Synchronizing Music Players?

orn asks: "Lots of people now have MP3 players in the living room. Some people have players in the kitchen, bedroom, garage, and so on. They are great when it comes to getting to your music from multiple places, but when you walk from room to room, it's almost impossible to get the music aligned. Are there software packages or techniques for synchronizing multiple networked music players? One thought is to use streaming software to stream to all players — but is there any streamer that will let you account for the different delays in different hardware to create a single synchronized whole?"

Re:Simplify

[i_should_be_working]

Indeed. And if one really wants to have other additional computers in control of the music, they can just use vnc or some similar app to control the music server.

Re:Simplify

[simcop2387]

similar in line with this you can get a low power FM transmitter off ebay, and use that and some radios, much simpler if you don't want to run that much wire. my parents do it like this.

Re:Simplify

[blhack]

I came here to suggest the same thing. We have a setup very similar to this in our house. There is a room with a rack that has 4 Amps on it. Each one is individually controllable as far as volume goes (remotely). So that i can be in my bedroom with the music on VERY low, and the kids can be out in pool with the music on very LOUD. With this setup, you can also run different sources to different amps too. Its pretty slick. I'm still at work so i can't look at who makes the stuff. If this is something like what you want, i'll go look at who makes everything for you when i get there. :)

BTW, everything is controlled either from little panels that look like light switches in each room, or from a wireless tablet.

Centralized unit

[ZipR]

I have a system from these guys (http://www.russound.com/index.htm) in my house. Each room has its own set of built-in speakers, with a separate volume and source control too. I serve music via my computer (in the basement), and can skip from song to song in the living room (on the first floor) with an ATI remote wonder (works through walls.) I also have my main TV audio hooked into the system as well as the DVD/CD player. When the big game is on, I can turn it up in all the rooms.

Re:Simplify

[_Sharp'r_]

My favorite trick is that with the right adapter you can use the cable TV coax already throughout your house as digital coax. That will generally get digital audio piped from one source to any device in your house that accepts a surround sound input.

Pre-existing cables and a couple of $70 Theater in a boxes (for the amps inside and the multiple speakers to scatter about the house) with that solution gave me whole house audio sourced from the one expensive tuner (Denon 3806) that runs my real theater, which of course was already tied into my PC/MP3 storage.

It's nice to be able to play surround sound from your computer to anywhere in the house without having to run cables between floors or anything.