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Since 2021 I’ve been using a combination of tools to handle my music collection. Today I’m going to talk about the tools I’m using to manage my collection including how I catalog, import, serve and listen to it.

Although I do subscribe to a music streaming service I have taken an interest in expanding my physical collection as well. My collection consists largely of CDs with some vinyl records mixed in. While I appreciate the convenience of digital stream I also enjoy the process and experience of playing physical media, which I’ve written about before. That said, I like to also take my collection with me in digital formats and enjoy knowing that it comes from my own personal collection. Before we get into how I copy my CDs to digital lets first discuss how I catalog and keep track of my collection.

Cataloging

A couple of years ago I learned about a site called discogs.com. In their words Discogs is “a platform for music discovery and collection” and this is exactly how I use it. You can search for and add to your collection each piece of physical music media you own or are interested in owning and add it to your collection or wishlist, respectively. The database contains user submitted and curated information about most releases available with surprising detail. You can choose to be super detailed about how you add items to your collection by selecting the exact release or more simply add the first item you find. How you use Discogs is ultimately up to you but it is an incredibly handy way to track what you already own, find new stuff you’d like to own and so on. Using Discogs allows me to track the state of my media (some of it is damaged and needs to be replaced, for example) as well as ensure I don’t buy the same item twice.

Importing

I import all of my CDs using a tool called XLD, available at https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html. Using an external DVD drive to my Mac, XLD is able to look up what CD is in the drive, grab metadata about it and take care of copying the music off of it and onto my NAS. The metadata ensures that the folders are named properly as well as the track titles. I stick to the FLAC format for the files as it ensures the best quality and compatibility with playback software. Whenever I sync music to my phone for offline play in the car I opt to have the songs encoded on the fly to a smaller format.

Some vinyl records also include digital files that you can download from a site. For these I will typically add them to an appropriate folder of either MP3 encoded music or FLAC encoded music.

Storage

All of my music is stored on a TrueNAS based storage system and then shared out to a virtual machine that is running Plex. TrueNAS exports the data using Samba so it is easy for my Mac and the virtual machine to access without issue. TrueNAS stores the files on a raidz set for redundancy and I periodically back the data up to another disk.

Playback

Once the music is imported and stored on TrueNAS I add it in Plex. Plex is a convenient way to manage music as it detects the music you have added and downloads additional metadata about it, like album reviews. Recent releases of Plex allow you to “sonically fingerprint” music so that it can better find similar music in our collection for building better mixes.

Although Plex is the server part of the music system the actual software I use is called Plexamp. Plexamp is an app that is dedicated to music playback offering a slick interface, ability to download music locally from Plex and provides gapless playback. If you’ve ever listened to an album and wondered why there were gaps between tracks that sound like they should flow together, gapless is what you’re looking for. In addition to gapless, when playing a mix you can optionally have Plexamp fade between songs and I find that this works extremely well. Overall, Plex and Plexamp are my favorite tools for listening to music.

The actual hardware I listen on varies depending on where I am. While working and at my desk then I will be using the setup detailed on my audio system page. While out and about it will be through my iPhone connected to headphones or my car.

Conclusion

I’ve long listened to music but only recently have I gotten back into the general process of collecting it and paying attention to the process of listening to it. I enjoy my physical formats but I’m also not blind to the convenience of digital formats. How do you manage your music?

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Like a “what’s on my computer” post, I thought it would be fun to go through a list of what is in the audio system in my home office. Back in 2020 I started down a journey of upgrading my audio equipment. This post details what I’m currently using and a little bit about why.

Amplification

Late in 2021 I upgraded the heart of the system from my Sony STR-DE425 to a Denon PMA-600ne. During the last half of 2021 the Sony started to show some signs of old age where it would randomly half enable surround sound mode or start the test tone but in just one channel. To fix it I’d have to unplug the receiver for a bit and then plug it in again. For this reason, I decided it was finally time to step up the amp I use in my audio chain. I decided on the Denon PMA-600ne integrated amp because it provided a number of analog and digital inputs, a phono pre-amp while providing basic tone controls. It has more than enough power for my room and reviews very well. What I immediately noticed about this amp was how much brighter it sounded than the Sony. I’ve always thought the Sony receiver had what I could only describe as a sterile sound but what I didn’t realize was how rolled off it was on the top end. With the Denon in place there is a lot more detail on the top end.

