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[jmone]

Re: Can I direct video to MC on HTPC and audio to MC on laptop?

As of yet, it can not be currently done.....    ...and I've spend a fair bit of time and money trying to do this (and just for 2ch analogue audio)!

My use case is during a party we have a PJ connected to a small MC HTPC (NUC) that plays the Video on a large outside screen but I need to get the audio to an amp in a separate location some 25m away (line of sight, or 50m cable run).

Asked about using two MC instances (one with each stream) but was told that it is not currently supported, so then I've tried:
- Wireless AV Senders (to far, for me to get a solid connection)
- Wired Audio Senders - I have this Gefen device and while it works, the sound quality is compromised and you need a dedicated Cat-5 run (eg not over your network).
- DLNA Devices using this windows virtual sound driver that outputs the sound to any DLNA device on your network.  This worked well but the issue is the sync (for me) is out by around 5-Sec and the MC's AV Sync Correction (Tools --> Video --> Advanced) only lets you adjust up to around 2.5sec.  If this setting was relaxed then we would have a winner!

I'm now waiting for some more stuff to turn up (should this week), based on Class 1 (100m) Bluetooth receivers and transmitters.  I don't have high hopes.... but we will see.

The next option are extenders like these but it is now stupid expensive for such a use case.

Any other ideas is welcome!

Thanks
Nathan

PS - the "ideal" solution would be to have under "Tools --> Audio --> Audio Device, the ability to select devices from other MC instances and a wider range in AV Sync Correction (Tools --> Video --> Advanced) to cater for what is going to be a greater latency than what local resources would have.

The "next best" would be just a wider range in AV Sync Correction so virtual sound card drivers like the one I linked to could be brought into sync

[jmone]

Found the thread on this here and Hendrik's advice

The reason this isn't allowed is that its rather inconsistent. Video can , for technical reasons, only play in one local zone. How do we determine which zone to use for that? There is no concept of primary zone as such.

[jmone]

Just had a play using a different virtual sound card driver between two PC's

http://www.stardock.com/products/acousticbridge/

It worked really well.  I could play a video on my Main PC in MC and the sound came out of my laptops speakers (not even running MC) in Sync and with no drift between the Video and Audio (well tested on short music video clips).   Looks like for $10 you can pump sync sound between PC's  

I need to play with Zones etc and the WDM driver and then I can post some configs.  Wish they had a Andriod version as this would then work for Home House Audio as well.

[jmone]

Wow - this is pretty low latency transfer (and stays in sync).  For a quick test I did the worst latency audio chain I could think of:

    YouTube --> WDM --> MC (Main) --> || Acoustic Bridge || --> WDM --> MC (Laptop) --> Laptop speakers

Once I lowered all the buffers in MC and Acoustic Bridge to their minimum, the audio/video sync was just discernible but you had to look for it.

A more simple chain like the following is spot on:

     MC (Main) --> || Acoustic Bridge || --> Laptop speakers

Also - Acoustic Bridge appears to be transmitting the audio in 44.1 / 16bit which is good enough for me. (edit:  that is just what the receiving PC's sound card was set to - I've asked more Q in their forum). I notice that for Multi Channel they do have a option "Use lossless compression when sending more that two channel audio (Will increase delay slightly)" but I've not tested this bit.

Thanks
Nathan

[jmone]

I'm now waiting for some more stuff to turn up (should this week), based on Class 1 (100m) Bluetooth receivers and transmitters.  I don't have high hopes.... but we will see.

These devices have arrived and after a quick test they work really well!  The Receiver is a Sony BM10 Class 1 receiver and it works well with the Miccus RTX and the USB Dongle that I ordered at the same time.  Also had pretty good range with std Android and iPhones (though not as good as the long range transmitters).

[jmone]

FYI - with some more playing with Bluetooth devices, I find they have a 100ms latency except with "Apt-X" enabled devices at both ends which is a low latency mode and pretty well spot on.

[wibblefish]

jmone, many thanks for all the research that you have done on this topic. Stardock looks perfect for my needs so I will give it a go.

[paabel]

 

Did you test acoustic bridge with flac or hires audio as well. If that works well,  would be amazing.

Thanks

[jmone]

Sorry for the late replay.  Yes it works with any source file as MC is outputting uncompressed Audio to this as a "Sound Device" (eg it is not transferring the file itself).  The good news with this approach is any of your MC DSP options are being applied.  One of the options in Acoustic Bridge is "Use lossless compression when sending more than two channel audio) which sounds promissing though I did post these questions over on their forum but they did not respond:

Can you please advise what specs are used to encode/decode the audio, eg:
- 2CH,
- Multi Channel, and
- Multi Channel with "Use lossless compression when sending more that two channel audio (Will increase delay slightly)"

...or is the format transmitted that set by the sending PC's Windows Sound setting?