Synchronizing Music Players? 64
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?"
SlimServer (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
The Squeezebox is a solid piece of hardware and even when it's turned off it's useful for using it's VFD as an informati
Simplify (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Simplify (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simplify (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, everything is controlled either from little panels that look like light switches in each room, or from a wireless tablet.
Re:Simplify (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Click [lightav.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I say that because I do know that you can backfeed various combinations of cable/satellite/over the air broadcasts in different directions over the same RG6 cable as long as you pay attention to the frequency ranges they use and use the right combiners/filters.
The only iss
Speakers? (Score:2)
I am not sure if this is quite what you want, but wouldn't it be easier to just add more speakers? That way, you'll only have one player to worry about.
Easy solution (Score:5, Funny)
That's what the volume knob is for. I assume you have an '11' setting on it? Problem solved. You can hear it in all rooms simultaneously.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
MP3 players are portable, are they not? Simply carry the one you're listening to with you, and the only delay you'll get is relativistic, which (1) is negligible at the velocities of typical slashdotters, and (2) nullified by carrying the player with you.
I believe Apple makes a suitable device for this purpose.
Simple. (Score:5, Funny)
First, figure out what your slowest player is. Then, delay the others to match. Note that a lot of cat-5 cable might be useful -- about a mile or two should do it.
Use an osiclloscope to compare two different devices, and figure out how much delay you need. Figure that eight inches of wire is about a nanosecond delay. Note that you might have trouble driving a mile or two of cat-5, so you might have to throw in a switch or hub along the way -- which will introduce additional delay. Simply measure the delay and use less cable.
See, simple!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
AirPort Express (Score:4, Informative)
Don't think DIY is going to do it (Score:5, Informative)
Buy a Sonos [sonos.com] and forget about it. It's an amazing set of hardware that's worth twice the price.
Re: (Score:1)
In any event, this sort of system is a bad idea. Sound travels at 343 m/s (as opposed to c within the network), so propagation delay introduces latencies that swamp the network's. Even if you synchronize, the system will only be synchronized for a particular spot. If you move from it, you'll get major flanging.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, because movie theaters and rock bands have the same goals in mind as the Ask Slashdotter. He specifically said he wanted no "echo", not that he wanted to drown it out with loud music/sound effects.
Apple Airport Express (Score:2)
I don't know how it works, but it does...
Max.
Perfect (and simple!) solution (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Having the music cut out unless you wave your arms around every 5 minutes might be a touch obnoxious.
Re: (Score:2)
Most motion sensors wouldn't detect, say, someone sitting at a computer, reading slashdot.
Use your webcam with motion-sensing software. A number of "security" apps will let you trigger an external program that could very well fire off an X10 [wikipedia.org] signal upon a sense event [or lack thereof.]
I know most of us are mouse potatoes, but I'm also fairly sure a large percentage make some form of perceptible motion within 5 minutes time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And so when they sit down to listen, the music stops? Brilliant!
Three Techniques: (Score:1)
2. Use a stream server on your network to "stream" your mp3's to the other players. This should be pretty close to real time synchronization.
3. Run speaker wire to each room from a central location
I've actually tried 1 & 3, they work great!
The answers are: Yes and I don't know. (Score:1)
The things we have to struggle against (Score:2, Funny)
OMFG! Life is so hard!
Sync'ing movies between two households? (Score:2)
In these few months, I am going to be out-of-town for most days out of the month. My wife and I miss each other very much and we've gotten the old Unlimited-Talk-To-Each-Other-On-Your-Cellphone plan, etc. But one of our favourite activities is watching movies or TV shows together. We already know how to play them on the computer when we are at home together (got the ol' bigscreen and hi-fi hooked up to my Linux box), but it wou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But as the other poster said, the cellphone network might have other ideas of latencies...
Re: (Score:1)
but personally i still think there is no real answer
maybe go and find out what the real definition of VLC media player is about but i dont think that would help really
if you find an answer let us know...
Centralized unit (Score:2, Interesting)
Airport Express easily streams 2 multiple speakers (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Airport Express easily streams 2 multiple speak (Score:2)
Who are these people? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jerry Seinfeld Would have said... (Score:1)
I always thought Kramer was the funniest anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Who needs music?
Who needs an ipod to get through the day at work?
I do. I work on a trading floor as a quantitative analyst. When I need to concentrate, music is a hell of a lot less distracting than the conversations I can hear otherwise.
Incidentally, this is what you get for asking rhetorical questions on Slashdot. Some nerd will always take you literally anyway.
wireless speakers (Score:2)
It's Buffer Time... (Score:1)
If you're linux compatible you should check out mpg123 as it can take a playlist on standard in, and it can buffer n bytes of music. In the man page they suggest that a one meg buffer is about six seconds of delay, so that's one way to give yourself some tuneable delay...
mpg123 will also let you send the output in pcm or wav to standard out... and then you could make your own software based buffer before handing the music off to the
Use the ethernet cable for analog signals (Score:2)
vlc (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
best of all, its handles multiple OSs
it handles varying latencies pretty well, i've had it sync two desktops over a 10/100 local and a 802.11b and a 802.11g laptop at opposite ends of the house... and it sounded pretty decent.
anything more is excessively costly, complicated and a pain in the ass.
Hate to point out the obvious but... (Score:4, Informative)
One iTunes installation streaming to several AirPort Express base stations (connectable via wifi or ethernet) provides just what you need, including synchronized output. I was really surprised when I discovered the output was synchronized, despite being streamed as data and decoded at the express device itself.
Furthermore, if you have several iPods it's trivial to synchronize them all with the same iTunes installation, in fact, it's kind of the entire point and reason behind the iPod's success isn't it?
It's not like the iPod is that great of a player, and people can quit pretending the scroll wheel was a good idea because it's not (my sore thumb joint...) but the software to manage the things, that's the golden feature right there.
I'm sorry to be the one that pimps Apple on this, but son... they've got you pegged.
PulseAudio (Score:1)
Obvious (Score:2, Funny)
Squeezeboxes and slimserver (Score:2)
X.