PSP + Airtunes + Coverbuddy = Dance Party Software Setup

Not able to allow an added $2500 investment in limited music server hi-fi accessories I had to accomplish due with music server apparatus I already owned: Airport Express, Mac Mini, Onkyo TX-DS989 AV Receiver and a Rogue Audio Magnum 99 Preamp. With some added software on my Mac Mini I could limited ascendancy the music served to the limited arrangement in my alert allowance with my Sony PSP.
I bought the Airport Express to serve music to my alert room. I approved this already just to accomplish abiding it formed (it did). I never acclimated Airtunes back because of the aggravation and disability ascendancy the song playing. The Airport Express instead served the purpose of wireless extender for my Xbox.
The Goal: My Mac Mini, in the admiral office, serves the music wirelessly to my Airport Express in the alert allowance through Airtunes. The Airport Express feeds a agenda arresting to my Onkyo TX-DS989's DAC. The Onkyo passes the candy analog arresting to my Rogue Audio Magnum 99 Preamp. With PSP in hand, ancestors in toe--hi-fi ball party.
Airtunes Set-up: Ambience up Airtunes connectivity amid the Mac Mini and my Airport Express in the alert allowance is as simple as anecdotic a name for the limited apostle area on the Airport Express. iTunes detects the Airtunes limited area and displays a bead down card with the best of your limited speakers or computer speakers or both. This set up can be complicated by your wireless network's aegis akin and multi-brand router compatibility.
A Linksys WRT54G wireless router connects the accomplished arrangement to the internet. The Mac Mini is in the aforementioned armoire in the appointment so it is affiliated through ethernet. Active a wireless G alone arrangement increases all-embracing arrangement speed. To board the PSP's B alone wireless I had to set a alloyed wireless network, slowing aggregate down. This apathetic down does not aftereffect the almost low bandwidth music serving.
Remote Ascendancy iTunes Software Set Up: My Mac Mini and the absorbed 300 GB USB 2.0 harder drive are admiral in my office. My home theater/hi-fi allowance is downstairs. The two apartment are affiliated through my Linksys wi-fi router and the Airport Express downstairs. Unlike a Squeezebox 3, the Airport Express has no included limited or beheld acknowledgment of the song playing. I don't wish to run admiral to the Mac Mini every time I feel like absence a song, alteration albums or playlists.
I remembered that endure year Sony PSP admirers ample a way to limited ascendancy iTunes through the PSP's web browser. The drudge complex ambience up Apache on your Mac, enabling PHP, ambience up DNS and again sending commands through the Sony PSP web browser's URL field. I ample anyone accept to accept anticipation of a simpler band-aid by now.
Coverbuddy is a abstracted iTunes accompaniment appliance that lets you ascendancy iTunes through a web browser. Coverbuddy has a appropriate browser interface sized for the PSP screen. It lets you baddest albums and songs through an alphabetical account and play, abeyance and skip songs. It aswell will affectation awning art for whatever song is arena on the PSP Screen.
Coverbuddy does not automatically download anthology art from the internet. You can manually seek for the art of the song arena through an Amazon card item. My iTunes library contains maybe two or three anthology covers because of the time and accomplishment it takes to acquisition the art. Coverbuddy alone appeals to me for the nice interface with anthology art next to selectable songs.
Luckily, Coverbuddy suggests Synergy for automated awning art downloading. Each time a song afterwards art plays Synergy queries Amazon and downloads the art based on the book ID3 tags. Synergy works 90% of the time. I accept albums it can't acquisition (Amazon accept to not advertise them). Worse it will cull down the amiss anthology art--it keeps downloading Pink Floyd's Dark SIde of the Moon for Modest Mouse's The Moon and Antarctica.
Coverbuddy is not perfect. It doesn't automatically acceptation Synergy's awning downloads (it's declared to). Already Synergy downloads art I annoyance and bead it assimilate the anthology in Coverbuddy's window. Coverbuddy comatose already and about absent one or two pieces of awning art afterwards a restart. Its affliction breach is accepting ashore on a chat box allurement to clean its iTunes catalog, locking out your limited web enabled limited until you can bang OK.
Once all the software was active I could adventure to my alert room, PSP in hand. Before I could actively accept (and ball with the wife and kid) I had to optimize the Airport Express's audio achievement for my hi-fi rig.
Next: rewiring your hi-fi set up for a music server.
Father, Husband and Geek. My aberrant interests accept not afflicted back I was a kid. I still adulation banana books, anime, role-playing games, animate video games, indie rock, alien toys and mecha models, bad American and abundant British sitcoms, and all the tech that let’s me acquaintance these hobbies to their fullest. Now that I’m affiliated with children, I’ve had to bang a antithesis amid acknowledging and adorable my ancestors and agriculture my geekery hunger. Lucky for me, my wife is actual accomodating and even geeks out with me on break (the ladies adulation Joss Whedon’s "Firefly"). My two year old brand annihilation that moves on the foreground bump awning and makes noise, so far she is simple to please. Geekwithfamily.com exists to adorn the lives of adolescent geeks and the accompany and ancestors who put up with them.