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[nanckekr]

My goal is to use one PC running MC. That PC will then feed 2 channel stereo to ideally 6 zones that can all play their own music independently of the others. One of the zones can then choose to play surround sound with 5.1 & Dolby Digital decoding. While playing surround sound in one that one master- zone, the other 5 zones should be unaffected by this.

The only additional requirement is that you must be able to have a digital (coax or fiber) input to the main zone with the surround setup. None of the other zones are required to be able to listen to that input.
OF course, all of these things must be programmatically available through the MS API’s.

How far can I get with MS to this dream, if I am willing to invest in the right sound cards and to develop the right custom software based on MS API’s?

[JimH]

As you may know, MC12 supports multi-zone playback.  User mastiff is the resident expert on this.

MC should be able to do what you're asking for without modification.  In MC, choose Player/Playback Options/Zone Manager.  Ctrl-T toggles zones.

Third party apps can be used to control zoned playback remotely.  NetRemote from promixis.com, MusicLobby from Cinemaronline.com and the RussSound controls from user zoner.  Links are in the FAQ (in my signature).

The DevZone has more info on programming interfaces.  Link above.

[nanckekr]

Thanks for the quick reply!

What sound cards are recommended for this application mentioned?
I am pretty well aware of what MusicLobby is doing. Are they using API's in MC that only they know, or are all the developers and OEM on the same level in terms of API's they see?

[JimH]

I'll let others advise on sound cards.

The DevZone has information on the Interface SDK here http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/DevZone

[rpalmer68]

I use an M-audio Delta 1010LT with MC and run 2 stereo zones and one off the spdif output (for surround sound etc) and still have another 2 stereo zones available.  This only gives you a total of 5 zones, but maybe the oboard audio ould be the 6th.

I use Netremote2 to control the musc playback in each zone.

All works pretty well, the only issue I have is if I try to Sync all the zones together for a party, the sync isn't very good.

But I don't do that often so haven't spent much time trying to sort it out.

Richard