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[fitbrit]

I finally got around to trying zones yesterday, and I am blown away! I know many of you have been doing this for years, but I thought I'd draw attention to this little-heralded gem of a feature.

I recently bought a 1923 house, but we've renovated and refurbished it into the 21st century. All rooms have at least a Cat 6 gigabit port. The media room and dining room have various cables riunning between them, including optical, coax, RCA and dedicated cat6 runs (for HDMI over ethernet, and USB over ethernet baluns). The idea was to get as much flexibility as possible, so that we could play the same or different tunes in the two adjacent rooms.

Since the dining room will have its own HTPC any day now, I knew I could just use the tremote functionality or even DLNA with MC15 running on both. However, a couple of days ago I tried sometihng I was very sceptical about. That was to use my HDMI connection in the media room for audio and video as usual, but then to use the optical connection from my motherboard to send music to the dining room. I've had enough audio troubles in the past to believe it would be next to impossible to let MC take over control of the non-default audio output (optical), while also sending the same or other signals through the HDMI. Well, it worked perfectly, first time around! I'm very happy indeed. The dining room has its own AVR, and 7.1 in wall system, and I think this is a much better solution than sacrificing channels on one's AVR for multi-zone capabilities.

My only gripe was that the whole zone configuration options were quite hard to find, being under playback options, rather than the main option settings accessed by ctrl-O; I think it makes much more sense there. It was only because I knew MC was supposed to be able to do this that I went rooting around looking for it.

I feel much more confident about recommending MC15 to others who want to do something like this in future.  In the past, I've kind of known it should work with MC15, but never knew how well. Well done, team.

[sunfire7]

nice, man! congrats!  

[newsposter]

Yup, zones and spdif optical cables.  You can get nice USB sound adapters with 5.1/7.1 output and spdif for around $25 each.  Run your cables to each room, add a low-cost amp with spdif input and you're all set.

[JimH]

Run your cables to each room, add a low-cost amp with spdif input and you're all set.

Listening to: 'At Last' from 'The Best Of Etta James 20th Century Masters' by 'Etta James' with Media Center 15

[fitbrit]

Yup, zones and spdif optical cables.  You can get nice USB sound adapters with 5.1/7.1 output and spdif for around $25 each.  Run your cables to each room, add a low-cost amp with spdif input and you're all set.

Yeah, if only I had thought about this before. All the plastering and painting is done. I lucked out and found a contractor who is really into this stuff so he was really keen to see my finished set-up. I got him to keep adding cables, and he was patient. The wife would not like it if we started to run more now though. Still, the Cat6 really helps - it's very versatile. I wish I knew the cool contractor before I got the house wired up with Cat6; he was much cheaper than the "pros" we used, and much better too. I would have got him to run at least 5-6 cat6 drops into each room. You can extend HDMI and USB to crazy lengths this way. With 23" touchscreens $300 or less a house can have a real wow factor and practicality with MC15 for not much money. For music alone I could just add a $200 Atom box running MC in TheaterView's Obsidian Touchscreen. Other rooms may get one of my several DLNA rendering devices such as the WDTVLive, Patriot Box Office or Xtreamer.

Dell also recently had the Aluratek Home Theater UPnP device on sale for $70. It has both wired and wireless connections, internet radio and USB too. It doesn't play Flac, though, but I hope I can get DLNA transcoding going on from MC. This is going in the kitchen with an Apple HiFi as the amplified speaker.

For a couple of the other rooms I may get the wireless JRiver device.

The basement gets my old HTPC and another 11.1 sound system (like the media room). The dining room is 7.1, and almost exclusive audio only; there is a 24" touchscreen connected to the mini HTPC there, but not practical to watch anything on. Plus we want just music while we eat, but some nice visualisations running during a party would be cool. The rest of the rooms get plain stereo for now, except my 5.1 office.

Thanks for the encouragement, sunfire7.

[newsposter]

so run your 23" touch screens with a diskless/RDP slim 'terminal' and hook your amplifiers to the slim terminal audio output.  You'll want to connect your semi-intelligent remote terminals together via windows terminal server on the htpc.

just another way.

[fitbrit]

so run your 23" touch screens with a diskless/RDP slim 'terminal' and hook your amplifiers to the slim terminal audio output.  You'll want to connect your semi-intelligent remote terminals together via windows terminal server on the htpc.

just another way.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I had to do Google searches to even begin to understand what you were referring to.

