As an irregular visitor to this site, I’d missed Chris’s posting on the Beaglebone Black server. I’ve always wanted to try Linux but as a Windows user all those weird command lines had put me off. But with Chris’s “idiot” list, perhaps that might make a cheap/fun little project.
So last week I sat down with the parts and had a stab, the instructions worked perfectly. The only stumbling block was my old ReadyNas Duo v1 connection string which after a long searches I found back here [doh].
Well, the little board seemed to find my library and ran straight out of MPD into my office headphones, so let’s move it to the lounge system! Well, “bless my Beagle” this little “cigarette packet” sounds better than my CAPS2 !!
You couldn’t take the smile off my face. My CAPS2 has a very good DIY split [power/data] USB cable off the usb Sotm card and of course I couldn’t use that and even with a crappy standard computer usb cable it sounds better.
Currently the only problem is [1] MPaD remote software on the iPad isn’t picking up my cover art and it seems this causes a lot of strife with others but to be honest that doesn’t bother me but will get around to fixing. And, [2] last night while playing the server seemed to change its own IP address in full flow?? – this morning it booted with the same address! But again it seems an easy enough tweak to set a static IP address if this starts happening on a regular basis.
As a music only system I’d say this sounds way better than my old CAPS2, now it’d be really good to have a remote app as good as jRemote.
Here’s an open question
Why does such a cheap little unit sound better than the Caps2, is it: -
Linux is better than Windows 8
MPD is better than J River 19
Smaller more light weight computer over CAPS2
And, yes I bet some will say a bit of all three ….. over to you!
