This was asked on the Homeseer forum but I figured I would post the reply here as well in case it could help others as well...
Quote:
Originally Posted by machadoman
Hi John,
I read your post on using the multiple receivers to setup whole home audio, and I think it is a great setup.
I had a few questions that i was hoping you could answer for me (i am a newbie, and pretty confused on everything that i need and building a system that fits my desires)
In that setup, can you do the following:
have multiple mp3 streams from the computer to different zones? How do i set that up with homeseer?
use voice commands to control which stream is heard in which zone? how else can it be controlled?
Why does it need to be 'synched'?
Why the need for the xantech distributor?
thanks, John. I will let you know how the implementation turns out!
Grant
Ok.... first you need to have a player that supports multiple zones if you want to play a different song/track in each zone. J River's Media Center is the player that most people including myself use. Its a great database/player that also supports lossless audio formats like APE. I would not use mp3 unless you don't care about sound quality.
Homeseer for me as it pertains to my whole house audio system is used to control my equipment via IR using my Slink-e. In order to use multiple two channel receivers to reduce the multizone cost (<$99 each zone) you need to have an IR setup that has distinct zones. You could also get by using different model recievers if no IR codes overlap.
Voice commanding a music setup is totally impratical. Its hard enough to get VR to work in a quiet enviroment with gated mic mixers let alone blast music in the room and try to get VR to hear only you. Use a nice touchscreen interface to browse, select and control. You can also use a PDA if you want.
The downside to having multiple zones supported with the player application is that its harder to get all the zones to play the same track in sync. So if you want to have one CD playing in everyroom it has to sync all zones so that the song is being played through all zones at the same time. The problem is that even if the track being played is off by mere milliseconds using the software method of syncing you will hear it. So I use a hardware sync method that takes advantage of the IR controlled line switching you have built into the receivers. The Xantech distribution amp ($60) helps send the 'master' zone to all the receivers. Without it you would overload the line level outputs trying to hook up more than one receiver together. So essentailly you have two sources being sent to each receiver. One output is from a distinct pair of channels for each zone. I use the Delta 410 PCI sound card. It has 10 channels that can be paired together so it looks like 5 sound cards. The second output comes from one of the zones that I designate as the master zone. This happens to come from a Xitel HIFO Pro USB sound device. I used it because it has a TOS optical link as well as RCA line level that are both playing at the same time. I needed the TOS link for my main home theatre receiver. The RCA line out goes to the Xantech distribution amp and then the outputs of that goto the AUX line levels on the receivers. Switching to line level input on a receiver to 'CD' plays the distinct zone from JRMC via the Delta 410 and switching it to 'AUX' plays the syncroized zone from the master zone via the Xantech distribution amp from the Xitel HIFI Pro sound device.
This is all controlled via my Netremote 'Now Playing' skin using a touch screen interface, Dell Axim PDA as well as on my PC's around the house. Of coarse I also have a light control panel as part of the Now Playing skin that acts as a GUI frontend for Homeseer to control my X10 lights.
So in short... Homeseer, Netremote, JRMC and the Slink-e are tied together to form my whole house audio system. You could also use MusicLobby for the GUI frontend. Both NR and MusicLobby support the JRMC player so I would start there.
http://www.jrmediacenter.com/index.html
Get that working with multiple sound cards and multiple receivers and build upon that.
Hope that helps
John
P.S. please do not start to add replies bringing up all the other various frontend/solutions for multizone setups. Start a new thread... thanks
