Topic: OT? Cheap Wireless Multi room with Media Centre!!! (Read 6574 times)

marketability · « **on:** October 23, 2003, 04:47:02 pm »

I am so ecstatically happy with life, J River, Barix et al that I wanted to let the world know!

Thought some of you might be interested in a great way of distributing Media Centre sounds around the house...

http://www.exstreamer.com has a product which when used with their Beta Virtual soundcard software allows you to send the output from MC to any room within the range of your Wireless network - the units cost £200 ish plus the cost of an 11Mbps WiFi card.

up to 3 playback zones can be configured to send 3 distinct streams to specified recivers, which can be controlled with webremote or netremote. All you need in each room is an exstreamer and a pair of active speakers or a HiFi. I'm getting perfect playback of APE and lossless WMA in every room!

They also do a cabled LAN only version which is cheaper

Are J River interested in talking to them to see if Media Server or The exstreamer can be tweaked to deliver MS output? MS detects that something is trying to pull audio but rejects the attempt - must be close!

___________________________________________
Listening to CSN in the toilet !!!

John Gateley · « **Reply #1 on:** October 24, 2003, 10:25:38 am »

It looks like they are using a custom protocol to stream the music. This makes it harder for us than if they were using a standard(well, quasi-standard) like uPnP. Depends on how many requests we get for it.

j

graham131 · « **Reply #2 on:** October 24, 2003, 11:25:10 am »

Quote from: marketability on October 23, 2003, 04:47:02 pm

I am so ecstatically happy with life, J River, Barix et al that I wanted to let the world know!

Thought some of you might be interested in a great way of distributing Media Centre sounds around the house...

http://www.exstreamer.com has a product which when used with their Beta Virtual soundcard software allows you to send the output from MC to any room within the range of your Wireless network - the units cost £200 ish plus the cost of an 11Mbps WiFi card.

up to 3 playback zones can be configured to send 3 distinct streams to specified recivers, which can be controlled with webremote or netremote. All you need in each room is an exstreamer and a pair of active speakers or a HiFi. I'm getting perfect playback of APE and lossless WMA in every room!

They also do a cabled LAN only version which is cheaper

Are J River interested in talking to them to see if Media Server or The exstreamer can be tweaked to deliver MS output? MS detects that something is trying to pull audio but rejects the attempt - must be close!

___________________________________________
Listening to CSN in the toilet !!!

I take it you are "working" from home this afternoon?

Graham

sub-24 · « **Reply #3 on:** October 24, 2003, 11:30:58 am »

Just get a big pair of speakers with a big amp and turn it up.

Thats what i use and i can hear ir perfect in every room.

It'll never replace valves and vinyl.

Rock'n'Roll

sub-24 · « **Reply #4 on:** October 24, 2003, 11:31:48 am »

Also my post was after 5:30pm

marketability · « **Reply #5 on:** October 24, 2003, 12:59:47 pm »

Thanks for the reply John! I'll be patient - its easy to be patient in music heaven!

knickelfarz · « **Reply #6 on:** October 26, 2003, 12:13:53 pm »

Quote from: marketability on October 23, 2003, 04:47:02 pm

... their Beta Virtual soundcard software ...

Where can this be found? Sounds interesting

marketability · « **Reply #7 on:** October 26, 2003, 12:39:08 pm »

knickelfarz - its only a beta at the moment - they sent me it after purchasing a wireless exstreamer

try info@barix.com

knickelfarz · « **Reply #8 on:** October 27, 2003, 06:42:44 am »

Quote from: marketability on October 26, 2003, 12:39:08 pm

knickelfarz - its only a beta at the moment - they sent me it after purchasing a wireless exstreamer

try info@barix.com

THX... if this means that the barix can be used with every format and MC (not only with MP3 and the barix server software...) it would be a "killer product" - better than SLIMP and all those other similar products

marketability · « **Reply #9 on:** October 27, 2003, 09:50:48 am »

knickelfarz - so far my testing is very positive

It will stream anything MC outputs (bar ASIO) and can cope with full strength APE/lossless WMA

The issues so far:
The virtual soundcard driver software is very CPU intensive (they will hopefully address this in the production version)

Dedicating a virtual soundcard output to a designated exstreamer is awkward and uses even more CPU

I'll keep the board posted

fex · « **Reply #10 on:** October 27, 2003, 01:57:33 pm »

Quote from: marketability on October 27, 2003, 09:50:48 am

... I'll keep the board posted

marketability

Thank you for your reports, I'm very interested in your experiences. This was the only reason I hesitaded to set on barix so far. I don't want to have a client (PC) in each room (especially not in the toilet

). It would be too easy to set up barix this way.

Still listening to: 'Pass The Toilet Paper' from 'Just The Best 98-1' by 'The Outhere Brothers' on Media Center 9.1

rossp · « **Reply #11 on:** October 28, 2003, 05:13:43 am »

Can you setup the virtual soundcard as an MC zone.

Keep up the testing and board updates, this product looks very interresting.

Ross

marketability · « **Reply #12 on:** October 28, 2003, 10:30:50 am »

Yes - the Virtual Soundcard driver emulates 3 soundcards - meach of which can be the "target" for a specific MC Zone.

You can then either broadcast any/all of the outputs to the network to be received by any exstreamer or (better IMHO) run multiple streamers to deliver a specified zone's output to a specified exstreamer

Findings update...

