Yesterday, I ran across a product called a GuruPlug while reading the comments for this article. I hadn’t heard of anything like this before, but it sounded like something our church could use.
Here is the thought: Our church has been having issues with the sound equipment going out. I wondered about using PulseAudio servers and clients to create a network of speakers throughout the auditorium. Using GuruPlugs would provide a cheap computer to hook speakers into.
The GuruPlug appears to run a version of Debian Linux. PulseAudio should run on that with no problems. From what I can tell, it looks like it runs about $100. Then, we would need a USB soundcard, maybe like this one. One of the comments mentioned someone getting it to work on Ubuntu 9.10 with no problems. Right now it is on sale for $17. Then, all we need is a pair of speakers, maybe like these for $5. This brings the whole client system to about $125, which isn’t too bad.
I found another person who looked like he was running PulseAudio on the GuruPlug: Linux Plug Computers as Music Servers. Does anyone else have any thoughts? Have you tried anything like this? Do you know of other devices that are similar?
I suspect that you will have problems with propagation delays (my term) i.e. The time from when the word enters the microphone till it sounds at speaker set A and the time that it sounds at speaker set B will be different enout to be noticable and distracting. On the other hand if you want to have a remote listening room that can be supplied from a single set of speakers, then this solution will probably work fine.