BoomerBlaster Pro

Do you remember the time

When the office was the party.

You lived under your desk. It was the dot-com boom. You smoked indoors. You ripped your vinyl to 128 kbit/s and put the vinyl out with the trash.

Everyone was noisy. Everyone listened to the same thing, because everyone had to. Noise cancelling meant someone going schhh. And every week somebody nudged the volume knob one notch. Nobody noticed. Boiling the frog.

Well. No?

Now you can at least listen together again. And embarrass yourself with your low-BPM downtempo² in front of the whole floor, at a volume that bothers no one.

Then and now

The office stereo, remastered.

A 1999 start-up office on film: a silver hi-fi beside a CRT monitor, an ashtray, pizza boxes, two people working late and a young man asleep under the desk.

1999the original

One stereo. On the desk nearest the power socket.
One volume. Set by whoever stood up last.
Noise cancelling. Schhh.
Track info. "What is this?" shouted across the room.
Album art. In a bin bag, with the vinyl.
Opt-out. Go home.

The same kind of office today: colleagues of both generations at their own standing desks in headphones, code on every screen, working and dancing.

Nowthe remaster

One clock. On the DJ's Mac.
Twenty volumes. One per pair of ears.
Noise cancelling. Built into the headphones, at last.
Track info. On the page. Nobody shouts.
Album art. Large. Centred. Judged silently.
Opt-out. Take them off.

How it works

Cast. Clock. Headphones.

Three steps. You do the first. Your Mac does the second. Your colleagues do the third, and they get to decide how loud.

Cast

AirPlay from your iPhone or Mac, or pick BoomerBlaster in Spotify's device list from any phone. Music, Spotify, Tidal, podcasts. Anything with a cast button.

Clock

Your Mac stamps every twenty milliseconds of music against one clock. Every listener's browser measures its distance to that clock and plays each chunk at the agreed instant. Drift past five milliseconds and it corrects itself.³

Headphones

Colleagues open one address, press play, put their headphones on. Cover art, track, artist, their own volume. Nothing to install. Nothing to explain to IT.

1clock, for the whole floor

20msper chunk of music

0installs on anyone else's machine

~2sfrom your thumb to their ears⁴

The cover of a record that does not exist: a dusk sea through a rain-streaked office window, a desk lamp and a monitor reflected in the glass.

Low Tide (Office Edit)

The Elevation Desks · Under the Desk, 1999

In sync · 14 listening

Now playing

Your taste. Their screens. Everyone's own volume.

Every listener gets the cover art large, its colours bleeding into the background, the track and artist underneath, and one slider that only moves their own ears. That is the whole page. Play, pause and skip are not on it, because they are on the DJ's phone.

Cover art from AirPlay, as the player sent it, crossfading on every change.
Volume and mute, per listener. The frog is safe.
One line saying it is in sync, and how many ears are on.

Get the highlights.

Elevated view of an open-plan office: some colleagues in headphones dance at their desks while others work in calm. — Your office. Half of it dancing. The other half none the wiser.

A woman in her sixties in headphones smiles and sways while typing at her standing desk. — Boomers in. Boom out.

A young man in a beanie and headphones points to the ceiling with one hand on his keyboard; an older colleague works behind him. — Keep working. Dancing is compatible with spreadsheets.

A 1999 office with a hi-fi on the desk and a man asleep underneath it. — 1999. The stereo won. Everyone else lost.

Colleagues at their own desks, each in headphones, working and dancing in sync. — Same record. Like 1999, minus the frog.

Sources

Works with the apps you already have.

AirPlay

From any iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Music, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube, podcasts. Anything with an AirPlay button. Title, artist, album and the artwork come along for the ride.

Spotify Connect

From any phone with Spotify.

BoomerBlaster appears in Spotify's device list like a speaker would. Android welcome. Premium required, because Spotify says so.⁵

The listener page on a desktop display, a laptop, a phone and a beige CRT monitor, lined up on black, all playing Low Tide (Office Edit).

Listeners

A web page. Nothing to install.

The most compatible app we have ever shipped. Works on the display at the desk, the laptop IT gave you, the phone IT doesn't know about, and the CRT nobody has dared to unplug.

Every generation

Boomers to zoomers.
One downbeat.

Half the office once slept under a desk. Half the office thinks that is a wellness trend. BoomerBlaster Pro is the first ghettoblaster both halves can agree on, because it keeps itself to itself.

A woman in her sixties, headphones on, typing at a standing desk and dancing.

Boomer.

Hands on the keyboard. Hips in 1999. Quarterly report on schedule.

A young man in a beanie and headphones points upward while working at his standing desk.

Zoomer.

One hand typing. One hand pointing at the ceiling. Both on the clock.

Compare

Which office sound is right for you?

	BoomerBlaster ProFree	A Bluetooth speakerFrom 899 kr.	SilenceFree
Who hears your music	Everyone who wants toin sync	Everyonewhether they want to or not	Nobody
Colleagues annoyed	0	All of themeventually	0
Cover art	Yeslarge	No	No
Volume creep	Impossibleeveryone has their own knob	One notch a weekthe frog never notices	None
Noise cancelling	Built into the headphones	Someone going schhh	Is the product
Dancing	Yesat your own desk	Yesbriefly	Discouraged
Chromecast	Nosee footnote 6	No	No
Smoking indoors	Still no	Still no	Still no

Get BoomerBlaster Pro

Free. Like the office coffee.

0 kr.Or 0 kr./month with financing.

Installs on the DJ's Mac with Homebrew, and on nobody else's with anything. Then AirPlay to "BoomerBlaster", send the address round, and watch the floor. Pro is the only model.⁸

brew install den-frie-vilje/tap/boomerblaster
boomerblaster init
boomerblaster start
boomerblaster url

View on GitHub Read the manual

Tech Specs

Requirements

A Mac with Homebrew. A network where devices can reach each other. Headphones for everyone.

Listeners: any browser on a laptop; phones with the screen on.⁷

Sources

AirPlay (classic), via shairport-sync.

Spotify Connect, via librespot. Spotify Premium required.

Sync

Snapcast: server-stamped 20 ms chunks, client clock estimation, hard correction beyond 5 ms.

Audio

44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo. FLAC by default; PCM or Opus by setting.

About 700 kbit/s per listener with FLAC.

Latency

About two seconds from source to ears, by AirPlay's design.

Ports

1780 listener page and control, 1704 and 1705 Snapcast, 5000 AirPlay.

Metadata

Title, artist, album and cover art from AirPlay sources that send them. Title and artist from Spotify Connect.

Privacy

Nothing leaves the local network. No account, no cloud, no telemetry.

In the box

One Python file, standard library only, and the listener page. Fetches Snapweb 0.9.3 on first run, checksum verified, as the DJ's own control page at /admin/.

Not in the box

Chromecast.⁶ Indoor smoking. Your vinyl.

Licence

MIT. Snapcast and Snapweb are GPL-3; shairport-sync and librespot are MIT.