What is the current status of Multizoning audio?

[rbziggy]

The only problem here is that when starting up Winamp, the last out_ds.dll setting overrides all the other out_ds.dll's.

Yes, that the one I found, there is only one config setting in winamp.ini. You need to reset once winamp is running. All works fine then until you play around, shutting down and restarting XL

I think a solid way to make it all work is figuring out the DSP control. ...

Okay, now I am really confused.

I'll have a play with my settings but it will have to wait until the weekend because it will affect / play in the bedroom zones wihich tends to upset the family late at night

[Marbles_00]

Just an update to where I left off.

I've rebooted the computer, and still have full frequency bandwidth of the LFE channel (I'm not complaining). I'm not sure what I did to achieve this. I'm still investigating, but if it ain't broken, don't touch it.

Now this is the first time I have ever messed around with Xlobby and multizoning. I'm now trying out the Heavy Metal skin. Is the only way to control the zoning capabilites, only done from the PPC window? I could only select different zones from that window and not the main zone overlay. The one thing I did notice is that when selecting "All Zones" using the setup that I stated in a previous post about using 0/1 of the KX drivers, is that Xlobby will have to be set up to stop playing the individual zone instances of winamp and then start playing the "All Zones" instance, otherwise you will have multi audio sources playing out your speakers (very irritating to say the least as I accomplished that last night). The same holds true for if an individual wants to only listen in one zone. When selecting that zone, a stop command will have to be sent to the "All Zones" instance of winamp and then start to play the individual zone(s) instances.

Not sure if this has been answered but with the All sync command, how does that work? Does it pick the playlist for the zone that is currently being controlled by the PPC? Does it just select the playlist of the first zone? I haven't tried it yet, but I'm curious as to how it is done.

Anyone else wish to share their experiences with KX drivers and multizoning?

[rhinoman]

Not sure if this has been answered but with the All sync command, how does that work? Does it pick the playlist for the zone that is currently being controlled by the PPC? Does it just select the playlist of the first zone? I haven't tried it yet, but I'm curious as to how it is done.

With sync, the playlist is loaded to all zones.

I requested this a while back because I found that otherwise when you moved from zone to zone adjusting volume, you would forget which zone you started at and selecting a new title in a different zone and that would require the sync to be restarted.

[Marbles_00]

I thought I would give an update to where I left off. I've been pretty successful with multizoning using a Creative Labs SB022X soundcard and the KX drivers. I didn't do too much to the KX configuration, but when I get a chance I will upload some images of my settings. This may help out some other users. The KX drivers set each stereo pair as the following:
Left/Right Main - Channel 6/7
Left/Right Surround - Channel 4/5
Center/LFE - Channel 8/9
It will also combine all the channels for a 6 channel output with a 0/1 setting.

I've set up Winamp instances for each of the above scenario's where:
6/7 is my livingroom zone
4/5 is my basement zone
8/9 is my back deck zone
0/1 is for all zones together

I'm trying all this out with a slightly modded version of the Heavy Metal skin where I have made adjustments to the zone overlay screen:
Added next/previous zone buttons
Modded the events of the All Sync button to point to the following event:
zone All Zones (Event Group Name)
zone previous
zone set (backyard)
stop
zone previous
zone set (basement)
stop
zone previous
zone set (livingroom)
stop
zone previous
zone set (All Zones)
zone synch all
This was required as I had a problem with synching all zones while the other zones were still playing. I was getting multiple sources playing out of each zone. When the All Zones instance is selected/highlighted as the main zone (playlist created), I just hit the All Synch button and each previous zone is selected/stopped and finally back to the All Zones which starts to play. What's nice about this is one sound card playing to multiple zones, but you won't have any synch issues. I guess one soundcard in itself is a drawback if you have a large house, but for my application (1800sq. foot home) this should work wonders. Should an individual not want to listen to the All Zone instance, then click stop, select your zone and continue playing that zone where left off, or select a new playlist.

Oh, I should add that currently I'm trying this out on a 733 PIII/396M RAM/40Gig IDE HDD. I'm even typing this post with the Heavy Metal skin up and all instances of Winamp going and lot's of crap (Winroute firewall, antivirus software and other services) running in the background. All I'm saying here is that you don't need an ultra-powerful machine to achieve basic multizoning capabilities, but I'll admit, there is a lag between my keypress for this post to what is displaying up on the screen, so I'm reaching the limits of the system.

