Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jmone]

Is it possible for Gizmo to show up a zone so you can push content to it (eg to replace devices like the ID)?  I'm sure many of us have old andriod devices sitting in draws that could be repurposed as headless renderers.
Thanks Nathan

[JimH]

Not at this time.  It's a reasonable thing to expect.

[fitbrit]

I kind of asked for this recently, Nathan. Except I posted in the media network forum. It might be possible to achieve something similar using an Android DLNA renderer app. I have not yet been able to get it to work such that the tablet shows up as a zone in MC though.
Jim indicated in that thread, that this is possibly a future goal.
I was about to post the link, but I see that you've already posted in that thread!

[jmone]

Thanks - yeah I know these are not new requests, just trying to keep a few Top of Mind due to the recent focus on Gizmo.

[jmone]

Not at this time.  It's a reasonable thing to expect.

Resurfacing this one due to the ongoing struggle to get multi room audio going and the fact that DLNA does not cut the mustard as syncing is so bad you can be on entirely different tracks!

They can, DLNA doesn't really make much of a sync guarantee (unless you use one of those new-fangled DLNA versions which we don't support yet, and hardly any device does either)

After doing more googling, the interweb (and Interact) is full of people trying to get multi room audio going with std components (like PC servers, tablets, renderers etc) .... and failing .... or they end up buying systems like the Sonos.

[jmone]

Thanks for putting this on the futures list, and I was thinking on the general use cases that may need to be considered, especially regarding Synchronisation and how it may work.

Requirements List.
Control: Be able to use any MC/Gizmo/DLNA instance as a control point.  Add the ability to link / unlink zones in Gizmo.
Multiple Zones/devices:  Pushing content to multiple instances of both MC/Gizmo in syc.
Per Channel Recognition:  A zone may need to have the ability to recognise a per channel sub set to which you can assign a Channel (eg Left / Right).  Eg you could have individual active speakers with their own HW renderer.  I saw this with trying to get MC and Sonos playing together, if Sonos pulled from MC then it sent separate channels to their relevant speaker, but it you pushed to the devices over DLNA you could only target a single speaker.

I'm sure there is more / better ideas.

Thanks
Nathan

[fitbrit]

These features could really push MC20 to new heights.

[JimH]

These features could really push MC20 to new heights.

Bob, Hendrik, Adam and I had a field trip today.  Bread for Hendrik, lunch at Chipoltle's, and a stop at Best Buy.  We bought a couple of powered speakers (Sony and Marshall) and we bought our first Sonos device.  Sonos3, I think.

[fitbrit]

Bob and Hendrik and Adam and I had a field trip today.  Bread for Hendrik, lunch at Chipoltle's, and a stop at Best Buy.  We bought a couple of powered speakers (Sony and Marshall) and we bought our first Sonos device.  Sonos3, I think.

Was this a CCTV picture of you paying for the Sonos, Jim?


That's a cryptic response, after quoting me.
It could mean:

1) JRiver has no interest in making a whole house, perfectly-synch'd system;you're even turning to Sonos yourself.

OR

2) You're going to see how Sonos does it, and will go one step beyond in ease of use and price point for these features. You just needed some hardware to tinker with.

OR

3) Something else I have no idea about.

Personally, I hope it's 2 or a mixture of 2 and 3.

[Hendrik]

You know us, we always do what we do!

[fitbrit]

I hope you keep doing it!

[jmone]

I love it when new toys arrive at JR as not long later we get the presents! 

Thanks guys

[kensn]

Kinda funny... I was just thinking the same thing..

I have completed re-capping, re-rectifying and polishing up a Nordmende Tannhauser 57 3D. Since it has a tape in input I wanted a way to push my tunes to it. What a delight it would be to hear new tunes and vintage tunes coming out of this beauty. I have successfully played a cheap MP3 player through it,  and a I have a wireless audio player that is now defunct due to driver issues with Win 7, and was wondering if a Gizmo device could act like a DLNA device with MC19. The unit sounds beautiful with its tube driven 7x11 woofer, electrostatic tweeter and dual midranges but I have yet to see an economical device to use with MC to push music to it. Please implement this.

Ken

[JimH]

Would an Id work?

[kensn]

Would an Id work?

Absolutely... But I have a few android devices laying around already.

Ken

[JimH]

I tried a Sonos device tonight.  It was a Sonos 3.

It stumbled a few times, but worked.  It wasn't anything special.

[jmone]

Yeah they seemed to be overpriced to me (but they are White... I imagine apple will buy them soon  ).

[apgood]

Personally I wouldn't get the Play 3 or 5 whenever I listen to them in the shops they sound a bit boom boxy to me, but I did buy my wife a sonos connect a few years back and it works well for what it does. High WAF.
What has stopped me buying more is the fact it can't play any of my high res music. Now if I can get a jriver solution that stayed in sync across multiple zones that could be linked and unlinked via android app (e.g. gizmo) that would be great.

