#subsonic

my home server is an old thinkpad laptop with a broken keyboard that was donated to me by a friend. it runs yunohost, a linux distribution that makes it simpler to reuse old computers as servers in this way: it gives you a nice control panel to install and manage all kinds of apps you might want to run on your home server, + it handles the security part by having a user login page & helping you install an https certificate with letsencrypt.

***

to stream my music collection, i use navidrome. this software is available to install from the yunohost control panel, so it's straightforward to install. what it does is take a folder with all your music and lets you browse and stream it, either via its web interface or through a bunch of apps for android, ios, etc.. it uses the subsonic protocol, so any app that says it works with subsonic should work with navidrome too.

***

to listen to my music on my phone, i use DSub. It's an app that connects to any server that follows the subsonic API, including navidrome. you just have to give it the address of your home server, and your username and password, and it fetches your music and allows you to stream it. as mentionned previously, there's a bunch of alternative apps for android, ios, etc. so go take a look and make your pick. i've personally also used and enjoyed substreamer in the past. here are screenshots of both:

***

to listen to my music on my computer, i use tauon music box. i was a big fan of clementine music player years ago, but it got abandoned, and the replacement (strawberry music player) looks super dated now. tauon is very new to me, so i'm still figuring it out, but it connects to subsonic servers and it looks pretty so it's fitting the bill for me.

***

to download new music onto my server, i use slskd which is a soulseek client made to run on a web server. soulseek is a peer-to-peer software that's found a niche with music lovers, so for anything you'd want to listen there's a good chance that someone on soulseek has the file and will share it with you. the official soulseek client is available from the website, but i'm using a different software that can run on my server and that i can access anywhere via a webpage, slskd. this way, anytime i want to add music to my collection, i can just go to my server's slskd page, download the files, and they directly go into the folder that's served by navidrome.

slskd does not have a yunohost package, so the trick to make it work on the server is to use yunohost's reverse proxy app, and point it to the http port of slskd 127.0.0.1:5030, with the path /slskd and with forced user authentification. then, run slskd on your server with the --url-base slskd, --no-auth (it breaks otherwise, so it's best to just use yunohost's user auth on the reverse proxy) and --no-https (which has no downsides since the https is given by the reverse proxy anyway)

***

to keep my music collection organized, i use beets. this is a command line software that checks that all of the tags on your music are correct and puts the file in the correct folder (e.g. artist/album/01 trackname.mp3). it's a pretty complex program with a ton of features and settings, i like it to make sure i don't have two copies of the same album in different folders, and to automatically download the album art and the lyrics to most tracks, etc. i'm currently re-working my config file for beets, but i'd be happy to share if someone is interested.

Shakewhatyamamagaveya

Electroshockboogie

Subbassmassacre

Drop beats not bombs 💣

Shitpost 4 life, phuckheadz

Huggy woogie

I’m a raver baby so why don’t you kill me?

Inyaface

Fuck You

Love VIP by Subsonic <3

Spotify

I have been a huge fan of the .300 Blackout cartridge! For anyone that’s actively in the suppressor game, a rifle cartridge like the .300 Blackout is a no brainer. Yes I do realize that many pistol calibers can be ran subsonic in AR style rifles and pistols, but the .300 Blackout shares all of the common parts of its 5.56 counterpart except the barrel of course. This makes the .300 Blackout make much more sense than a pistol caliber AR that uses a bunch of different parts and more chance of not running correctly. Late last year I cobbled together yet another .300 Blackout from some parts I had leftover form previous projects and picked up the remaining needed parts from Brownells. My Brownells BRN-180 .300 Blackout has been one of my favorites as well. This makes the 4th .300 Blackout I own, so there’s no mistaking that I’m a fan of the caliber. But is it still the KING? 

In the past few years there’s been a number of other newer calibers coming into the market that are kinda following in the .300 Blackout’s footsteps. One of those is the 8.6 Blackout caliber that was developed by Q. This is of course a larger .338 diameter projectile than the .300 diameter projectile used in the .300 Blackout. The parent case is also that of the 6.5 Creedmoor. Barrel wist rates are considerably different as well. Most .300 Blackout are 1:8 twist and the 8.6 Blackout is a 1:3 twist rate to get the most out of the shorter barrels and heavier projectiles. The 8.6 Blackout’s advantage is the availability of much larger weight projectiles and therefore a more devastating effect on the intended target. The disadvantage in my opinion is the need to use an AR-10 sized receiver increasing the overall weight of the firearm. There’s no free lunch as they say, so you can’t gain something without giving up something else. And if you think that .300 Blackout ammunition is pricey, you’ve not taken a look at the 8.6 Blackout yet. But wait there’s even another newer cartridge on the horizon that claims to beat out both the .300 Blackout and the 8.6 Blackout. 

Introduced by Hornady is the new .38 ARC which is supposedly bale to deliver over one and a half times the energy of the .300 Blackout. Once again the advantage of this particular caliber is the ability to load with bullets much heavier than .300 Blackout. With over 300 grains on tap, the .338 ARC eclipses the maximum 225gr loads of the .300 Blackout by a huge margin. The .338 ARC uses the same pattern magazines and bolt as the 6.5 Grendel and doesn’t require the use of the larger frame AR-10 receiver to run. This is literally the best of both worlds with subsonic performance of the .300 Blackout, 1.5X the energy and the ability to maintain a similar weight of the firearm. Since the .338 ARC is totally new, only time will tell how much it takes off. As expected the ammunition is out of this world expensive at the moment, but if popularity takes off, expect the prices to come down a bit once supply matches demand. 

So is .300 Blackout still the subsonic king? I’d say for now due to the popularity and availability of the caliber, but be on the look out for these 2 other new calibers, especially the .338 ARC. Brownells has you covered on all 3 of these calibers if you’re looking to pick one up. 

I felt a pang of aptitude last week, so I dug in and started troubleshooting Plex. I searched for error messages in a new way, I guess, because after about 10 minutes I found a suggestion to delete the server from my account, and delete the preferences file from the server. boom, now the kids can watch their shows, and I can watch Mr Show.

Subsonic is harder, because since I started using it, it has forked a few times, so there are way fewer people running it, let alone running it on Tomcat 8 on FreeBSD. so I stepped back and reconsidered: if something else will do the same thing and be easier to setup and maintain, it's better. so, I forgot everything I never really learned about Tomcat (complicated as fuck) and started downloading Python modules.