Music to code by

For many years I've had SlimServer (now SqueezeCenter) installed on my Linux server and found it very good for streaming music to my Nokia tablets. These tablets have excellent sound quality so I often plug one into the hi-fi. These days it's usually the Quality Amplifiers.

But I wanted more music - what to do? I tried "tuning" the N800 to last.fm but the results weren't good. Nokia tablets run Linux and have limited computing power, they are great at streaming audio and video, but not so good at running Flash, and can't run any Windows software. So I had an idea...

How about running Spotify on my laptop and streaming the audio to the hi-fi? Simple - well - simple-ish. I used a Pinacle USB TV thing to grab the audio from the laptop headphone socket and Helix-producer on the laptop to convert it to a Real Audio stream. From there to Helix-server running on the Linux server and via wi-fi to the media player on the Nokia tablets.

From this description it's probably hard to believe that the results sound very good indeed. No dropouts, no machine being loaded too hard; each can carry on with its normal duties.

Very happy! I'll wait a while before I think about paying to not hear adverts.