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Authored by: robg on Feb 26, '02 12:02:40PM

An RCA cable and the KeySpan remote would certainly work just fine, albeit with some limitations. First, the computer and the stereo need to be relatively close together, if not actually in the same room. In our case, though, I'd need a 50' RCA cable, which isn't really practical. Second, there's no remote display, so you can't easily do things like select by artist or album, or build new custom playlists on the fly. Third, your Mac needs to be running iTunes (or some other MP3 player) all the time (at least, I think that's a true statement based on reading the product spec for the remote). This makes it somewhat harder to do something CPU intensive (like Quake3!) while the MP3's are playing downstairs, as iTunes will be competing for CPU time.

With the Rio and the Audiotron, there is no foreground application required. And with the Audiotron, there's nothing at all running on my Mac other than Samba, which runs all the time anyway. The Rio's script would be running on the Mac, which is one more reason why I chose the Audiotron - to help minimize the work my Mac is doing. But both these solutions are notably less CPU intensive than iTunes or another MP3 player.

Everyone will, of course, have to decide if this is something they'd like to do. If it is, as the comments to the story have shown, there are a number of ways to use your computer as a remote MP3 player, for anywhere from $0 to $400 (iPod ;-).

-rob.



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