I also want to thank everyone who has contributed to this post and keeping it alive, and helping each other to achieve a very common goal.

David

[rhinoman]

Finally got round to some further experimenting myself.

I first of all set up a second installation of xlobby on my file server, i'll call this the shoutcast_server as that is what I'll be doing with it. This is completly seperate to my xlobby-server that has 8 zones.

The shoutcast_server xlobby opens an instance of winamp with the shoutcast dsp plugin configured to output a stream on port 7001 on my lan. On my xlobby-server I added a play file command to point to http://shoutcast_server:7001. This was then synced across the 8 zones using the sync all command. The 8 zones allow independent zone volume control.

Music is selected on the shoutcast_server in the normal way and just outputs to the network.

Pro's:- sync works fine, now its set up it remains "fiddle free"

- 1 zone no longer gets - left behind

Con's:- playback is lagged about 5 secs from the server, not a biggy but it means when you select a new song or album it takes a couple of seconds to catch up. This wouldn't be an issue with a playlist for a party.

- shoutcast encoded the output stream at a maximum of 320k mp3, this make a waste of having ape files as the rencoding lowers the quality, gain probably unimportant for a party.

- the zones on the xlobby-server no longer show what is playing, they only point to the stream address.

- xnet doesn't work properly because the zones on the 2 serevrs combine and cause a playback loop, this means keepeing 2 database's upto date.

- for party playback, it means jumping between 2 instances of xlobby:- 1, for selection and 2, for volume control.


This does kinda prove that a solution is quite achievable, reading from the disc once instead of concurrently. It would be better if it was all integrated into one version though.

[rbziggy]

I thought I would give an update to where I left off. I've been pretty successful with multizoning using a Creative Labs SB022X soundcard and the KX drivers. I didn't do too much to the KX configuration, but when I get a chance I will upload some images of my settings. This may help out some other users. The KX drivers set each stereo pair as the following:
Left/Right Main - Channel 6/7
Left/Right Surround - Channel 4/5
Center/LFE - Channel 8/9
It will also combine all the channels for a 6 channel output with a 0/1 setting.

I've set up Winamp instances for each of the above scenario's where:
6/7 is my livingroom zone
4/5 is my basement zone
8/9 is my back deck zone
0/1 is for all zones together

David,

I had a play at the weekend and I haven't suceeded in getting 0/1 setting to act as 3 x stereo pairs with KX drivers. I did play about with the DSP settings and managed to change routings and use some of the additional DSP plugins to combine different stereo pairs (e.g. feed a stereo 0/1 winamp to the 4/5, 6/7 and 8/9. But unfortunately it seems to treat 4/5 as the same so when 4/5 was selected that also ALWAYS played to all zones). However, although I gave up at that point, I think it may be possible to make it work by routing the 0/1 INPUT (I'd been playing with the OUTPUT) straight through. The reason I gave up (apart from time) was I realised that you could only set one all zone config and that would be static with KX. At least with output stacker I could do (say) two different multizones such all "All" and "Downstairs".

I'm back with output stacker for the moment but if you have made KX work I'd still be interested.

Regards

Richard

[rbziggy]

John

Very interesting, a few questions and thoughts on your test...

Pro's:- sync works fine, now its set up it remains "fiddle free"

- 1 zone no longer gets - left behind

My take from this - given that everything stayed in sync - is that you have proved that there is no problem with XL or multiple instances of Winamp streaming to multiple soundcards... when they use a single, common, input stream (the shoutcast).

This does seem to further substantiate the hypothesis that the falling out of sync issue really does come from the upstream multiple disc re-reading setup. This seems to be the only variable you have changed in your test.

Does this seem so to you?

Out of interest, have you tried as a comparison the Output Stacker approach? (It's pretty easy to set up as a test.) I'd be interested in your thoughts as although there is the "fiddle factor" on each XL startup, it only has that one 'con' and doesn't suffer the other cons you list.

(Slightly OT, I'd also be interested in your view on how audible the difference is in quality of ape vs 320k mp3. I ripped all my music - 4000 tracks - to 320k and ever since have wondered if I should have gone lossless but don't fancy the job again!)

Regards

Richard

[rhinoman]

HI Richard,

Yes your summary of the conclusion is spot on. All we need in xlobby is for it to pull from a single stream.