Sources

Despite having a nearly limitless selection of music available to me through Spotify I sometimes like to engage in the experience a bit differently depending on my mood. For this reason, feeding the Denon is a mix of devices that I can select from.

About mid 2021 I picked up a Sony CDP-C245 so that I could have a CD player again. This 5 disc changer was a cheap find on Craigslist that got me listening to my CD collection again, even though most of it is ripped to the computer anyway. What I like about the CD player is that it is dedicated to the task of playing CDs, has its own unique sound signature and has a nice display. Using the CD player is a bit like picking out a skin for WinAmp years ago or selecting what software you want to manage your music collection in today. Like software, the interface on each device is different and unique. It has physical buttons for all of the functions that the device offers. I like the classic Sony CD player display with the calendar grid, the symbols for which disc is selected along with the track and timer display. All told, using the CD player adds a bit of nuance to the experience that is just satisfying. The player, being old and used, has its issues. The tray sometimes freaks out and needs to reset itself by opening and closing. It also lacks digital output. I may replace it with a slightly newer model that has digital output but I’ll definitely stick with the classic Sony design.

Since the Denon is not a receiver it doesn’t have a built in radio tuner…but I do listen to the radio sometimes. To solve this I am using the tuner in the Sony and simply outputting it to the Denon. I wasn’t really expecting this to sound as good as it does but the Denon does a great job here.

My computer, which I run Spotify and Plexamp on, is connected to the Denon using a Schiit Modi 3+. Prior to the Modi 3+, I connected my computer to the Sony STR-DE425 using plain a 3.5mm to RCA cable. Oddly this resulted in a bit of hum some of the inputs on the receiver. To resolve this I picked up the Modi 3+ so that I can could add an excellent DAC with digital inputs to the Sony, remove the hum and just improve the overall sound quality. The Denon does have digital inputs but unlike the Modi 3+ it doesn’t have a USB input. Rather than adding optical out from the computer I opted to just stick with the Modi 3+ and feed it into an analog input on the Denon. Also connected to the Schiit is my Xbox One X’s optical output.

I have a few other gaming systems in my office in addition to the Xbox One X. These systems are all HDMI based and for these devices I use an HDMI switch that includes digital outputs. The HDMI switch allows me to output all of the systems to a single HDMI input on my monitor and then route digital audio from the switch into a digital input on the Denon.

The last item connected to the Denon is my Audio Technica LP120x turntable. This is a well known and excellent turntable that also reviews very well. Since the Denon has a built in phono preamp I opted to use that instead of the one built into the LP120x. I can’t really say if one sounds better than the other but both are more than acceptable and any remaining differences would certainly fall within the realm of personal preference.

Speakers

The Denon is currently connected to a set of Polk T-15 bookshelf speakers. These speakers are a bit unique in that they aren’t really designed for direct, on axis listening like other speakers. Instead, they were engineered from the point of view that a lot of users aren’t able to create a dedicated listening space and would instead position the speakers in a less than ideal arrangement. For this reason, the speakers offer the best sound when you are about 20 degrees above or below the tweeter. “Luckily for me”, my desk design doesn’t really allow for ideal speaker placement and the T-15s, while inexpensive, sound great to me in this room. I may upgrade in 2022 but before I do I plan to put some acoustic treatments in the room.

To round out the sound, and give it a lot more heft, I also have an old subwoofer connected to the subwoofer output on the Denon. This Yamaha subwoofer is from a home theater kit that I bought to give me a little something while living in an apartment. It is…not great but provides some much needed bass extension that the T-15s lack. This is arguably the weakest link in the audio chain today and is the first thing I am looking to upgrade in 2022.

