How would the SalkStream compare to the Squeezebox Touch?
The Squeezbox Touch has a DAC built in with analog RCA out, a display with an interface, is based on ARM architecture chip and, if I remember correctly, needs Squeezebox Server (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_Server) installed to play music across a network. In stock form, the SB Touch will not feed a USB DAC.
The SalkStream is based on a small x86 single board computer running a headless (no VGA, no screen or LCD), stripped down version of Linux. The Salkstream software and hardware is a very minimalist, high performance music server for feeding USB DACs. If the DAC is USB Audio Class 2 (UAC2) compliant it will play 24 bit audio with sample rates to 192Khz. Salkstream is completely silent and has no moving parts. Audio files (FLAC, WAV, AIFF, etc) are fetched over the network via ethernet. You can have a small NAS in another room, use your desktop as a NFS or CIFS server in another room or use JIm's SalkStream server.
The Salkstream also avoids any noisy (EMI/RFI) LCD or LED displays in the hardware.
The audio software is based on Music Player Daemon (MPD). MPD is a true client/server audio player. The MPD daemon (or server, if you will) runs on the headless Salkstream hardware. It doesn't care about album art, lyrics, graphics, etc. All of that is controlled by the MPD client. The MPD client connects to the MPD daemon over the network and controls music playback and play list selection. The MPD client is also responsible for the storing of album art, lyircs, etc.
A blurb from the MPD wikipedia page:
"MPD simply runs in the background playing music from its playlist. Client programs communicate with MPD to manipulate playback, the playlist, and the database. It is not a full-featured music player program such as Amarok, but its clients serve a similar role.
MPD uses a flat file database to maintain the basic music file information when it is not running. Once the daemon is started, the database is kept completely in-memory and no hard disk access is necessary to look up or search for local audio files. Usually, music files must be below the music root directory and are only added to the database when the update command is sent to the server. Playback of arbitrary files is only allowed for local clients which are connected to the server via Unix Domain Sockets. MPD does not provide a built-in tag editor, this functionality is handled by clients or external programs, though 3rd party patches do exist to add this functionality to the server.
The client/server architecture provides several advantages over all-inclusive music players. Clients may communicate with the server remotely over an intranet or over the Internet. The server can be a headless computer located anywhere on the network. Music playback can continue seamlessly when not using X or restarting X. Different clients can be used for different purposes - a lightweight client left open all the time for controlling playback with a more fully featured client used for intensive database searches. Several clients can use the same database, even running simultaneously remotely or under different user accounts.You can have several clients connected at once, e.g., use your laptop to put together a complex classical music play list, put the laptop to sleep, then use your iPod Touch or Iphone (
http://www.katoemba.net/makesnosenseatall/mpod/) using Mpod or iPad client using Mpad (
http://www.katoemba.net/makesnosenseatall/mpad/) to sit at you listening chair and casually control you Salkstream.
There are many clients available for Bluetooth phones, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. There are also Web clients available to control MPD on SalkStream.
The cool thing is, if your MPD clients crashes it does not affect music playback. That's the beauty of a true client/server architecture music player. No skips, pops, pauses, etc. That's a big advantage over monolithic programs, e.g., Amarra, Puremusic, iTunes, running on traditional desktop computers that have to run a GUI (graphic user interface) and many system services that a desktop machine requires.
The Salkstream is a stripped down, mean, lean, high performance, silent machine that does one thing only: play bit-perfect audio. No mouse, keyboard, VGA, or other superfluous hardware, nor any other superfluous software like anti-virus, graphic user interface, or unnecessary system services.
Hope that helps.