Therefore the easiest solution for me, but probably a bit more expensive, would be to get some more ION/ION2 based nettop full PCs like the Acer REVO 3600 (ION lite, ~$230 on sale) or the Revo 3610 (ION, ~$360).

The latter will be hooked up to one touchscreen. In fact I'm typing on it now. The other touchscreen I have now will be connected to my basement HTPC in clone mode with a ~52" HDTV. So for ~$600 per room for nettop and touchscreen, I could have a whole house multimedia system for a LOT less than much smaller, non multi-touch Crestron touchscreens alone cost. I could see each room with such a setup within 2-3 years. Of course, it doesn't pay to do this all at once for the rooms that aren't used much right now; by the time I need such a system in one of the smaller basement rooms, the whole setup would be significantly cheaper per room, and much easier to set up an additional room (from gained experience).

[sunfire7]

fitbrit
very nice set-up and ideas.  Im now saving for my house and when I have it my next step will be something like you're doing!
I hope for then J river will still be in development as now. Best multimedia app J River Forever!

[fitbrit]

Sunfire, if you're in the US (or even Canada like I am), I cannot recommend Monoprice.com enough. Great prices on materials for your setup. I bought several orders in consecutive weeks for my house, and they sent me an email giving me special deals (wholesale prices) for anything I get from there. HDMI, ethernet, optical, speaker etc. cables are at amazing prices, and really high quality. Shipping to Canada is crazy expensive, but still saves me money compared to buying locally.
Oh btw their in-wall speakers are tremendous value and cost a fraction of the name brands that they're actually made by. I'll post pics as soon as more of the setup is completed.

[sunfire7]

thank you so much for your recomendations!

Edit: Amazing site!

[JimH]

Here's an AVS Forum thread on zones:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18915563#post18915563

[fitbrit]

Here's an AVS Forum thread on zones:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18915563#post18915563

I'm afraid I kind of lost it with iq100 in that thread. I just got so fed up of post after post of his. Jeez.

[JimH]

I saw it.  You're a good person.  I don't think he can help it.

[JustinChase]

I'm afraid I kind of lost it with [former member] in that thread. I just got so fed up of post after post of his. Jeez.

LOL, that was funny

I'm super glad you've got yours working well, and are all wired for the (near) future, and hope you'll continue to share your successes.

I also knew zones were available in MC for years, but hadn't had a chance to play with them until a few months ago.

Currently, I only have the living room and patio wired (from my Marantz receiver), but it works great.

One of these days, I'll split the 7.1 into the 4 stereo to wire a few other rooms in the house, and go to HDMI streaming to the receiver, but that means a new video card and receiver, so 2 zones is good enough for now

Control sill remains the elusive part of the equation for me.  a small touch screen, a mobile device (my current best solution) or small compu as you suggested earlier?

I have no cables run to any of the rooms I'd like to add music and video to, and don't want to run the "wrong" cable now, so I'm still in research phase.

using a mobile device to control is good enough for now (getting better soon  ?   ), but I still need to get the signal from the HTPC to the zone's speakers and display devices.

There seem to be many options and many prices, HDMI cable, Cat 6, associated adaptors, speaker cable, amplification, etc.

seems easier to not progress 

Thanks.

[dbalkunjr]

I don't know if I should post this here or in the webremote thread.  But here it goes.  I know that on the PC interface of MC I can "Synch all Zones" and I realize that this implementation is far from perfect because of latency and such.  I have 5 zones in my house.  All of them are separated enough that I do not have to worry if the synchronization is spot on where it will mess with peoples heads.  The problem lies in that I will be in a zone controlling it using webremote on my Droid or Ipod Touch.  When I move onto another zone and want to continue listening to the queued up playlist I have to change zones and then drill down thru the menus to start the playlist in that zone.  This is a pain.  Since I listen to most playlists shuffled, when I start it up in a new zone it usually starts playing a different song that was playing in the zone I just exited.  Is there a way using webremote to sync zones to alleviate this problem?

[Matt]

I don't know if I should post this here or in the webremote thread.  But here it goes.  I know that on the PC interface of MC I can "Synch all Zones" and I realize that this implementation is far from perfect because of latency and such.  I have 5 zones in my house.  All of them are separated enough that I do not have to worry if the synchronization is spot on where it will mess with peoples heads.  The problem lies in that I will be in a zone controlling it using webremote on my Droid or Ipod Touch.  When I move onto another zone and want to continue listening to the queued up playlist I have to change zones and then drill down thru the menus to start the playlist in that zone.  This is a pain.  Since I listen to most playlists shuffled, when I start it up in a new zone it usually starts playing a different song that was playing in the zone I just exited.  Is there a way using webremote to sync zones to alleviate this problem?

