multi room audio possibilities....

[nick_harambee]

what are the possibilities of using NR for multi audio room control.

i have an m-audio soundcard with 4 stereo outputs. could i use NR to control these different outputs (i.e. to control the m-audio control panel software)?

nick

[jwilson56]

Check out these threads...

http://www.netremote.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=957

http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showtopic=588



I have 5 zones right now but I also use Homeseer and a few scripts to do it. I suspect you could doit without it also if you can control you equipment. I am still working on my project but here is a screenshot of the main page.

John

[Cocophone]

John,

If I understand correctly:

1. Your soundcard has multiple outputs and each output goes to a different receiver. Looking at some M-Audio ads it looks like the different outputs are for 5.1 or 7.1 speaker setups. I didn't understand that each audio output can be independent of each other.

2. Mediacenter can send different songs to the different receivers at the same time using the different outputs of the M-Audio soundcard.

thanks for the help.

[jwilson56]

The M-Audio Delta 410 card has 10 channels. Two of these are digital (Coaxial) and the rest are line level (RCA). These channels can be paired up so in effect you have five sound cards in one. Each of these pairs can be selected in Media Center and assigned to a 'zone'. I have an additional Hi-Fi Pro USB sound device that has both TOS Optical (which I needed) and line level outputs. This is my master zone and allows me to play synchonized music to all 5 zones together with a little IR switching of inputs. This eliminates one of the weak spots of many multi-zone systems. My main system that is fed with the TOS channel is a Sony ES 500 watt receiver. The other zones are all centrally located 2 channel 200 watt RMS receivers. They are all 'out of site' except the Sony which resides in the entertainment center. The Slink-e interface provides IR control (via Homeseer) to the zones (2-5) and also talks to the Sony via the slink interface. It has worked out quite well. Each zone has its own set of controls (power, mute, volume) and can play totally independently. This can either be music from Media Center (which supports multi-zone) or from their own tuners as each zone has its own. I ripped all 700 of my CD's to a 250GB hard drive using a lossless format called APE. I originally used a changer based system but I really like the instant chnages and cross fade efects you can do with Media Center and a hard drive based system.

John