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[Craig]

MC2Slim is a small program that runs alongside Media Center and allows you to treat your Squeezeboxes as MC Zones and play your music as if they were a soundcard on your PC.

The program needs to be installed and run on the same PC that you use for MC but can connect to a remote Slimserver.

More info and the download can be found at
http://www.duff-zapp.co.uk

Enjoy
Craig

[JimH]

Great news, Craig!  Thanks!

[Craig]

Thanks Jim,
Now if only I had a working beta of MC12..... 

Craig

[JimH]

Here's a link to the Squeezebox:
http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_overview.html

[scthom]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I'll try it out.  SlimServer is fine for what it does, it's what it doesn't do that I miss 

[JONCAT]

Anyone tested this? How's it working?

DC

[scthom]

I actually d/l it but didn't try it yet because of my busy schedule.  I was hoping for an implementation that didn't require SlimServer to run alongside MC.  But I like that it's set up as a separate zone.

[Craig]

I actually d/l it but didn't try it yet because of my busy schedule.  I was hoping for an implementation that didn't require SlimServer to run alongside MC.  But I like that it's set up as a separate zone.

Well my logic there was that if you had a Squeezebox then you'd allready have Slimserver running, I couldn't see any point in writing a new server.

There'll be an MC12 compatible version along shortly.

Craig

[scthom]

Well my logic there was that if you had a Squeezebox then you'd allready have Slimserver running, I couldn't see any point in writing a new server.

I do.  I'm not faulting your logic 

I don't know why, I actually hadn't thought much about it.  I was just hoping to not run SlimServer.  I guess I was thinking of a replacement server, except without the web interface and all of the bells and whistles (we don't need another library), that would be accessed from MC.

But hey, I'm not complaining, I haven't even actually used it yet.  I'm just ecstatic that somebody started it!!  In case others haven't said it yet, Thanks.

[Craig]

Scott

Well If you used it exclusively then you wouldn't need to maintain your Slimserver library. If you play a file through the CLI as I do, then it get's played whether it's in Slims library or not.

Craig

[alexzogh]

MC2Slim is a small program that runs alongside Media Center and allows you to treat your Squeezeboxes as MC Zones and play your music as if they were a soundcard on your PC.

The program needs to be installed and run on the same PC that you use for MC but can connect to a remote Slimserver.

More info and the download can be found at
http://www.duff-zapp.co.uk

Enjoy
Craig

Great program!

I use musiclobby (www.cinemaronline.com) as a touchscreen front end to MC, and have my squeezebox(s) connected up to my multi-zone home audio system. I LOVE IT!

I was using the web interface of the squeezeboxes to control them, but now all of the zones are controllable from my touchscreen, I only have one problem. My squeezeboxes are setup as zone 2, and zone 3. I have not figured out how to silence zone 2 and zone 3. When I start one of my squeezeboxes, whatever is playing also get's piped to the server soundcard, which is actually zone 1 in my system.

Is there a way to configure my squeezebox zones to audio output to the equivalent of /dev/null? I tried using the "disk writer", but that's a total hack....


any ideas would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'm going to post my setup over at the musiclobby forums, as I'm guessing this will solve some problems for other users. THANK YOU.

[Craig]

Great program!

I use musiclobby (www.cinemaronline.com) as a touchscreen front end to MC, and have my squeezebox(s) connected up to my multi-zone home audio system. I LOVE IT!

I was using the web interface of the squeezeboxes to control them, but now all of the zones are controllable from my touchscreen, I only have one problem. My squeezeboxes are setup as zone 2, and zone 3. I have not figured out how to silence zone 2 and zone 3. When I start one of my squeezeboxes, whatever is playing also get's piped to the server soundcard, which is actually zone 1 in my system.

Is there a way to configure my squeezebox zones to audio output to the equivalent of /dev/null? I tried using the "disk writer", but that's a total hack....


any ideas would be appreciated. Otherwise, I'm going to post my setup over at the musiclobby forums, as I'm guessing this will solve some problems for other users. THANK YOU.

You could always set up MC to output the zones to an unused output on your sound card but I just make sure that they're using 'Internal Volume' and leave them muted. Make sure the MC2Slim 'Use  MC Volume' is unchecked though.

Craig

[alexzogh]

You could always set up MC to output the zones to an unused output on your sound card but I just make sure that they're using 'Internal Volume' and leave them muted. Make sure the MC2Slim 'Use  MC Volume' is unchecked though.

Craig

Thanks for the thoughts. This doesn't work for me because MC is installed on the PC in my home theater - there are no unused outputs.

I wound up installing a great little app named virtual audio cable, which creates a "virtual out". On a whole side note, VAC allows you to pipe the output of JMRC to the input of any other application (using a virtual 'in'). for fun, I piped it to an audio streaming application. I then tuned my squeezebox to the audio stream, and it worked. Not nearly as nice as your solution which passes ID tag info, volume changes, and keeps things synced, but is a workaround to get not  only a squeezebox up and running to play a MC zone, but also anything that can play streaming audio (like my old audiotron's)

Alex

[JONCAT]

I am considering adding an audio zone in the bedroom (now that I have the living room taken care of), and was wondering if I can run say Zone 3 using this application but also, if I am in the bedroom, control my Squeezebox with the remote.

