Large music collection on Home Theater... how to?

Recently I bought this awesome 5.1 home theater system for my bedroom. Now, this thing has a USB entry, so I figured connecting my hard drive to it and playing my music collection would be easy... well, it's not.

The problem is that my music collection is a little large (15k+ files) and when connecting the hard drive it takes a while to load, then gives me a list of at most 50 MP3 files. My guess is it takes too long to index my whole library, so this thing just says "fuck it, I'm leaving it here".

Now, I have a PS3 connected to the Home Theater. I've been trying to use a Media server to network my music collection to the PS3 and play my music from here, but it seems to take the exact same ammount of time to index my files and seems to start again everytime I connect the PS3 to the media server. It also seems to lack the ability to "emulate" 5.1 channels and just goes stereo.

I have a decent sound card on my computer which can connect to a 5.1 system, but the cables seem to be different (the Speakers have the simple black/red cables, the sound card has an analog-look-alike entry plug [like the one on speakers, sorry don't know english name]), and it'd mean disconnecting the speakers from the Home theater and connecting them to my PC instead...

So yeah, basically my question is: is there some (easy) way to play my music on my home theater system? Preferably emulating the 5.1 channels, but at this point, anything would do.

How ya doing, buddy?

Could you link the home theater system? is it just speakers or a separate unit?

and when you say black and red wires you just mean the + and - ?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

MeTaL_oRgY, based on your descriptions, I'm led to believe that your speakers take these kinds of cables (RCA cables)



While your sound card takes this kind of cable (BNC aka "Banana" or Stereo cables)



If this is the case, you can buy all sorts of converters

to help you in your configuration needs.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I think I was a little vague. I apologize.

llmercll - It is a separate unit. Besides reproducing DVDs, it has entries for: optical, HDMi and USB. It also has an input entry for an AV cable.

And yes, I meant the + and - cables.

SCHWARZE-7 - Not quite (sorry for having you guys play 'let's try to decifer what this guy talks about'... :/ ). The Home theater speakers are connected to the Home Theater unit using cables like these:



The sound card, on the other hand, has 3 entries which require analog cables. It's pretty much like this:



I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Hmm I really don't know how I can help you there. I'm sure there is a way to make + - cables into the sound card compatible jacks, but I wouldn't know how. Hell it might be a really hard thing to do, and it would make the "unit" a waste. Also, transferring, what, 15k? of mp3 files over a usb connection could overload for the unit, if it scans all the files and keeps their tag info an shit. that's a lot for a usb connect, it would take looong time. (basically what you said)

The only thing i can think is making a separate folder and only putting in an album or so at a time to listen to (but i say fuck that)

How much did you pay for that thing anyway? to be honest I wouldn't listen to Music on a 5.1 setup, and you can get a wall pounding logitech 2.1 system for under $100.

If I were you I would return your home theater system (isn't that what pc's are for?) and get yourself some logitech 5.1 and 2.1 (for TV and computer).

That gives you 5.1 for movies and games and 2.1 for audio.

Hope this helps

I was speaking idiomatically.

Well, the home theater is a nice addition to my ever-growing console collection. PS3 on HDTV and 5.1 is an awesome experience. I just thought it'd be a nice bonus to be able to play my music on the system, since it really sounds quite nice.

I got a nice, small 5.1 system on my computer so I do have a decent sound. It's just not as good quality as the Home Theater. It also looks kinda strange to have two buffers next to each other. :P

I believe networking to the PS3 is the best solution. And it sucks. Hopefully someone can prove me wrong.

Thanks for your time, llmercll.

update Oh yeah, and the HT took around $300 bucks away from me. :P I think it's a decent price. :P

How ya doing, buddy?

hehe, i was hoping you'd say $300...

Newegg.com - Logitech Z-5500 505 Watts 5.1 Speaker - Speakers

I'd look into those, I'm almost certain those will sound better than whatever you got, and you can hook up multiple connects to them, and switch your "output" on the fly.

Straight from the manufacturer...

"Connect to multiple sources: Simultaneously connect 6 audio sources including PCs, video game consoles, and DVD, CD & portable music players… and control it all from the Digital SoundTouch Control Center."

FELIPE NO

Are the speakers active or passive? I doubt you can drive passive ones with just the soundcard itself. The worst thing that could happen is that it permanently damages the amplification unit of the card *g*

EDIT: I should mention pulseaudio. Maybe it's worth setup a unix system on the PS3 (and the audioserver), so you can use it. pulseaudio is really neat, since it allows you to use remote sound devices from everywhere in the local network (even WAN works).

I have a central audioserver setup, which houses my entire music collection. It's connected to an external USB DAC, which in turn is connected to my headphones and a hifi system.
However I have also a desktop system in another room, which has also a small audio system (headphone + Creative Labs setup). With pulseaudio I can just tell the audioserver that it should stream the decoded stream over the network to the desktop system, so I can listen it there.

I could also connect the DAC and the bigger hifi system at the desktop, it would make no difference.

You can even synchronize all the different audio devices to get music in the entire house. I don't use this often, but it works as well.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

llmercll That looks like a pretty nice system. I'd leave that as a last-resource, though. I'm quite happy with the HT I have (it looks pretty sweet, too), but definately something to consider.

LiquidAcid I have no idea if they are active or passive (to be honest, that's the first time I've ever heard of active or passive speakers... I need to read more. :/ ).

On the other side, PulseAudio sounds like a nice solution. I'm installing it right now and will let you know how it goes. Thank you.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Be aware that you need a client application that can "talk" pulseaudio.

On linux this isn't a big problem since most sound applications have an ALSA backend. With ALSA you can create a virtual device that pipes everything to the pulseaudio server. So every app that has ALSA support can therefore talk to pulseaudio.
Native support is better though, but the virtual device method works as well.

In fact that's not entirely accurate. If you've read the pulseaudio description, it's mentioned there that PA is a ESD drop-in replacement. So apps that support ESD work as well. ESD however is pretty dead and I never saw that many apps that used it in the first place.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

This is a joke post, right.

Let me see your "awesome" home theater system first.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.