make it so whenever I play a song on my laptop, the file is streamed to the Windows box and through my stereo, rather than through my laptop's speakers. Is this possible? My laptop is a standard MacBook, OSX 10.5.6 if that matters. Both computers are running iTunes currently but I'm happy to investigate other software. Thanks!

posted by downing street memo to computers & internet (11 comments total)

Share your iTunes music library over your home network -- not sure if this will work between a PC and Mac, however.
posted by nitsuj at 8:52 AM on March 22

SqueezeCenter (formerly SlimServer) is what you want.
posted by suedehead at 9:00 AM on March 22

Suedehead, that looks great - do you know of a free alternative?
posted by downing street memo at 9:18 AM on March 22

I haven't tried it, but this looks like a possibility:
Create a wireless speaker setup without AirTunes
posted by djpyk at 9:38 AM on March 22

downing street memo, you want Softsqueeze or something similar to use with SqueezeCenter. Both SqueezeCenter and Softsqueeze are free.
posted by wsp at 10:01 AM on March 22

downing street memo: The Squeezecenter server software is free. The hardware is what you pay for, but you don't need it. Just use one of the virtual players to connect to the server software.
posted by odinsdream at 10:14 AM on March 22

Thanks for all the help! I've managed to control the music on my server with SqueezeCenter - how can I play music on my laptop through the stereo hooked up to the server? It's probably something very simple I'm not even seeing...
posted by downing street memo at 12:34 PM on March 22

Take a look at this discussion.

On the computer connected to the stereo you'd open the URL: http://yourip:9000/stream.mp3

That will load up an MP3 stream in your music player, whatever it may be. You won't hear anything playing yet, though.

To start playing music go to: http://yourip:9000/

This is the web interface to the SqueezeCenter server software. Choose a music file from this and press the Play icon associated with it and you should start to hear music playing on your stereo.
posted by odinsdream at 6:00 AM on March 23

Unless this isn't obvious: Once you've requested something to start playing via the web interface you can close your web browser. The server software will be streaming it to any connected player.
posted by odinsdream at 6:07 AM on March 23

odinsdream - so basically I need to install squeezecenter on my peripheral laptop as well as the server. Interesting. Hopefully I can just leave stream.mp3 open in iTunes or whatever, always "listening" for music?
posted by downing street memo at 1:28 PM on March 23

No. The server software is all you need, and you only need to install that in one place.

However, the server machine needs to have a copy of all of your music.

Once you have the server software installed, from any web browser on any machine, including the server, you can access the music interface and start playing music. When you start playing music, it's "streamed" to any connected clients, which would typically be the Squeezebox hardware player, but which can also just be any other computer on your network (again, including the server) connected to the stream.mp3 URL.

I realize this is confusing, so just play around with it but only install ONE copy of the server software.
posted by odinsdream at 8:43 AM on March 24