So I have Zone 3 playing, initiated from the main PC, then go into Zone 3...could I then have total control over Zone 3 with the Squeeze's remote...?

v/r
DC

[JONCAT]

Big question:

CRAIG-is this app able to sync playback perfectly between zones?

If I add a squeezebox or two it would be instead of hardwiring new Zones out of my EMU1212M which could then (hopefully) be sync'd by MC.

Will MC2Slim wokr? I see you can't, or at least not yet, use crossfading palyabck and some other options. Can more people report on how well this app wotks with the three different zone options...

v/r
DC

[Craig]

Doc

I am considering adding an audio zone in the bedroom (now that I have the living room taken care of), and was wondering if I can run say Zone 3 using this application but also, if I am in the bedroom, control my Squeezebox with the remote.

So I have Zone 3 playing, initiated from the main PC, then go into Zone 3...could I then have total control over Zone 3 with the Squeeze's remote...?

v/r
DC

I don't know if you'd call it total control but you have play/pause/stop/skipback/skipforward control from your remote, these functions are much improved in the upcoming release though. If you stop playback from your remote then you can do anything you would normally do with your Squeezebox without help from MC

Big question:

CRAIG-is this app able to sync playback perfectly between zones?

If I add a squeezebox or two it would be instead of hardwiring new Zones out of my EMU1212M which could then (hopefully) be sync'd by MC.

Will MC2Slim wokr? I see you can't, or at least not yet, use crossfading palyabck and some other options. Can more people report on how well this app wotks with the three different zone options...

v/r
DC

I can't sync MC and a Squeezebox because I just can't get the timing resolution from MC, you could sync 2 Squeezebox's through Slimserver and then control them as 1 from MC, I've not tried that but it should work.

I couldn't use MC's crossfading becaue of the way I have to detect when a song is ending, I've seen talk of MC events being added to MC12 - that would mean a re-jig of my program but would help with things like that.

You could set Slimserver to do the crossfading then MC2Slim should keep MC in sync, again I've not tried that but I will if I get a chance.

Also, I don't recommend actually listening to the zone that's controlling the Squeezebox in MC because I have to jiggle around with the MC song position to keep them in sync. This causes glitches in MC playback.

Hope this helps
Craig

[JONCAT]

Any updates on this front? MC12 implementation?

thanks
DC

[Craig]

Hi Doc,
Well the program is up to V1.53 so there's been quite a few changes along the way.

I'm actually part way through quite a major rewrite of the internals to slicken it up but as yet the event interface of MC has not been developed sufficiently to make MC2Slim fully event based.
There's been plenty of chat in the plug in developers forum but unfortunatley not too many changes :-(

Craig
 

[Rob L]

Presumably there's a lot of Squeezebox-specific stuff in this that would prevent you from using this with other hardware (e.g. soundbridge)?

I was just wondering if at the lowest level there was a stream that you could just point pretty much any player at, but it sounds like it's a lot more sophisticated than that...

[Craig]

Hi Rob,

MC2Slim doesn't stream anything, it controls Slimserver which in turn controls the Squeezebox so if you can connect a Soundbridge to Slimserver then you can control it. I seem to remember something about Roku using Slimserver but I'm not sure. Maybe you know more?

Craig

[Rob L]

ah, ok, yeah, I haven't tried getting it to talk to slim server because it's pretty much working fine for me without it. But I also remember something about how it should talk to it - but then I guess it's not doing a lot more than streaming...

so I guess a limitation of your system is DRM?

I was kind of hoping that it would work more as a virtual soundcard - or is it still doing that?

[Craig]

ah, ok, yeah, I haven't tried getting it to talk to slim server because it's pretty much working fine for me without it. But I also remember something about how it should talk to it - but then I guess it's not doing a lot more than streaming...

It seems that you can connect anything to http://serverIP:9000/stream.mp3 and it will show up in Slimserver as a player. MC2Slim will then see it as a player too and you should be able to control it from MC (I've not tried it though).

so I guess a limitation of your system is DRM?

Slimserver doesn't support DRM'd files so no, you won't be able to play them using MC2Slim

I was kind of hoping that it would work more as a virtual soundcard - or is it still doing that?

I see it as a virtual soundcard but in reality, it monitors what MC is playing and tells the Squeezebox to play the same.

Someone has just come up with a wav input plugin for SS so in theory you may be able to route the output of a soundcard through this and stream anything you like. I've not had a play with this either though.

Craig

[mirdle]

Ok this potentially sounds very exciting.   Has anyone been able to use MC on your PC to control the output of a squeezebox?  It sounds like you should be able to by using MC2Slim but I'd like to know if anyone has actually gotten it to work with one squeezebox and multiple squeezeboxes?

Thanks,
Mark.

[Craig]

Hi mirdle,

There's always been more discussion about MC2Slim on the squeezebox forums.

Try these for size:-
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=27281
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29622
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34438

The current version is V1.53 and can be found at www.duff-zapp.co.uk

Craig