WinampTv users...

[scottw]

I just bought an Asus 7135 tv/fm card off ebay for $10 for the purpose of FM audio. I set it up with WinampTv and it works great. I was just wondering how others have it setup with multizone audio if at all. I set it up with my primary/livingroom zone but cannot get it to work with additional zones. In the setup of WinampTv under the audio tab I have it setup as:
Connection: digital, played by DirectShow
Audio Source: Asus Silicon WDM Video Capture
Renderer: Directsound: KX Wave (I am using the KX drivers and have it pointed to the appropriate channels)
All this works.

I go to setup my next instance of winamp for a different zone and get the following error:
Graph cannot edit.
Error: No combination of intermediate filters could be found to make the connection. (80040217)
Capture driver: ASUS Silicon WDM Video Capture


Now I know that I cannot listen to 2 different radio stations at one time with the one card but I want to be able to listen to one station at any zone. I thought if I stopped the Winamp in the Livingroom I would be able to play the winamp in another zone but I can't even configure the second Winamp because of this error.


Is what I am trying to do not possible?

Thanks,
Scott

[Marbles_00]

Which channels of the FXBus are you using? Is it possible to add a screen capture of your KX DSP routing map, so we can visualize what how you are routing?

[scottw]

Sure here it is:



To tell you the truth I am pretty lost with the KX setup but thanks to your (marbles) Basic KX DSP post:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4704&highlight=

I just followed from that.

Do you think the error is from the KX side??

On the Renderer section of the WinampTV setting I just point that to the KX channel I want.

Thanks,

[scottw]

Oh and here is a screen cap of the winampTV section:

[Marbles_00]

Well, that's where I would start. You have to remember that the FXBus are a build of 'virtual' streams from inside of the soundcard. All sound that is generated by the computer by players and sequencers are routed out of one or more FXBus ports. Essentially the KX drivers define the FXBus this way:

WaveOut L/R are FXBus0 and FXBus1
MIDI Synth Out L/R are FXBus2 and FXBus3
Surround and Direct Surround streams are located at FXBus4 through to FXBus9

The setup you have has 4/5, 6/7, and 8/9 of the FXBus going to individual mixers, then to individual outputs. It doesn't matter if your using the Directsound output setting 4/5 or Wave out 4/5, it is only going to one output, so you will only hear sound out of one zone. You could try using 0/1 for either Directsound or Wave. If you look at the DSP map, FXBus 0/1 is routed to all the mixers, hence all the zones are pathed to play whatever is coming from bus 0/1.

This means though that whatever is being played individually on buses 4/5, 6/7 and 8/9 will be mixed with whatever is played on 0/1, which is undesirable (two seperate streams of music coming from the one set of zone speakers), but meaning that the individual zone music has to be stopped when 0/1 is played. But this is how you can achieve synced audio across multiple zones easily (and how I have done my "partyzone" setup).

Two things come to mind. You could use Virtual Audio Cables, and define the Winamp TV as a source. Xlobby user 'Scalt' has used VAC for mapping different sources to different outputs successfully in his zoning requirements.

Or, you could shoutcast broadcast the output of WinampTV, using the Shoutcast DSP plugin/Shoutcast server. Once your winamp instance is connected to the server, then you would have a button with an event command 'music/play file' associated with it. The filename associated to that command is the IP address:port of the shoutcast server machine. Then each instance of winamp/zone can play that 'file' at the same time. This is how I have done it with my AM/FM Tuner attached to one of the soundcard inputs. This may not be synced in the end...unless you play from the 'partyzone' instance...or in other words, play from the instance of winamp that outputs to FXBus 0/1.

I guess though, if mixing FXBux0/1 to the other channels doesn't matter, first you could try over everything else is route the output of the WinamTV instance to either Directsound 0/1 or Waveout 0/1 and see if that will work for you. The only thing I'm wondering, is what would happen in the event you would want to use FXBus0/1 also as your "all zone" output and have an instance of winamp defined for that purpose, at the same time as the WinampTV defined with the same FXBus output.

Hope I made some sense, and I hope this helps.