Works fine on 80211.b @ 2Mbps with short dropout only very sporadic (1 in 30 mins of listening)
on a wired LAN the droput is virtually non-existant
I suspect there is no buffer in the exstreamer - (I am going to ask Barix) - which may be causing the occasional dropout

The stream is 128Kbps MP3 currently - the developers promise 320 and VBR in a subsequent release

marketability · « **Reply #13 on:** October 28, 2003, 01:25:10 pm »

Lots of good feedback from Barix re: development of the virtual soundcard - they are very helpful

...hopefully the next version of the driver may include:

320kbps or VBR MP3 streaming
better handling of multiple streams from a single PC ./ Mutiple MC zones

The processor load issue is addressed and on an Athlon 1100 averages 25% CPU

To handle mutiple zones/streams at high bitrates I expect to need a chunky server!! $:-\$

The search for better music in the toilet continues.....

jrietschel · « **Reply #14 on:** October 28, 2003, 02:45:29 pm »

Hi all,

I'm Johannes Rietschel of Barix. We would be interested in working with JRiver to get perfect integration with the Media Center. Peter is not the only user of Media Center - we had several other customers who used Media Center (probably still do).
I think our virtual audio card driver is a good way to plug JRiver and Barix together, especially as it allows to use ANY audio format for storage, not just MP3. If we get info from JRiver about their streaming format (Barix only uses standard HTTP/TCP/UDP), we can also look into adding support for it to the firmware. The other interesting point would be to use the controls of our/an IR like next playlist, next song, prev .. etc, probably shortcuts, to control what Media Center plays. This would give you not only independent audio in different rooms, but also a simple way to control what is played. For that we would need advice from JRiver about a control API, we are flexible about the "how"s.

Greetings

Johannes Rietschel
Barix AG

JimH · « **Reply #15 on:** October 28, 2003, 03:00:12 pm »

Hi Johannes. Welcome. We'd enjoy seeing what we can do together. If you will drop an e-mail to me ( jimh @ jriver.com ), I will make sure you get help deciding what to do. I can also provide a few licenses so your team can use MC.

marketability · « **Reply #16 on:** October 28, 2003, 03:10:14 pm »

collaboration in a world of madness! there is hope for us all

Thanks Jim / Johannes

kiwi · « **Reply #17 on:** October 28, 2003, 03:35:54 pm »

This looks extremely interesting. Particularly the exstreamer gold, that has digital outputs. It's not wireless, but I can deal with that.

I would love to see this in combination with MC. I would probably still have an RME card for my primary audio device, but to have other systems get music would be awesome.

One thing that would be great, maybe for v10... or maybe as part of the virtual sound card software, would be to have the ability to actively assign playback zones to one or multiple devices. i.e. a matrix setup, where I have virtual inputs that connected to the real outputs. I'd like to be able to have 4 zones and play back sync'd music on any/all of those zones.

RME has a very cool output mix board that does just that.

kiwi

jrietschel · « **Reply #18 on:** October 28, 2003, 03:55:45 pm »

.. regarding the "sync" feature: we have developed a method to sync multiple exstreamers up to about 1ms accuracy, and this works independent of the software/server side. one exstreamer can sync to another one.
this "zoning" can be controlled via IR or web interface.
Adding this feature to the virtual audio card is future.

Johannes

fex · « **Reply #19 on:** October 28, 2003, 03:58:40 pm »

Sounds good. If you do a search for a solution like this in Europe, you'll find "Exstreamer". Hope you can mange this together. Would be great.

kiwi · « **Reply #20 on:** October 28, 2003, 05:01:15 pm »

Very cool.

kiwi

marketability · « **Reply #21 on:** November 02, 2003, 02:57:28 pm »

Next experiment...

Exstreamer Gold (digital outputs) with a WiFi bridge

System based on a wireless exstreamer is settled in nicely and works a treat with MC

AussieInSeattle · « **Reply #22 on:** April 25, 2004, 05:34:59 pm »

I'm about to purchase an Exstreamer for integration into MC which will be controlled via NetRemote for whole house distributed and zoned audio. I'm trying to decide whether to go for their Digital Product ($299 as opposed to $159 for the stereo outs). Is it worth the extra cash? I'll be mainly using it for internet radio and mp3's.

Finally I've found the product (exstreamer) that will tie my system together and get the audio from my computer to my stereo and controllable via netremote!

Thanks,

Matt

marketability · « **Reply #23 on:** April 26, 2004, 01:48:59 am »

The guys at barix rate the digital but for me I'd go for the analogue and buy more units

For streamed audio at MP3 320kbps is it worth the investment in a separate DAC?

For my main HiFi I still use a HTPC into an external DAC and avoid the downshift from APE to MP3

The exstreamer is perfect for distributing sounds to "secondary" locations eg. garden, toilet!

BigAl · « **Reply #24 on:** September 09, 2004, 10:28:42 pm »

Quote from: marketability on October 28, 2003, 03:10:14 pm

collaboration in a world of madness! there is hope for us all

Thanks Jim / Johannes

Did anything ever come of this meeting of the minds? The Exstreamer Wireless solves a big problem for me and I'm about to take the plunge. Any recent updates from Barix that I should know about?

Thx, Al.

Jakester · « **Reply #25 on:** September 10, 2004, 04:43:40 pm »

Would love to know more about the status on this as well. Like marketability I use a dedicated HTPC to access lossless APEs via ASIO in my theater, but would love a product like this for "secondary" rooms. At this point I'm planning yet another HD to hold an mp3 version of my library so that I can use one of the many media receivers out there ...

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: OT? Cheap Wireless Multi room with Media Centre!!! (Read 6574 times)

fex

fex