Since it might be useful to some other people I want to document my audio setup in a few blog posts. By audio setup I mean the storage, organization and playback of my music collection. It covers the following: file systems, file formats, network access, choice of portable hardware, my own maintenance software (conversion, synchronization etc) and briefly other software (operating systems, playback software).

The overall features of the system, as I will describe later:
* fully compatible and based on Free Software codecs
* uses Free Software in all parts, except playback on portable
* inexpensive hardware, especially the portable part
* scalable to very large music collections, expandable to growing music collections
* easily adaptable to different or new situations (e.g. individual parts of the systems may be used independently)

The system works, but is not completely finished, i.e. some maintenance operations have yet to be added or tuned for performance or convenience, but I think it will be useful nevertheless. If you are skilled in bourne syntax, you might spot some rough edges or have ideas for the TODOs. If so, please let me know.