What is the current status of Multizoning audio?

by **rhinoman** on Thu Dec 15, 2005 7:28 pm

The mackie onyx looks similar.

From the breif look I had at the HDSP mixer, there are 6 preconfigured settings available that are easily selected from girder, this should allow a few sync group options, all upstairs, all downstairs, kitchen and outside, bedroom and bathroom, etc.

It turns up tomorrow so should have a better idea in a couple fo days.

Its a little annoying to be looking at hardware solutions for a problem that could likly be sorted in software although the other reason for choosing the HDSP is to get some extra zones.

by **samgreco** on Thu Dec 15, 2005 7:40 pm

Its a little annoying to be looking at hardware solutions for a problem that could likly be sorted in software although the other reason for choosing the HDSP is to get some extra zones.

Couldn't agree more! Including the extra zones

by **CiXel** on Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:33 pm

rhinoman wrote:Sam,

Are you aware that Steven added some code so that we could see the time offset between zones. Once in sync mode, you go to F2, then the about tab and there is a box labeled zone sync.

Hmmm... I wonder if there's a way to access that number as a variable which could then be plugged into some delay plugin?

by **rhinoman** on Thu Dec 15, 2005 9:40 pm

Steve did give me a parameter to alter to try and improve things, it was a while ago and i dont remember exactly how or what it did, only that the changes I made didn't seem to make any difference.

by **Marbles_00** on Fri Dec 16, 2005 5:29 pm

Wasn't this it?

Ok this is going to be a little harder to test, more work on your part. Here is a new exe

http://www.xlobby.com/xlobby2.zip

I've given you the ability to change the maxdifference setting between any two zones. I had hardcoded it to 60ms, so you should try something lower then that. Open up your xlobby.xml file and add this line

<maxdifference>60</maxdifference>

where 60 is the number you will lower....I dont know what a good number will be for you....on my system 60 synched everything...I'm wondering if thats whats doing it. You will have to restart xlobby each time you play with that setting in the xml file.

Forgot to add maxdifference is in milliseconds.

Form the post:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... =multizone

by **rhinoman** on Fri Dec 16, 2005 7:14 pm

Thats the one.

by **samgreco** on Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:43 am

Now that Steven is back, I thought that I would resurrect this thread.

I haven't had any luck at all with synching zones. It always falls apart. And very quickly lately. I decided to rebuild my server a couple of days ago (it's my SageTV server too) and all seems great on the TV front. But that's been great all along. I haven't tried the multizone stuff since rebuilding. I hope to try this weekend.

So my question for Steven is, just how does XLobby synch Winamp instances? Where does the timing/clock come from? I figure the more I understand it, the more likely I am to figure it out.

by **stevenhanna6** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:09 am

how does XLobby synch Winamp instances

its getting the timming from winamp itself, so i have to go by what winamp is telling me terms of its current position in milliseconds. Basicly I tell the multiple instances of winamp to play a file, then try adjusting the position to synch to one another based off of the first winamp instance.

by **samgreco** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 3:36 am

So it sounds as though the first instance is the master clock, yes? Then where do you tell the rest how often to check that clock? Or do you?

by **stevenhanna6** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 3:41 am

yes first instance from a group becomes the master clock for the other ones. I check to make sure the synch is within the limits every 10 seconds.

by **samgreco** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 3:59 am

Can that be changed? If so how and is there a performance hit?

by **stevenhanna6** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:02 am

yah I can change it, performance hit wont be too much I would think...I just never thought a song would drift so quickly in 10 seconds....you can also see the synch stats in "setup" under...."about" i think it is...there is a box there that shows what the difference is.

by **rhinoman** on Thu Feb 09, 2006 9:06 am

Any thoughts on a zone getting left behind Steven?

by **stevenhanna6** on Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:32 am

I just fixed the zone getting left behind bug, and I have redone the synch algorithm again, check the end of this thread for the latest version and some of my observations.

http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 1&start=15

by **rbziggy** on Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:04 pm

Last year, I posted various messages on this thread about using a multiple output stacker plugin in Winamp to route one winamp instance to several soundcards. (e.g. creating an 'All Downstairs' zone in winamp that would toute to not one but three soundcard outputs.)

This all worked very well for me with no syncing/drift issues and I've been using it since.

However there was one flaw that made it less desirable for many. When you started xl/winamp, each of the outputs in that instance of winamp ended pointing to the same soundcard. So you had to go into the winamp instance and reset the outputs to the individual soundcard. Bit of a pain!

Well, I've just upgraded to winamp 5.31 this morning (it has support for FLAC formats now) and... The problem outlined above has disappeared. Somehow, they have changed something in the config of Winamp that means your config for each output is not lost.

So, I think this is a really good solution now for the multi-zone issue. Though I'd share this good news!