Are you looking for a button like "Sync from zone x" or looking for a way to lock the zones together on the server so it's not necessary to configure them independently?

Thanks.

[dbalkunjr]

Both options would be useful for my purposes. If I could only have one of them then it would be "Sync from Zone X".  This happens so often and it gets frustrating when I am listening to a song in a playlist that I am jammin to and as I walk into another zone I have to queue everything all over again.  If I could use WebRemote just like the options we have in Playback in the MC PC interface, that would be great.

[jmone]

Are you looking for a button like "Sync from zone x" or looking for a way to lock the zones together on the server so it's not necessary to configure them independently?

Thanks.

During a party I'm looking for a simple - "output to all zones" so that the one track is playing everywhere and in sync!

[flac.rules]

During a party I'm looking for a simple - "output to all zones" so that the one track is playing everywhere and in sync!

Yeah, that would be nice.

[sdgrizdan]

Yeah, that would be nice.

+1

[Bill Kearney]

Syncing output zones never works.  Better to just use a multi-channel amp instead.  I do this.  Three MC zones fed into a Russound whole-house amp.  If I want to hear the same thing everywhere I only need to select that source, which can be done from any keypad in the house.   Yeah, not cheap but brain-dead simple for everyone to use, and reliable.

[flac.rules]

Syncing output zones never works.  Better to just use a multi-channel amp instead.  I do this.  Three MC zones fed into a Russound whole-house amp.  If I want to hear the same thing everywhere I only need to select that source, which can be done from any keypad in the house.   Yeah, not cheap but brain-dead simple for everyone to use, and reliable.

Why wouldn't using several zones be reliable? It's always nice to have a multiple channel amp, but it doesn't do all you can do with zones, and the other way around, they compliment each other.

[gappie]

i like the new way zones can be linked. 
when i link two zones while music is playing. i have to stop playback before it will work.
is this a limitation of the program and/or something technical?
or is it something that depends on some settings?

thanks
 
gab

[Matt]

i like the new way zones can be linked. 
when i link two zones while music is playing. i have to stop playback before it will work.
is this a limitation of the program and/or something technical?
or is it something that depends on some settings?

thanks
 
gab

I think if you link a zone to another zone, the zone you dragged should start playing whatever is in the destination zone. 

We haven't implemented this yet, but we plan to.

[gappie]

thanks. now i know that how it works is how it is and that even better is to come.

 
gab

[Matt]

A zone linking feature is in the works.  As fitbrit said, OMG! Zones!

[fitbrit]

A zone linking feature is in the works.  As fitbrit said, OMG! Zones!

Yup, can't wait to try this. Will "physical" zones (connected to a sound card) be able to link with DLNA ones and vice versa?

[Matt]

Yup, can't wait to try this. Will "physical" zones (connected to a sound card) be able to link with DLNA ones and vice versa?

You can link all types of zones, but physical zones will work best.

Once you add a DLNA zone to a link, I think it really would need to stop after each file.  Then, when all zones have stopped, it could start playback again.  This is because gapless & cross-fading aren't possible with DLNA devices.  A system to do this stop-after-each-file approach will not be part of the initial release of zone linking.

Also, the initial release will require users to ensure linked zones have similar between track settings.  Hopefully a later release will allow linked zones to, while linked, inherit settings from the first zone in the link.

These caveats aside, the system works surprisingly well.  I've been testing with three different soundcards, amplifiers, and output methods.  It pretty much just works.

[WinoOutWest]

Wow... I think I remember asking for this about 5 years ago.  This will be nice!  This is why I've never begrudged the regular upgrade fees with JRiver.  Great addition.

[fitbrit]

I just tested linking zones and how sweet it works! I'm getting some stuttering, but that's purely an optical cable issue, which will be resolved soon. Thanks Matt et al - this is HUGE, and I hope you sell more MC15 installations based on this alone.

[JimH]

[Edit to remove build 86.  A newer build is available at the top of this board.  Zone linking has several enhancements.]

[JimH]

The post above is not an error.  I've put it here because the zone linking is an important new feature, but this build might be less stable than the default downloads.