The reason I've held off on the output stacker approach is because I use foobar for my main zones, my rme cards don't allow volume control in winamp with waveout selected. I might try it with direct sound but the last time I tried it (a few years ago) there was an audible difference.

The lossless or 320k mp3 question. I ripped to ape because
a) I was told it wwas the best option when I started and knew nothing and even if my current setup wiouldn't show the difference, the one I aspired to would,
b) it allows me to convert back to wav with no loss,
c) now my front room setup is pretty nice I can tell the difference but for the rest of the house this is probably un-necessary

Now disk space is cheap its even less of an issue, I also keep a complete set of my 18500 tracks in 128k for my portable players (it took 4 days to convert using my 4400+ and dbpoweramp).

[rbziggy]

John

Well I guess that gives us a conclusion - we know, for robust and reliable multizone, we really need a single data feed from the base storage; unfortunatley the in-built XL multi-zone method doesn't do this. However, a single feed can (obviously) easily be achieved from one Winamp / Foobar instance; it's just then a case of finding the 'best' approach to distributing from that point to multiple zones. For this, we now know there are then a couple of workable, although not perfect, solutions available without modification to the core XL application. Looks like we have taken a pretty good stab at answering the question at the start of the thread

Interesting points about storage of media. I may have a further play with wave and uncompressed. Similarly, when I started I had no idea about what formats there were - I just assumed it was MP3 and went for the best quality of that I could find!

Regards

Richard

[rhinoman]

Wav, has its own problems in that it cannot be tagged, each album takes 640mb. If you use a lossless format like ape or flac etc, they don't loose any quality but only take about 330mb per album. Mine are ape but if I was starting today I would probably use flac as it is getting some support from portable players.

[samgreco]

Just as an update and to prove how stubborn I am , I have been trying lots of things to get Winamp to work in synch. So far... it doesn't. Very dissapointing.

I have tried messing with buffers. Direct Sound, Wave Out, etc. Nothing will stay in synch. I think that, as others here seem to have proven, that a single feed is the only reliable way to accomplish this. But how to make it managable is the question. How do you join zones on the fly? And keep individual level controls (I think this is VERY important) ?

Anyone know how to program a virtual audio matrixing patchbay ? I did find one that was part of a software package called Audio Mulch, but haven't figured it out yet . Oh well.

I probably won't have much time between now and the first of the year to experiment with this, but I'll keep checking back.

[redondo_se]

I started a thread a while ago about my experience with virtual audio cable:

Possible Alternative for Synchronized Multizone Audio

It worked pretty well for multiple analog sound cards. I'm currently in a pretty small house that only has 2 zones. I like to use my soundstorm soundcard in the living room to clone the front speakers to the surrounds. There is no way to maintain sync when different sound cards have different buffer lengths (as someone else indicated earlier in this thread). So, I gave up on it and instead ran the analog out of the soundstorm over cat5 to the other room. It get's the job done for now.

When I get a bigger house, I'm planning on sucking it up and getting Sonos. It's expensive, but it works. I'm also looking forward to the Rhapsody integration.

Sean.

[samgreco]

I saw the Virtual Audio Cable mentioned, but haven't looked at it yet. I'll have to check it out.

The Sonos looks great, but I have so much PC hardware already, that it seems a waste not to figure out how to use it.

Does anyone know the mechanism being used to synch Winamp? Where does the clock come from, etc.? It might help to understand the method to figure it out.

[rhinoman]

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.

Xlobby tries to resync about every 10 seconds which is why we hear slight hiccups when its just getting going.

I'm changing my rme card for a newer HDSP version. For this card RME make a mixer that allows any output to be duplicated on any other outputs. I'm hoping I'll be able to preconfigure a sync up and then use girder to call it up/turn it off.

I agree the Sonos stuff looks cool but to much investment in hardware for me at the moment. If I moved it might be a possible solution to not running speaker wires everywhere.

[samgreco]

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.

I was not aware of that. Is it adjustable? I wonder what the overhead hit would be to tighten that up?

Although the new HDSP card looks interesting. If you could get Girder or XLobby to control the mixer, you would have the best of ALL worlds. You could switch zones in or out using the mixer and adjust levels.

I saw the new Mackie Onyx recording interface and it has this mixer app:
http://www.mackie.com/products/400f/rollover.html
Sounds similar to what you'll have.

Killer is, we should be able to do this with ANY multi-out sound card. It's just that the card makers haven't exposed the mixer hardware to the basic drivers.

Keep us posted on your progress.