The laptop is a Mac, the music server is Ubuntu.
Music is stored on the server and the audio comes from the server. The laptop is just to control things.
Tried Airfoil. Despite the inefficiency of running the mp3 to my laptop and then the audio back to the server, this worked for a while. Then I tried to assign my server a manual IP address. After that it stopped working (even after switching back to DHCP-assigned IP) and has never worked again.
Something like ESounD might work but I can't find a way to install that on the Mac without Macports (which would pull in and compile 7 billion other packages just to do so). I don't use Macports and don't want to install it just for one single purpose.
I tried using VLC's http interface and that was clunky, unreliable and didn't work with it's own media library.
I tried various DNLA/UPnP setups but none of them worked properly (the problem was often the size of my music collection. They seem like they've never been tested past a few 1000 tracks)
Any other ideas? Anyone know how to get ESounD working using homebrew or how to manually compile it?
Is there an alternative to Airfoil or ESounD? Or something similar to VLC's HTTP interface that actually works?
Best Answer
I often ssh into my ubuntu box (with ssh -X) and run audacious to listen to music. The UI shows up on the laptop but the sound comes out of the ubuntu box. This is under windows with cygwin xserver but mac has an xserver I believe.