[Matt]

These changes will be in build 87, coming hopefully next week sometime:

Changed: When playing to linked zones, playback statistics are no longer counted multiple times.
Changed: When zones are linked, the between tracks and seek modes will inherit from the first zone in the link.
Changed: Leading and trailing silence suppression is disabled when zones are linked, as the amount of trailing silence removed can vary slightly based on buffer states, making it cause sync problems.
Changed: Seeking in linked zones works more reliably.
NEW: Linked zones monitor drift and if too much drift occurs, playback is stopped at the end of the current file and then the next track is started in sync. (a user can force a manual sync any time by pausing playback)

[gworrel]

I just wanted the administrators to know that I bought MC last week because of the zones feature.  I bought 4 identical refurbished Insignia brand stereo receivers on eBay from Best buy for about $30 each. I also bought a used M-audio Delta 410 sound card that has 4 pairs of RCA outputs that can be used to send output to 4 zones.

I tested it a few days ago with my poolside zone and it worked great.  I was a little confused by the language of synchronizing "to" or "from" the current zone.  How can I tell what the current zone is?  I thought if a zone was on that it would have a check mark but I am not sure that was the case. I have yet to try to make it work with my Harmony 1000 remote.  It would be really nice if I could control it with my Palm Pre as I walk around the house.

I wanted this setup as much so I could listen to Car Talk and other radio and podcasts as for music. Thanks.

[JimH]

gworrel,
Welcome.  Great post.  Thanks for stopping by to let us know.  I hope you will stick around and help shape our zones setup.

Jim

[Matt]

I was a little confused by the language of synchronizing "to" or "from" the current zone.

I think you will find the new linking system easier to understand.  You drag zones onto other zones to link them, or drag them back to Playing Now to unlink them.  Linked zones are shown visually in the tree.

How can I tell what the current zone is?

The name of the current zone should be in the player information display at the top.  If not, you can right-click 'Customize' and use the [Zone] keyword to add it.

[gworrel]

Thanks JimH and Matt.

I will play around with it a bit more this weekend.  I am curious what remote options people are using with zones. What we need is a small touchpad wireless wifi or rf remote that can be mounted to the wall in each zone to control and display Now Playing information. I would love to hear of any such options out there. Or is everyone going to Iphone and Android apps for remote control? As I mentioned I have a Palm Pre which is lagging in development efforts. If I could replace my Harmony 1000 with an inexpensive mobile device (Itouch?) app I would seriously consider it. 

So linked zones means they are synchronized?  I was surprised when I first started using the zones feature to discover that I could have a different player for each zone.  Does this mean that I could be watching a movie in one zone and playing music in another?

[fitbrit]

So linked zones means they are synchronized?  I was surprised when I first started using the zones feature to discover that I could have a different player for each zone.  Does this mean that I could be watching a movie in one zone and playing music in another?

Yes, absolutely! That's mostly what I do. If you want music in each zone, but different tracks, you can probably create a split view to monitor what's going on in which zone too. Or you can do this while watching video in a detached window (primary and secondary monitor set up for those of us who have these, for example). So... watch the video on one monitor/TV; observe/control what's going on in the various zones on the other.

While not as cheap as a single iPod touch, I'm going to be using a dual core Atom/Ion PC running MC15 and a wall-mounted 23" Touchscreen as a control pad. This gives one a lot of flexibility, because it's a fully-fledged PC, capable of running Theatre View, for about $600, including the touch screen. I'll have two of these combos in different rooms. With networked zones, it'll allow a lot of control, especially with the "play here or there" functionality of connecting to a library server.

Another option may be a small Windows 7 tablet, such as an Archos device or similar. These may be able to run a full MC15 installation too. I'd also love to see a dedicated J River control app for jailbroken iPhones/iPods and iPads.

[jmone]

Got my zones (more or less) in sync.  It was an odd process running back and forward to a convergence zone as you adjust the sync (kinda makes you feel ill when the get close to being in syc but are still out). I found moving the slider a little difficult when getting down to the fine tuning (could not use the arrow keys or type a value).  Now - just need to add the ID and more muzik everywhere!

I can now leave Inside and Outside linked and just use my receivers "Zone 2" On/Off button to turn outside On and Off (just like the old fashioned A+B Speaker button!)

Thanks
Nathan

[wo0zy]

I'd just like to add my thanks to the devs for this great feature. Absolutely fantastic!

Has anyone tried configuring multiple zones using the discrete outputs from an onboard realtek sound chip? I've been testing using an Intel H57JG board which has on board realtek ALC889 with support for 10 channel audio however I'm only trying to configure up to 4 zones (using the outputs used for 7.1 operation).

What I'm finding is MC only sees three of the 4 outputs (front, rear and centre/sub only) and when I configure each zone to use one of these outputs each all zones still play to the front left/right channels.

