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Author Topic: home setup  (Read 1476 times)

theonewithgingahair

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home setup
« on: February 20, 2009, 09:12:00 pm »

I've been peeking in and out of these forums for a while now in the hopes of coming up with a definitive home audio solution and I was hoping that maybe asking would give me a better summary than any info I have gathered so far.

I currently have a cat6 LAN setup at home, with 6 main rooms, each has a computer connected or one that is available to connect to it.

I was thinking that from these computers I could hook up my external amplifers (not great but they will suffice) and TVs, this in combination with one computer set up as a server would then hopefully stream either music or dvd's/movies to any of the computers that wanted to watch it/listen to it (I dont know enough to decide whether drive mapping and overnight cloning is better than streaming).

Assuming I am on safe ground so far...:D... so several questions:

1) Could i then run single instances of xptunes on each computer, and therefore have discrete control over the individual zones? (the idea here is that when i get the time i program a little index web page of all zones - directing you to each of the discrete xptunes pages, allowing my tabletPC to chose which zone it is and therefore what its playing).

2) Is there anyway that MC would have control over the amp vol and or other (normally remote controlled options)? Like if i used a usb ir blaster (redrat etc) connected to the pc's? and would xptunes have control over the IR also?

3) If i stream an internet radio station, but want it playing in multiple zones (i.e. kitchen + living) will there be any noticeable delay between the two?

4) If i have a local input (in this case an old record deck) through mic channel (or if i can get the money together better quality input), can I stream it to other zones? (i.e. kitchen + living)

I know there's a lot of questions there, but if MC can pull it off, it beats the hell out of many other whole house audio solutions hands down, especially on price!

Many Thanks
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MrHaugen

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Re: home setup
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2009, 05:43:27 am »

Just throwing out a couple of opinions and suggestions here.
Streaming video is not the best imo, so if I were you I'd install a local MC13 client on each machine. That's just my opinion though. There might be better solutions.

Only hint I can give you is that soundblaster card, with the right app, support multiple zones. Theres a project called X something, that makes multiple zones on each card, and represent it as individual sound cards. If you use two sound cards and a amp or two, you might have a very affordable setup. I'm not sure about controling zones on XPTunes, but if it was possible you might end up with a very simple and affordable multi room setup.

The rest of you're questions I'm not to comfortable answering, as I have little experience here.
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imugli

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Re: home setup
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2009, 06:03:32 am »

Welcome Aboard!

1) Could i then run single instances of xptunes on each computer, and therefore have discrete control over the individual zones? (the idea here is that when i get the time i program a little index web page of all zones - directing you to each of the discrete xptunes pages, allowing my tabletPC to chose which zone it is and therefore what its playing).

Conceivably, yes. I don't believe xpTunes can control zones yet, but you could script hyperlinks to each rooms instance of XPTunes. Is that what you mean?

Quote
2) Is there anyway that MC would have control over the amp vol and or other (normally remote controlled options)? Like if i used a usb ir blaster (redrat etc) connected to the pc's? and would xptunes have control over the IR also?

Not that I can see. XPTunes would need to also interface with your IRBlaster interface, which I don't think it can.

Quote
3) If i stream an internet radio station, but want it playing in multiple zones (i.e. kitchen + living) will there be any noticeable delay between the two?

Simply, yes. 

Quote
4) If i have a local input (in this case an old record deck) through mic channel (or if i can get the money together better quality input), can I stream it to other zones? (i.e. kitchen + living)

No. Though this kind of UPNP streaming is something a few of us have been asking for. How it would work from an input as opposed to stored data tracks is another thing all together.

Here's another solution perhaps...

Have you heard of Promisis Girder and NetRemote?

NetRemote is used to control MC (as well as other software packages) and supports multiple zones. Girder is a Remote Control Interface software that can be used to blast ir commands also.

It would take some setting up (I wouldn't like to try it myself) but you could probably get exactly what you're after with those two installed on each PC. It's a more expensive but probably more thorough solution.

You'd set up one PC with multiple soundcards (or 1 soundcard with multiple output zones) and control each zone with the NetRemote. If you have Amps already, you'd run an analog out cable from the soundcard to your amp in each room.

You could then program Girder to, on the event of someone selecting Play DVD in Netremote, change the amp volume to x (or even turn it on, via your IRBlaster) and start playing (You program NetRemote with the command line to begin playing the movie).

GadgetBoy

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Re: home setup
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2009, 04:34:06 am »

I wrote a quick article on some of the things I did with MC and NetRemote:

http://www.lazyautomation.com/?p=4

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LazyAutomtion
www.lazyautomation.com

la·zy [ley-zee] - Resistant to work or exertion; disposed to idleness.
au·to·ma·tion [aw-tuh-mey-shuh n] - The automatic operation or control of equipment, a process, or a system.

theonewithgingahair

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Re: home setup
« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2009, 09:27:41 pm »

thanks for the help guys,
sorry about the late reply,
I have done quite a bit more research on this now so I have ascertained the following: netremote would be perfect if I didnt want to use iPhones also ;-D

as it stands (and i hate to say this because I love jriver) but I have decided to use sage instead for my whole house set up (they do provide a nice MC plugin), that in conjunction with a couple of tuner cards, IRtrans and girder should give me full whole house A/V, with a little manufactured webgui on my part all should easily be controllable from the tablet +iPhones (ha ha ha never as easy as that but im persistant)...

guess i will have a tuner for the zones that will need to have synced radio...dunno how multiroom syncing is going to work on movies etc tho :( anyways, the forums here were a great deal of help and I wish jriver had tuner support etc

jon
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