outsider,
1. How does Tonecast interface with MC? Does it appear as another soundcard to which MC plays music to?Download it and see, it's shareware/trialware and very very small - not sure how long the demo works for, but long enough....
Na, really, it is a small app. that has two parts, a broadcaster and a reciever. It's like Shoutcast, but is independant - and will stream any audio source. It does not require Winamp to run (although there is a plugin for Winamp).
You tun it and set it to intercept sound (from the soundcard) and broadcast it on the lan using UDP. No changes are required to MC or anything else.
You can either re-encode using Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2 at various bit rates/channels/phsyco-acoustic's etc. or uncompressed audio...that's what I am using and it takes 1.411 Mbit of bandwidth (easily covered on a Wi-Fi).
You can also set gain, buffers etc...
It's a very simple, but somewhat primitive interface and took some playing to get it to work. Tutorial on the site is pretty crap and the doco/help is also crap.
You then go the remote PC and set it up as a reciever and boom! out comes crisp, uncompressed audio.
2. So you still need a PC next to the stereo...Yep, still need a PC next to the stereo...but one step at a time...
I have a couple of EIPIA-M mini-ITX's which I am not using, one EPIA-M6000 us set up as a fully passivly cooled PC - was my server - and has the teeny weeny plug pack power supply and uses bugger all power...sooo, it's going to make it's way inside the TiVo box - plenty of room and serve as my audio server. I'd only get about $200AUD for the lot on eBay and a Squeezebox costs $500+AUD here, so it's a pretty good solution. Esp. as I might just make my next project to make the EPIA-M into a media player to play Div-X etc movies on the TV....but that's another day.
As for streaming to a Squeezebix or other, not sure if this would work - ie. if it's a "normal" streaming audio" feed or if it's some proporiatory system being used...I might play with this at some stage as yeah, I do prefer discrete devices - much more reliable.
I'm still going to persue a better, (read propper), solution to this as I think it's something that should be done...and that may be via Apple Airport, squeezebox (or other), or even an ethernet enabled speaker....
So keep the ideas coming guys!