I acknowledge that this is likely an issue with the realtek codec or drivers rather than MC but I was hoping someone else could confirm that they've seen this and maybe suggest a workaround.

Many thanks,

Wo0zy

[flac.rules]

Good job, its a very nice feature. Just a few small features to go, and we can reach whole-house server-based music-nirvana

[Tanoshimi]

So I have a question regarding Zones before I upgrade to 15 (I've been using 12 for years and stubbornly refusing to upgrade every other year or so).  Here's what I have:
- Laptop connected to Plasma
- Laptop Connected to Plasma
- Desktop connected to Projector
- Western Digital networked video player connected to LCD
- GIGABit NAS holding Movies
- NAS holding music and personal video
- ATI Remote Wonder RF PC Remote control

All are connected by Cat6 cable, and I've been able to watch the same/different video (even HD) from all of them.  I have no library capability across them all.  I tried sharing the library files (with all but the one machine set to open in read only mode), but that was glitchy.  I've tried Zones to have one instance of MC12 running and displays sent to all other devices.  I can get 6 videos (or the same video 6 times) playing on the one machine at the same time in 6 different windows for Zones, but do not know how to get them across the network to the other units.  Here's what I want to do:
- Play 6 different movies from 6 different locations, most likely PC/Laptop connected to the TV
- Play the same movie on 6 different machines (Synched is cool, but not essential).
- Play different music in each room
- Play the same music in each room
- Be able to access smartlists, or individual media items, from each location.
- Use a single remote control (because it's radio frequency, it can control from anywhere) to select which PC/Laptop (basically, TV or Zone) I wish to control, and play/pause/volume/ etc.

My (limited) experience with Zones has left me with basically 3 issues I haven't been able to resolve using Zones.  Not sure if MC15 is better equipped, or if I'm just doing something wrong.  Here are my problems:
1. Haven't figured out how to make a Zone go to a different networked computer, rather than one that's directly connected (think Media Extenders in Windows Media Center).
2. How to access the playlists/smartlists, guts of MC12 from the Display mode.  Does Theaterview show up in the Display?
3. I can switch Zones with Ctrl-T, but there's no indicator which Zone is active in full screen mode.  Is there a simple way to display the Zone name for 2 seconds when it becomes active so I can tell when I've hit the Source button (programmed to send Ctrl-T) enough?

Based upon my hardware (all networked computers connected to TV's) and my needs (sharing the library individually among those units), what's the best setup?

[gulp]

I hope I can use this feature for my following demand, could someone please help me?

I want to connect two different DLNA server devices (with different settings) to a renderer and separate zones. I then want to automatically switch zones playing to my DLNA renderer, depending on what DSD sample rate is played.

How can I connect a DLNA config to a zone? So far I just found how to connect non DLNA gear.

THANKS!

[JimH]

You can load one DLNA Server and play to multiple DLNA Renderers.

[gulp]

You can load one DLNA Server and play to multiple DLNA Renderers.

I maybe mixed DLNA server and renderer terms because in JRiver the configuration of the renderer is first called „add/edit DLNA Server“ and then „add Audiophile 24bit DAC“.

My renderer Airlens is automatically added to JRiver after I configured it as Audiophile 24 bit DAC. But when I add a second Audiophile 24bit DAC with a different DoPE setting, there’s no second Airlens added to put it to a different zone that could be selected based on a rule.

How can I add a second Airlens renderer connected to the second Audiophile DAC configuration?

I saw that I can have two DAC configurations, two zone configurations, I can switch zones by rules and I can associate a DAC configuration to a renderer (DLNA server) and link a zone to a renderer. Besides a DLNA renderer I can add a non DLNA renderer, but I couldn’t find out how to add a second DLNA based renderer in the Play now tree in order to link a different zone to it or associate a different DAC configuration to it.

My impression is, as mighty and genius the options are, terms are confusing and I need some help ;-)

[gulp]

My main question is how I can add a second dynamic zone for a DLNA device, which I could link to an add. DLNA Server (Audiophile 24bit DAC config).

To create a  local zone is no problem but doesn't help me. When I create a new dynamic zone JRiver asks me for a URL. When I key in the IP of the renderer, nothing happens.

So as soon as someone can help me solve creation of the add DLNA zone, I can configure the zone switch depending on DSD sample rates.

[gulp]

…or if none can help…ist there any better documentation about adding a dynamic zone available than that it exists? Did anyone use this feature before?