Software

As I said, my computer (a Mac mini) is one of the sources connected to the Denon using the Schiit Modi 3+’s USB interface. Using this connection, the Modi 3+ appears as an output audio device on my computer providing a direct path from my music software to the DAC which is then converted and fed into the Denon as an analog signal. The software I am using includes:

  • Spotify (with subscription) provides streaming audio
  • Plexamp (requires Plex Pass) allows me to play my ripped CDs from my Mac but also on my iPhone
  • Plex for some of the items in my collection that work better on Plex, like OCRemix tracks and some game sound tracks.

To help route audio on my computer I use Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource. This app allows me to route audio from the above apps directly to the Modi 3+ while keeping other apps like system audio or Zoom routed elsewhere.

Conclusion

Thank you for joining me today as I go through my audio system as it currently stands. Putting this together has been a lot of fun and listening to it even more so! When it comes to audio, what do you use? What is your favorite piece or what are you looking to improve first? Leave a comment!

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For nearly as long as I’ve been using Linux I have had some system on my home network that is acting as a server or test bed for various pieces of software or services. In the beginning this system might be my DHCP and NAT gateway, later it might be a file server but over the years I have almost always had some sort system running that acted as a server of some kind. These systems would often be configured using the same operating system that I was using in the workplace and running similar services where it made sense. This has always given me a way to practice upgrades, service configuration changes and just be as familiar with things as I possibly could.

As I’ve moved along in my career, the services I deal with have gotten more complex and what I want running at home as grown more complex to match. Although my home lab pales in comparison to what others have done I thought it would still be fun to go through what I have running.

Hardware

Like a lot of people, the majority of the hardware I’m running is older hardware that isn’t well suited for daily use. Some of the hardware is stuff I got free, some of it is hardware previously used to run Windows and so on. Unlike what seems to be most home lab enthusiasts, I like to keep things as basic as possible. If a consumer grade device is capable of delivering what I need at home then I will happily stick to that.

On the network side, my home is serviced with cable based Internet. This goes into an ISP provided Arris cable modem and immediately behind this is a Google WiFi access point. Nothing elaborate here, just a “basic” WiFi router handles all DHCP and NAT for my entire network and does a fine job with it. After the WiFi router is a Cisco 3560g 10/100/1000 switch. This sixteen year old managed switch does support a lot of useful features but most of my network is just sitting on VLAN 1 as I don’t have a lot of need for segmenting my network. Attached to the switch are two additional Google WiFi access points, numerous IoT devices, phones, laptops and the like.

Also attached to the switch are, of course, items that I consider part of the home lab. This includes a 2011 HP Compaq 8200 Elite Small Form Factor PC, an Intel i5-3470 based system built around 2012 and a Raspberry Pi 4. The HP system has a number of HDD and SSD drives, 24GB memory, a single gigabit ethernet port and hosts a number of virtual machines. The built Intel i5-3470 system has 16GB memory, a set of three 2TB HDDs and a single SSD for hosting the OS. The Pi4 is a 4GB model with an external SSD attached.

Operating Systems

Base operating system on the HP is Proxmox 7. This excellent operating system is best describe as being similar to VMware ESXi. It allows you to host as many Virtual Machines as your hardware will support, can be clustered and even migrate VMs between cluster nodes. Proxmox is definitely a happy medium between having a single system and being a full on cloud like OpenStack. I can effectively achieve a lot of a cloud stack would provide but with greater simplicity. Although I can create VMs and manually install operating systems, I have created a number of templates to make creating VMs quicker and easier. The code for building the templates is at https://github.com/dustinrue/proxmox-packer.

On the Intel i5-3470 based system is TrueNAS Core. This system acts as a Samba based file store for the entire home network including remote Apple Time Machine support, NFS for Proxmox and iSCSI for Kubernetes. TrueNAS Core is an excellent choice for creating a NAS. Although it is capable of more, I stick just to just the basic file serving functionality and don’t get into any of the extra plugins or services it can provide.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is running the 64bit version of Pi OS. Although it is a beta release it has proven to work well enough.

