See the 1st attached picture where I show the Overview for my 6 zones. The 2nd picture shows what it looks like when I select my
Home zone under
Playing Now.
By definition, all branches under the top node
Playing Now are "zones". Having MC default to naming them
Zone1, Zone2... etc, would not be very helpful. Instead, when you create a new zone, users can name them to whatever is useful to identify what they represent. It is been so long since I only had a single zone, I forget what MC defaults to for the initial (single) zone name.
These zones represent where/what MC will play as defined by the user. They can be different locations within your home, or they can be driven by parameters the user defines to route through different components in the audio chain. For example, I have a separate zone for my headphones, as I want to use different DSP parameters for it, versus my regular speakers. Once you get the hang of how to create/setup/use MC zones you will understand how this feature sets MC apart from all other media players.
My personal primary purpose of my zones, is any time I start something to play, that it doesn't wipe out my current playing queue. For example, if I launch an internet radio station (e.g. Spotify), it is automatically diverted to my
Internet zone, thus keeping my
Home and
Headphones zones playlists intact. This automatic diversion requires using
Zone Switch, which I am not going to lie, does take some effort to figure out and get right. But the payoff is huge. Here are some links for that.
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Zoneshttps://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76605.0Final comment about the
Playing Now Overview: it is just that, an overview, and the amount of information displayed is necessarily limited. It allows you to see every zone simultaneously, quickly compare their status, and choose to begin, pause, or stop play from one location without having to switch to other tree branches to activate each zone. Selecting the zone's title bar within the overview page makes it "active" and instantly shows its corresponding info (song title, track progress, etc) in the player header bar at the very top. You can even have all the zones playing simultaneously if you choose to.