Domotix: A Free Media Center

The audio file explorer

This screen is the first one displayed when you access the music module. The explorer allows you to navigate through your files in 5 different ways:

• Browse by disk: Allows you to access defined directories. If no folder is defined, all of your hard drives and optical drives will be displayed.
• Browse by genre: Shows the list of music genre present in your library
• Browse by artists: Shows the list of artists present in your library
• My Playlists: Shows the saved playlists (see below)
• Search: Allows you to search your music file tags

To go into a folder, you simply need to click on it, with this being the same if you want to listen to a song. When the song is started, the CD cover, and other information about the track will be displayed. Once the song has finished, Domotix will automatically more onto the next. You can access the songs lyrics by clicking on the “Lyrics” button or with the full screen button (F11 or the button on the remote).





Playlist manager

The “Playlist” section allows you to automatically or manually create playlists that can then be saved and loaded. A playlist is a group of songs that can come from different folders.

 

To create a new playlist, you can:

• Ask Domotix to generate the playlist: in this case, a new window will appear asking you if you want to randomly create a playlist, by genre, or from a folder. Once you have made your selection, Domotix will randomly create a playlist and display the file list.

• Manage a playlist: By clicking on this button, you will access a new screen tha has two parts; to the left, a list of all of your music files and to the right the elements that are present in your playlist. To add a file to the playlist, you simply need to click on it. Once the playlist has been created, you can listen to it by selecting the first song from this screen, or by going back to the previous screen.

To launch a playlist, you simply need to click on the first file in the list and the rest will follow. You should also not that you can access the lyrics by pressing the full screen button.
If you want to save a playlist, you simply need to click on the “save” button. Domotix will ask you to provide a name for the playlist and it will then be stored. You should note that if you don’t save playlist, then it will be saved as a current playlist and will be accessible again the next time yo open Domotix.

To change to another saved playlist, click on the “Load” button. Domotix will then allow you to choose from the saved playlists.

 

Listen to an Audio CD

If you want to listen to an Audio CD, you can do this via the audio files browser by exploring by disk and then selecting the CD drive.
A specific interface exists in Domotix which is accessible via the general menu -> Listen -> CD Audio when inserting an Audio CD. The track listing will be updated automatically and a search for information about the CD will be done on CDDB so that the artist’s name, album name and track names can be displayed.

To listen to the CD, click on the first track and the other songs will then follow. Another interesting function in this module is the possibility of saving your CD in the mp3 format on your hard drive. To do this, click on the “CD -> MP3” button. Domotix will ask you where you want to save the CD. Select the folder and click on OK. If no information can be found on CDDB about the CD, Domotix will ask you to provide the artist’s name and album title. Input this information and the CD recording will start. Its progress will be then shown on the screen. You should note that you can continue to use Domotix while this process is taking place.