Software and Services

The Proxmox system hosts a number of virtual machines. These virtual machines provide:

Kubernetes

On top of Proxmox I also run k3s to provide Kubernetes. Kubernetes allows me to run software and test Helm charts that I’m working on. My Kubernetes cluster consists of a single amd64 based VM running on Proxmox and the Pi4 to give me a true arm64 node. In Kubernetes I have installed:

  • cert-manager for SSL certifications. This is configured against my DNS provider to validate certificates.
  • ingress-nginx for ingress. I do not deploy Traefik on k3s but prefer to use ingress-nginx. I’m more familiar with its configuration and have good luck with it.
  • democratic-csi for storage. This package is able to provide on demand storage for pods that ask for it using iSCSI to the TrueNAS system. It is able to automatically create new storage pools and share them using iSCSI.
  • gitlab-runner for Gitlab runner. This provides my Gitlab server with the ability to do CI/CD work.

I don’t currently use Kubernetes at home for anything other than short term testing of software and Helm charts. Of everything in my home lab Kubernetes is the most “lab” part of it where I do most of my development of Helm charts and do basic testing of software. Having a Pi4 in the cluster really helps with ensuring charts are targeting operating systems and architectures properly. It also helps me validate that Docker images I am building do work properly across different architectures.

Personal Workstation

My daily driver is currently an i7 Mac mini. This is, of course, running macOS and includes all of the usual tools and utilities I need. I detailed some time ago the software I use at https://dustinrue.com/2020/03/whats-on-my-computer-march-2020-edition/.

Finishing Up

As you can see, I have a fairly modest home lab setup but it provides me with exactly what I need to provide the services I actually use on a daily basis as well as provide a place to test software and try things out. Although there is a limited set of items I run continuously I can easily use this for testing more advanced setups if I need to.

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Chris Wiegman asks, what are you building? I thought this would be a fun question to answer today. Like a lot of people I have a number of things in flight but I’ll try to limit myself to just a few them.

PiPlex

I have run Plex in my house for a few years to serve up my music collection. In 2021 I also started paying for Plex Pass which gives me additional features. One of my favorite features or add-ons is PlexAmp which gives me a similar to Spotify like experience but for music I own.

Although I’m very happy with the Plex server I have I wondered if it would be feasible to run Plex on a Raspberry Pi. I also wanted to learn how Pi OS images were generated using pi-gen. With that in mind I set out to create a Pi OS image that preinstalls Plex along with some additional tools like Samba to make it easy to get up and running with a Plex server. I named the project PiPlex. I don’t necessarily plan on replacing my existing Plex server with a Pi based solution but the project did serve its intended goal. I learned a bit about how Pi OS images are created and I discovered that it is quite possible to create a Pi based Plex server.

ProxySQL Helm Chart

One of the most exciting things I’ve learned in the past two years or so is Kubernetes. While it is complex it is also good answer to some equally complex challenges in hosting and scaling some apps. My preferred way of managing apps on Kubernetes is Helm.

One app I want install and manage is ProxySQL. I couldn’t find a good Helm chart to get this done so I wrote one and it is available at https://github.com/dustinrue/proxysql-kubernetes. To make this Helm chart I first had to take the existing ProxySQL Docker image and rebuild it so it was built for x86_64 as well as arm64. Next I created the Helm chart so that it installs ProxySQL as a cluster and does the initial configuration.

Site Hosting

I’ve run my blog on WordPress since 2008 and the site has been hosted on Digital Ocean since 2013. During most of that time I have also used Cloudflare as the CDN. Through the years I have swapped the droplets (VMs) that host the site, changed the operating system and expanded the number of servers from one to two in order to support some additional software. The last OS change was done about three years ago and was done to swap from Ubuntu to CentOS 7.

CentOS 7 has served me well but it is time to upgrade it to a more recent release. With the CentOS 8 controversy last year I’ve decided to give one of the new forks a try. Digital Ocean offers Rocky Linux 8 and my plan is to replace the two instances I am currently running with a single instance running Rocky Linux. I no longer have a need for two separate servers and if I can get away with hosting the site on a single instance I will. Back in 2000 it was easy to run a full LAMP setup (and more) on 1GB of memory but it’s much more of a challenge today. That said, I plan to use a single $5 instance with 1 vCPU and 1GB memory to run a LEMP stack.

