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[durufle]

I love JRiver for a number of reasons and wish to use it as the heart of a whole home audio setup.  I have a number of questions:

1. I have 8 wired zones with speaker wire running down to an equipment room in the basement.  I'm using an 8 matrix/zone amplifier to power in-ceiling speakers in each zone.  I figure 4 streams/zones out of MC will suffice.  Any recommendations on reliable ways to get 4 zones out of MC?  USB interface with 8 outputs? 4 stereo PCI cards?  I'd like the outputs to be quiet and perform reasonable well -- even though they are powering in-ceiling speakers.

2. In my home office, I use a local system with high-end gear (usb dac, local pre-amp, amp, speakers etc). I assume I could just use the Media Network feature and tap into the Library on the main JRiver PC that will reside in my equipment room?

3. Lastly, my wife's home office -- she'd like the ability to have JRiver on her mac for convenience but she'd like the output to be played through the in-ceiling speakers in her room (This is one of the zones that will be connected to the whole-home-amp in the basement equipment room).  Any suggestions on how this might work?

[Vincent Kars]

I have no hands-on experience with multichannel DAC so take this with a grain of salt.
It is a breeze to setup multiple zones in JRiver and play different audio streams.
I doubt if it is possible to route all the zones to the same audio device and play them over different channels.
Maybe pro-audio devices like Motu or Focusrite can do more than I can imagine.
Your best bet is probably multiple audio devices say 4 cards or 4 USB DACs

[csimon]

Having struggled with trying to get MC to do whole-home media distribution properly for years, I think you're on the right track with using a matrix switch to distribute the audio.  I'm doing a similar thing.

1. I think you'll need four separate audio devices (PCI soundcards, USB soundcards, DACs, DLNA streamers etc). A single 8-channel device won't give you independant audio in each stereo pair, you'd only be able to stream the same audio to each zone - so in that case why bother with a matrix!

2. Enable Media Network on the main PC.  Load its library on the office PC (no need to enable Media Network there), so you can browsed the media from the central library but play locally of the office PC.

3. I assume your wife will use the central media too rather than having media locally on the Mac? In which case I think the way I see this working is do the same thing as 2 above but also check the option "Show zones from the server on the client" in Media Network on the Mac.  This will allow the Mac to browse the media on the central library but also output to any of the zones on the central PC - so feeding into your whole-home amp as normal.  If, however, your wife has a local isntall of MC and media on the Mac, then instead enable DLNA Renderer on the main PC and enable Media Network and DLNA controller on the Mac.  This will allow the Mac to browse local media but send output via DLNA to the zones on the central PC (each zone will appear on the Mac as a DLNA destination). however, a small disclaimer is that the Mac version of MC is a port and is work in progress, and I don't know how much of this functionality is there.

Out of interest, how are you controlling the matrix switch/amp, i.e. controlling which rooms get which audio, grouping rooms etc?  Does it have a mobile app, or some other remote controller?

[csimon]

Regarding a multichannel sound card, see this thread http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=92263.0 which suggests that it is indeed possible to split a multichannel sound card into separate zones and send independant audio to them.

[blgentry]

With all of your speaker wires and amp in the same location, which is presumably a far run from your main computer(s), it seems to me that you'd probably want a small computer of some sort located very near the amp, so you can feed it's 8 channels with audio.  As far as I know, you can easily plug in 4 USB external sound cards and use each one in a zone.

What I *don't* know is if a server JRiver instance can point to individual sound cards, or zones, on a remote JRiver instance.  In my mind, that would be ideal:  Point the server JRiver to each of the zones on the basement JRiver and play to one or more zones as you see fit.

As the previously poster pointed out, a 7.1 sound card is said to work as individually addressable channels also; it just requires more configuration that's not super intuitive (but makes logical sense).  I have experience with multiple sound cards on one system.  That was very straightforward.

Maybe someone else can talk about the possibility of addressing multiple zones on a remote JRiver instance from the main JRiver server.

Brian.

[csimon]

What I *don't* know is if a server JRiver instance can point to individual sound cards, or zones, on a remote JRiver instance.  In my mind, that would be ideal:  Point the server JRiver to each of the zones on the basement JRiver and play to one or more zones as you see fit.

What MC client/server isn't good at is sending to remote zones that are not on the server.  I think this can only be done using DLNA.

However, just look at this thread that has just been posted!  http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=97573.0

[durufle]

Having struggled with trying to get MC to do whole-home media distribution properly for years, I think you're on the right track with using a matrix switch to distribute the audio.  I'm doing a similar thing.

1. I think you'll need four separate audio devices (PCI soundcards, USB soundcards, DACs, DLNA streamers etc). A single 8-channel device won't give you independant audio in each stereo pair, you'd only be able to stream the same audio to each zone - so in that case why bother with a matrix!

2. Enable Media Network on the main PC.  Load its library on the office PC (no need to enable Media Network there), so you can browsed the media from the central library but play locally of the office PC.

3. I assume your wife will use the central media too rather than having media locally on the Mac? In which case I think the way I see this working is do the same thing as 2 above but also check the option "Show zones from the server on the client" in Media Network on the Mac.  This will allow the Mac to browse the media on the central library but also output to any of the zones on the central PC - so feeding into your whole-home amp as normal.  If, however, your wife has a local isntall of MC and media on the Mac, then instead enable DLNA Renderer on the main PC and enable Media Network and DLNA controller on the Mac.  This will allow the Mac to browse local media but send output via DLNA to the zones on the central PC (each zone will appear on the Mac as a DLNA destination). however, a small disclaimer is that the Mac version of MC is a port and is work in progress, and I don't know how much of this functionality is there.

Out of interest, how are you controlling the matrix switch/amp, i.e. controlling which rooms get which audio, grouping rooms etc?  Does it have a mobile app, or some other remote controller?

Thanks for the response.  The matrix is controlled via hand-button remotes and/or iOS remotes.  It's a basic RTI automation system.  

I really do love JRiver and would love to make it work, but at the end of the day, it may just make sense to bite the bullet and pick-up something like one of the Fusion Research or Autonomic devices and only use JRiver for my office setup where everything is local anyway.