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[centai]

I use JRiver on my HTPC in the living room. The HTPC is connected with my TV and a Asus Xonar Essence One DAC and I am quite happy with this setup.

Now I want to hear music in other rooms as well and I want to get a multiroom solution like Denon Heos, Sonos, ...
I also tried to integrate a second zone in JRiver by running a DLNA media renderer on my laptop, but the playback was not in sync and JRiver almost crashed.

I want to get a multiroom solution, where I can integrate JRiver. It would be good, if I could just use one app with no need to switch between Gizmo and another app. I also thought about to put something like a Heos Link between DAC and the speakers, but as far as I understood the signal would be converted from analoge to digital and then back to analoge, which make the DAC useless.

Has anyone experience with JRiver and mutliroom and can share best practices?

[6233638]

The best experience I have had is Media Center playing to Airfoil, which then handles routing that audio to multiple AirPlay devices.
 
However this only allows for one source to be played to all rooms, you cannot send different audio to different rooms with this setup.
Media Center would need native AirPlay support to do that, and JRiver have said that they are not going to add it.
You do have individual volume control for each device, and can switch rooms on/off though.
 
Playback is perfectly in sync, the hardware is relatively inexpensive, and has proven to be reliable. I have AirPlay (previously "AirTunes") hardware which is more than 10 years old and still works well - though AirPlay is limited to 16/44 streaming. (CD quality)
 
The other option would be a multichannel sound device (e.g. 7.1) playing to multiple rooms at once. (7.1 = 8 channels = 4 stereo zones)
Since it's all playing off the same device, there should be no sync issues.

EDIT: To clarify this, if you are trying to play different audio to different DLNA devices, it may work for you.
 

[fitbrit]

Airfoil may be a good way to sync MC to multiple rooms, but I have not had any trouble playing different music in different rooms via DLNA.

I use Onkyo network receivers to achieve this. They work out of the box with default DLNA settings in MC.

I am keen to try airfoil one day for synced playback too.