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[yap]

Hi

Does anyone know of an application or a way to have multiple virtual sound cards in a PC without having the physical sound cards, so I can set each of these virtual cards in MC as zone output??

[Mr ChriZ]

I'm intruiged as to what would be the purpose of this?

[jgreen]

Yap, I don't think so.  I believe it is up to your card manufacturer to implement separate hardware audio paths and provide driver support to windows to identify each as such.

HOWEVER . . .
In the interest of scientific exploration, download a trial copy of "Virtual Audio Cable".  This app will allow you to establish software connections between devices, or even between software audio sources.  Once you'vee figured out how to use it (I never could), you might try enabling your onboard sound and use that as a second source, in a addition to your soundcard. 

OR . . .
You could go out and buy a prosumer card, such as the RME, Lynx, possibly the E-Mu or M-Audio.  For a few hundred bucks, you could do exactly what you want all day long, and not have to battle that stupid VAC interface.

[yap]

Yes, after relentless searching on the net I found "Virtual Audio Cable" an excellent utility.

I created two virtual cables using the utility and then in MC I created two zones with each having it's own virtual cable as output.

Then I wanted something that took these virtual cables input and created a live stream like web radio for clients like Roku to play as web radio stream. Therefore, allowing MC to have multiple zones without any soundcard in the server plus client content can be controlled remotely via Netremote.

I found another utility called "Broadwave", this utility takes inputs from those virtual cables and produces live audio streams. I don't have any client like Roku yet so I couldn't test the solution I wanted but I have successfully played two zones remotely using Windows Media Player.

For me this is a powerful multizone solution since MC zones are streamed to be picked up by clients without any complicated setup and using Netremote I can control content of the streams.

Since, I don't know enough about Web radio and different streaming techniques and what kind of streams uPnP type of clients need I am not able to test this solution yet.


If anyone knows any live Web Radio stream utility that is easy to setup please let me know.... I tried to use the icecast2 but it seems bit complicated and messy.

[yap]

finally cracked the Icecast2 by using oddcast....here is what I have

Using Virtual Audio Cable I created three virtual cables.
In MC I created three zones and set the output of each zone as one of the virtual cable.
Installed oddcast in three seperate directories to get three different streams of ogg vorbis encoding with each oddcast taking input from one of the virtual cable.
Configured all three oddcast streams to connect to the icecast2 server.

Used three different client PCs to play each MC zone stream in remote location around the house with each zone controlled by Netremote.

With this solution, you can add remote zone with easy and each remote client is free to tune to any MC zone music.

it would be very nice is to get MC doing uncompressed streams direct to icecast2, this would be very desirable for home networks as bandwidth is plenty and to reduce delay in music compare to the above solution.

[bradesp]

Hi Yap!

I'm wondering if your experirence might helpful to my setup.

Here's my dilemma.  I have my entire CD collection ripped to a server with 80% of the files in full resolution WAV format and the other 20% ripped to high bit rate MP3's.   I stream these digital files using JRiver Media Center to an external USB / DAC which in turn feeds my receiver.  What I now want to do is remotely control multiple digital streams to multiple external USB / DAC devices for playback in various rooms around my house.

The VAC program strikes me as something that might allow me to setup the various zones in JRiver's Media Center and then subsequently feed my external USB/DAC boxes, but it's not clear to me if I'm making to big a leap in my assumptions.

So in summary here's the scenario.  Assume there are multiple USB devices recognized by my computer.  In your opinion would it be possible to use VAC to somehow "trick" MediaCenter into feeding each of these a digital stream as if they're an installed sound card?

Thanks!

bradesp

[jgreen]

Brad, I don't think there's any need to trick anybody.  Look in the Windows Mixer, and if you can see separate USB sound card/devices there, you can use MC's multizone system to let 'er rip!

Yap did not have separate devices, as far as the OS was concerned.  Apparently VAC was able to provide virtual identities to the OS so he could create MC zones for them.  For me, VAC only encouraged befuddlement. 

One note:  I tried this back in prehistoric times (without VAC) and it required the cards to be of differing models, otherwise windows could not differentiate between, say, two separate Audigy NX's.  Hopefully that's changed.

If in fact you can see separate devices, you are off to the races.  There is pretty much no limit to what MC can do for multiple zones.  It's almost spooky.  Try posting to the main forum, to attract the likes of "Mastiff", "Glynor" and "Alex B", among others.