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Playing music with MPD and PulseAudio across LAN

Dec 31, 20244 min read

Huh?

My setup looks like this…

  • TrueNAS at 10.0.99.37 with an iSCSI share containing my music
  • Debian mini PC at 10.0.99.40 connected to the iSCSI share (mini)
  • Debian mini PC at 10.0.99.41 connected to my speakers (jukebox)

What I was looking to do was create an MPD server on the mini (40) that would stream via httpd over to the jukebox (41). (Not a good idea to mount the iSCSI to multiple machines, but it did cross my mind.) Basically, leverage the fact that the jukebox is connected to the speakers, without having to spin up a different share, media library duplication, or complex setup. I’ve got a pair of Polk Audio Monitor Bs that I really like and I don’t use enough to really justify the hassle I went through a few years ago to get my hands on them and replace two of the woofers.

I already have Jellyfin running, so that is a potential approach, but I had some trouble setting up the remote control. The jukebox just wouldn’t show up on my phone, and my phone wouldn’t show up on my jukebox. I thought it might have had something to do with Tailscale, but even when I disabled Tailscale they didn’t show up. Plus, I’ve had some issues with the remote control reliability in the past.

My requirements:

  • Play/control and store all music on the mini, but output to the jukebox connected to the speakers.
  • Use phone and laptop to remote control - preferably via a terminal interface over SSH if on my laptop. (I love ncmpcpp and I’ve missed using it!)

So I fought with mpd httpd for quite a while. At first I didn’t understand that 8000 was the streaming port and 6600 was the control port, but even after realizing that and adjusting my configuration accordingly, the audio still wouldn’t output to the speakers. Everything looked like it was playing correctly, just no audio output. Local mpd on the jukebox would output to the speakers, so I knew that was working to some degree. My setup seemed to match any documentation or forum posts I found, or the setup differed enough that I was left wondering.

Eventually I said screw MPD httpd - everywhere I found said that MPD was not really designed for a streaming setup anyway, so I figured that’s why the documentation was limited. I had come across a similar setup using PulseAudio during my documentation escapades, so I went with that.

Went through too many documentation pages and forum posts to link here, and they had varying levels of relevance, but here’s the one that eventually worked (funnily enough, right above the section going over httpd audio streaming):

Configuration

Won’t go over the iSCSI share, I went over that here already. Pretend that the mini PC (40) has all the music locally, because for all intents and purposes of this project, it IS stored locally.

Mini PC (10.0.99.40)

  • Install mpd, pulseaudio, and ncmpcpp

PulseAudio

Simply run pulseaudio --start.

Note

I need to make sure this runs on a reboot. I haven’t tested that yet.

MPD

Edit /etc/mpd.conf. Point the daemon to your music library folder. Here’s what the first section looks like in my config:

# /etc/mpd.conf

db_file            "/media/shared/svc/mpd/database"
log_file           "/media/shared/svc/mpd/log"
music_directory    "/media/shared/music"
playlist_directory "/media/shared/svc/mpd/playlists"
pid_file           "/media/shared/svc/mpd/pid"
state_file         "/media/shared/svc/mpd/state"
sticker_file       "/media/shared/svc/mpd/sticker.sql"

# ...

Replace any audio_output {} sections with the following:

# /etc/mpd.conf

# ...

audio_output {
	type "pulse"
	name "remote" # name doesn't really affect anything
	server "10.0.99.41" # ip of the jukebox
}

Run systemctl start mpd (and systemctl enable mpd if you want it to start automatically on a reboot).

Jukebox (10.0.99.41)

Install pulseaudio. (ncmpcpp is unnecessary. I realized later in my testing that mpd is also unnecessary with the Pulse configuration, so I disabled it.)

Configure /etc/pulse/default.pa to stream audio from the mini (40):

# /etc/pulse/default.pa

# ...

# This line should exist, uncomment it and edit the IP address
load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=10.0.99.40

# ...

Run pulseaudio --start (pulseaudio --kill first if it’s already running).

Jam out

Now you should be able to control mpd from the server via SSH and ncmpcpp. M.A.L.P. is a great Android client for controlling it remotely, it’s what I started using. So far, I’ve had no issues with dropping connection. Volume adjustment works like a charm. I’m back to my happy vim keybindings to play music with my terminal, and I can switch to my phone without a hitch.

Woke up my roommate this morning blasting King Gizzard…while I was still lying in bed!

Next project…organizing my music library with beets!

EOF

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