[nitephlight]

FWIW, I would buy an Id in a heartbeat if Android synergized for effortless whole house HTPC control EVEN if designed specifically for the Id alone. 😜

[Hilton]

I'm looking at using FiiO W1 digital distribution to get around the DLNA Multi-zone sync issue.
Its a WiFi 24/192 optical and 48/16 USB DAC transmitter and receiver pair with up to 4 receivers. $120 a pair.

I'll just use my current Multi-zone config with the transmitter and set the other receiving zones to the same now playing zone if I want album art.
The receivers are tiny and can be battery powered too which opens up the option of using it outside for BBQs with just a iPhone dock speaker with line in. 

I'm finding out how much the receivers are, I'm guessing around $50 per receiver.

[jmczen]

I tried a Sonos device tonight.  It was a Sonos 3.

It stumbled a few times, but worked.  It wasn't anything special.

Hi Jim,

Perhaps it would have been more useful to buy a pair of sonos play 1 instead. The killer feature is really synchronized audio.

[ShirazD]

I'm surprised I haven't seen Airfoil mentioned here. I've been using this with JRiver for many years now in lieue of DLNA/Zones (no good syncing) or Sonos (too expensive).

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

It's a reverse-engineering of Apple's Airplay protocol, which is by far the best software-based audio sync'ing protocol around. Airfoil is quite mature now and their Windows support is solid. You can play to various rooms in your house at the same time, over wifi, sync'ed with impressive precision. It's gotten better over the years.

For a client (receiving audio) you can use any Airplay receiver (there are tonnes on the market, in a variety of form factors), the Airfoil app on an Android or iPhone, or on the Airplay client on a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer -- ie. it's flexible.

In fact this solution works so well that at this point the only disadvantage to using it is simply the fact that it's not integrated into JRiver. I've been hoping for years that Airfoil would be integrated into JRiver, offered as an alternative to, or integrated with, the existing zones system.

[6233638]

Unfortunately I have a number of issues with Airfoil.

1. You can't have it start as a service or hidden in the background. It has to pop up when you launch the program.
 
2. When you use it to send audio to a device, or devices, it continually sends silence to them. This holds onto the device and prevents anything else from connecting. So I have to manually enable Airfoil on the PC when I want to use it, and remember to disable it when I'm finished, or else no-one else can send audio to the speakers.

3. When you enable the "System Audio" feature (the only way to get it working as a zone in MC) it automatically switches your active sound device and sends all system audio to through the AirPlay receivers.
It does this every time you enable/disable the connection so it's a huge annoyance when combined with #2.

4. It ignores the system volume level. While Media Center has internal volume control, and volume protection options, Airfoil does not. Audio gets sent through it at 100%.
When combined with #3 it could potentially fry your speakers if you are using a power amp.

More than a few times now, I have accidentally blasted audio through multiple speakers in the house since it's switched device without me realizing, ignores the system audio, and captured audio from a web ad or YouTube video.

5. There's no way to send different audio to separate devices. There's only the single Airfoil device to send audio to, and then it routes audio to the receivers you enable. So while it does sync, it doesn't do independent audio.

6. It has caching or buffering issues I've yet to be able to solve without restarting the PC.
Sometimes for no apparent reason, audio stutters (even with both the PC and AirPort connected via Ethernet) or has a weird echo effect.
Stopping/restarting playback usually cures the stuttering, but it doesn't seem to help with this echo. Nor does logging out and back in - I have to restart the PC.
 
7. The AirFoil Speakers application is incredibly unstable for me if I try to send audio to the PC, and out to the AirPlay receivers. It crashes at least 3/4 of the time I try to use it.
 
 
 
It is extremely good at sync though, and a good solution if you don't have a need to send audio to the AirPlay devices from anything else. (just leave it connected all the time)


I'd much rather have seen the JRiver team focus on AirPlay integration than the id project.
I have these <$99 receivers in place (much less if you look at eBay prices for the older devices) which have analog + optical out, are capable of perfect sync, and can be played to directly from a mobile device.
Why would I replace them with a $400 device which can't do sync or play from my mobile devices? A single id costs more than all the receivers I have, combined.

[themusicdan]

I realize this thread has not been active since July, but I wanted to add another use case for this setup of Gizmo as a Zone.

If you could use Gizmo as a Zone, you would be able to control the audio not only in different rooms in the same building, but also control the audio in different places. My family likes to play what we call the Music Game, where we take turns picking songs to play. With Zones, we could do this remotely, taking turns adding to a playlist that we are all able to listen to even if we are separated by miles.

The alternative I've come up with is to set up a streaming radio service, but this seems overkill for a private listening service for a single family.