INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows => Topic started by: rick57 on February 08, 2013, 12:23:03 am
-
I want to be able to play media in 5 rooms. Mostly 2 channel music, maybe sometimes AV
In the four rooms other than the main room, my music won’t run off the main (lounge) room’s amp. Each will have its own stereo amp – I have a few good “spares”.
Can (subject to hardware) MC (with JRemote) play *different media in each zone, at the same time??
Does MC’s multi-zone functionality run off multiple sound cards in one PC, a multi-output card, and/ or separate PCs?
Note: I have an older (but good) idle PC with an M-Audio Delta 410 soundcard fitted – which has (4 inputs and) 10 analog outputs.
Thanks
Rick
-
Can (subject to hardware) MC (with JRemote) play *different media in each zone, at the same time??
Yes.
Does MC’s multi-zone functionality run off multiple sound cards in one PC, a multi-output card, and/ or separate PCs?
All of the above! A Zone in MC can be a separate sound card, individual stereo pairs from a single soundcard, a client installation of the MC player on another PC, or a DLNA Renderer (which could even be an amp itself).
The only issue with multi-zone as far as I can see is syncing them in case you do want the same media in more than one zone at the same time. DLNA renderers are absolutely useless in this regard, but if MC is able to control the hardware directly (such as discrete soundcards) then it becomes possible and MC does have timing fine-tuning to adjust if things aren't absolutely perfect.
JRemote will allow you to select and play to zones independently but at the moment it lacks the zone-linking functionality that is available in the full MC.
-
Great news, thanks!
I have an idle PC with a sound card (M Audio Delta 410) with 10 outputs
http://www.m-audio.com/images/global/manuals/Delta410_Manual.pdf
Seems that do everything except play 96 Hz, I could get by without that
What is zone linking?
-
Combining two or more zones together so they play the same media in sync.
So one scenario is you could have 4 rooms, 2 of which are playing independent music and the other 2 are playing the same music.
-
Understood, thanks
Though thinking about it, while it'd great to fully use the card I have, two of the rooms would be very hard to get with any cable, including interconnects
Could some of the zones run off the sound card, and some off wireless?
-
A zone could be a DLNA Renderer so you could stick a wireless media player such as the WDTV Live (once they get its last botched firmware update corrected...) or, if you're more of an audiophile, a Cambridge Audio NP30 or a Denon DNP-F109 or similar units, in a hard-to-reach room and connect it to an amp.
I've been wrestling with the best way to get multizone audio into hard-to-reach rooms too (2-foot thick stone walls...) and I'm currently experimenting with the Marmitek Audio Anywhere 625 digital audio sender, which is a tiny, tiny (approx 3" square) audio transmitter that can be used with multiple receivers at the same time. I'm not likely to want independent music in each room at this time so I just want whole house synchronised audio - I'll just pair an additional receiver with a pair of powered speakers in each room. There's a very, very slight delay introduced - not very much at all, but enough to be able to perceive a "hall" or echoey effect if you can hear the original source and the transmitted version at the same time. So basically, you could connect a transmitter to one of the outputs from your sound card. This system can only be used once in a house though, there is no way to pair a transmitter with a receiver so you can't have two transmitters. Marmitek have another product called Surround Anywhere which is intended for surround speakers without trailing wires to the back of the froom. It accepts line level or speaker level input and at the receiver end has an built-in amplifier so it outputs speaker-level - you wouldn't need an additional amplifier there. So if you need two wireless rooms, you could implement one with a Audio Anywhere and the other with a Surround Anywhere!
Just two different ways of sending audio wirelessly! One is over an ethernet wireless network, the other is transmitting the audio itself wirelessly.