[scottw]

Thanks for breaking that down for me. I have a better understanding now.
I like the idea of the shoutcast option. I think I read your post on that a while back, wish I would have remembered before

I don't think I want the first option because I don't want the Fm played thru all zones just one at a time so I think shoutcast will work.

I will dig into it and post any questions I have back here if that's ok.

[scottw]

OK I am trying out shoutcast now. I installed shoutcast and the dsp plugin for winamp and it works but have a few questions as to how I can implement it in my setup.

Since I am using an FM tuner card it will be a bit different than your setup. In your setup you have a constant stream of audio coming into winamp via line in of your sound card and you can change stations with the UIRT right?
So you have a seperate winamp program running with the DSP plugin just to distribute the fm audio to the SC server and other instances of winamp that point to the IP of the SC server and play in your different zones, right?


So right now I have seperate copies of winamp for each zone. So I would add another copy of winamp with the DSP plugin and that copy would play from the FM tuner card.
To play the radio I would just need a 'music/play file' button that would point to the SC server, right??


I am pretty sure I have all that, if I am right

My main question is how to change stations within XL. Each radio station has a flie, .tvc I think, that has all of the station info like the frequency. To play the station in winamp you just have to point it to that file using the a 'music/play file' button.
I am thinking I would need to add this (DSP/SC) copy of Winamp into XL thru the Foobar/Winamp Zones section so I can control it thru XL but that would add it as a zone and I really do not want to do that. Am I thinking of that right?

Sorry for all of the questions I just want to be able to understand what exactly I am doing.

Thanks,

[Marbles_00]

In your setup you have a constant stream of audio coming into winamp via line in of your sound card and you can change stations with the UIRT right?

Correct, and it works nicely. My limitation is that I can not just select one of the presets. My tuner works by going through the presets either increment or decrement. It also has 5 pages for a total of 40 presets...but you don't know exactly which radio station is tuned...until the station itself identifies itself.

I am thinking I would need to add this (DSP/SC) copy of Winamp into XL thru the Foobar/Winamp Zones section so I can control it thru XL but that would add it as a zone and I really do not want to do that. Am I thinking of that right?

What I did (I know my setup is different) was to have the winamp DSP and SC server start at windows startup, so they are always running in the background.

So then I created a button that calls on the command "music/play file" in the file window I put "http://192.168.X.X:port, where 192.168.X.X is the IP address of the SCserver, which is running in the background on the music server, and the port matches what I define in the SC sever setup. I allowed like 32 connections to the server, so any zone can connect up to the server and listen to the radio. Now to controll it, I use the UIRT with buttons to define preset up/preset down, and page increment. So any zone can change the station...only problem is that it will effect all stations. I figured this is a small price to pay as most likely for my family and lifestyle, only one zone at a time will most likely ever use the radio function.

Your setup will be different in the fact that you will have to somehow use .m3u files which will define your radio stations to call up the .tvc list. For that you will have to look more intently at this post:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... c&start=15
and how P3rv does it, or this thread:
http://www.xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... t=winamptv
may help out a little

Depending on the chipset of your FM tuner card, you may be able to use the Radiator program instead of WinampTV, and command the different stations via command line. This way, you'd then still use the shoutcast idea, but now can easily control the presets. Read that first post for more details.

Hope this helps.

[scottw]

Great thanks will try.


One more quick question. Do you have a buffer on your shoucast server?? What I mean is if I am playing a song on the Winamp with the DSP and it is like half way thru the song, then I connect one of the zones to the SC server via IP it starts at the start of the song instead of where it is currently playing. I assume this will be the same for the FM audio but this is no good for me. Do you have realtime streaming or is there a delay???


Thanks for all your help,

[Marbles_00]

Yeah, I have a time delay from when stations are changed to when you can hear the change. To help get around this I would have to play with the buffer settings on the line-in plugin I'm using on the Winamp instances associated with the Shoutcast DSP. I've played with them before, but if I recall, I didn't set them right, and had a bunch of problems, so I put them back to default, and haven't played with them since. I also use the Null Output plugin, so there is no buffer settings to configure on the output.

I also don't change the station to often. It sits at the local rock station setting, so I don't notice the delay.