Wow, didn't realize that (I didn't see the dates).
Well, I was looking at all the different whole house audio systems out there...and at the time I had the time to create things.
So, I did. Instead of spending $300/zone, I made my own.
You get one USB soundcard per zone. I personally just run that out to PC speakers (through Cat5). The speakers are setup in the "zone" you want them to be in. You can hook that into an amplifier if you want.
Anyway, I can get away with this, as Winamp can be started with the command line flag /class=ZoneName
Then, I found some code online, that I modified (there are a bit more elegant solutions out there at this point, however 3-4 years ago, this was "cutting edge"). I made 1 .exe per classname. Each exe looks to "hook" into a specific classname, then pass proper "sendmessage" commands to that instance. Then I Setup Homeseer to have "sets" of X10 commands, execute a script, which does all the heavy lifting.
If there are special things that need to happen during say, a powerup, they can be executed in the script. For instance, more times then not, I needed to turn a UPB module on to apply the local power to the PC speakers. OR in the case of controlling the Audrey, I had to launch Phjuke. In the case of shoutcast, nothing extra happens during a powerup. Finally that Zone's Winamp gets loaded.
My wife loves it, as I made a webpage that parses all the playlists that are on the server, then displays them. You choose the zone you are in, choose the playlist, then turn the zone on, the playlist plays. If you want to change the playlist, repeat. The HS script takes a value from the "ev.misc" (I think that's it's name...but it's the note field in HS) and launches Winamp with the proper classname and playlist when "powered up."
The parsing the playlists is dynamic, so she can add playlists at will, and they will show up on the server. I recently added "subdirectories". This allows us to group our playlists (i.e. I have MY playlists, Holiday playlists, etc.). There is also a separate webpage that creates the proper events to allow HS to run Winamp. One last webpage allows you to view any playlist that shows.
Overall, I'm pretty impressed with it. I mean, it's not every day that I come up with such a "huge" system level "thing".
Finally, since I re-installed HS recently, I didn't want to recreate all the "control devices" for the 8 zones. So, if you run the script with the flag "install" all the status devices and I think events are created for you (it was a pain, as you had to make 10 events and 8 devices for each zone).
So, one script, three webpages and my custom .exe files and this thing rocks and rolls. Next goal, right now, is to make the playlists editable through the web. Right now, you have to make them in Winamp and copy/move them to the playlist directory. Deleting should be easy enough (I'm doing that right now in another webpage for a tasklist). Adding should also be easy (again, tasklist webpage). But, at this point in my life, it's a matter of finding the time!
I figure, now that the software is done, my total cost per zone is about $10ish ($3 for the USB audio card and the cost of speakers / wire).
--Dan