Cloudflare

Speaking of Cloudflare, did you know that Cloudflare does not cache anything it deems “dynamic”? PHP based apps are considered dynamic content and HTML output by software like WordPress is not cached. To counter this, I created some page rules a few years ago that forces Cloudflare to cache pages, but not the admin area. Combined with the Cloudflare plug-in this solution has worked well enough.

In the past year, however, Cloudflare introduced their automatic platform optimization option that targets WordPress. This feature enables the perfect mix of default rules (without using your limited set of rules) for caching a WordPress site properly while breaking the cache when you are signed in. This is also by far the cheapest and most worry free way to get the perfect caching setup for WordPress and I highly recommend using the feature. It works so well I went ahead and enabled it for this site.

Multi-Architecture Docker Images

Ever since getting a Raspberry Pi 4, and when rumors of an Arm powered Mac were swirling, I’ve been interested in creating multi-architecture Docker images. I started with a number of images I use at work so they are available for both x86_64 and arm64. In the coming weeks I’d like to expand a bit on how to build multi-architecture images and how to replace Docker Desktop with a free alternative.

Finishing Up

This is just a few of the things I’m working on. Hopefully in a future post I can discuss some of the other stuff I’m up to. What are you building?

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If you run Plex at home and access it externally you may want to limit the amount of bandwidth remote access is allowed to use. Not limiting the bandwidth Plex uses will affect other users on the same Internet connection and those playing online games or doing video conferencing will be affected the most. The reason for this is Plex is going to utilize your upload bandwidth, and all of it if you allow it to. Most households have asynchronous connections meaning one direction is slower than the other and typically it is the upload speeds that are drastically slower. This makes sense as most people download content rather than push it to the Internet. Plex, however, turns that around and does push data to the Internet. Since uploads speeds are usually slower than the download speed outside your home you will quickly use up, or saturate, your upload speed. Once the upload capacity from your home is at its limits everything else will suffer in some way. Online video games will get laggy, drop packets, and will feel awful. Video conferencing will become glitchy and even downloads speeds can drop.

Luckily, Plex offers two ways to limit how much bandwidth it will use (though you probably only need to tap into one of them). The first way, and the way you can probably skip, is to set the Plex client itself to be a good citizen in “Quality” section of the settings screen. It looks like this:

Set the “Internet Streaming” video quality to Maximum unless your system can’t handle full quality

Most of the time you can leave this to “Maximum”. If you find your player is still stuttering you can modify this. This is will usually happen if the download speed of your connection is slow or if you just want to save bandwidth.

The more beneficial setting is located in the server settings section under “Remote Access”. The settings on this page will affect your Plex server globally, to all clients. In my home, my upload speed is about 11mbit. To ensure that others in the home have adequate upload capacity I set my upload speed and video quality to 4Mbit, as you can see here:

Set the Internet upload speed to some fraction of your total upload speed

By configuring Plex with a lower value than your total upload you will force the entire server to use less than your total upload speed, regardless of how many streams are coming off of it. This will leave room for other applications on your network if they need it.

Keep in mind that the limit does apply to all remote streams, and if there are enough of them, the setting could be too low and cause stuttering on their side as they need to pause and buffer the content. The setting also applies to downloads so even if someone downloads content to offline it in high quality they will be limited to whatever value you put here.

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For a long time, I’ve wanted a Spotify-like experience but with music I’ve collected over the years. I appreciate Spotify because I can stream music on my desktop and phone anywhere I am but I can also download music locally to my phone to save on bandwidth. That said, there are some things that aren’t on Spotify like video game soundtracks or ocremix content that I also want to have with me. While Spotify can download local content to my phone the process is a bit cumbersome and the interface is, honestly, not great for that.

Enter Plex and Plexamp. Plex, probably better known as the tool of choice for those heavily into piracy, is actually a great way to store, catalog, and play your music. But Plexamp (and a paid Plex Pass) as a client really takes the experience up a notch by offering an experience that is entirely focused on music playback including hi-res formats and gapless playback. It also has some really clever genre, mood, and artist-based automatic playlists that are super slick. Combine this with the ability to stream the music from outside your home and offline it (at any bit rate you want including FLAC) and you really have a winner.

While I could do a video showing it off I don’t think I could a better job than this one.