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    Multi-Zone Music Source Options

    Greetings all.

    I've spent a several hours recently going thru threads here and some other web resources but not sure I'm working out an effective plan for multi-source audio.

    First, for our new construction I will be putting in a Monoprice 6-Zone:
    https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10761

    Initially starting with just the one device until we get around to finishing the basement and outdoor entertainment areas, at which time I will add a second (I'll be pre-running the speaker, line-level and cat5e for controllers). As a quick side-note here, I know the current plugin by happnatious1 only supports one device but from what I've seen in the monoprice manual their api is pretty well documented so this may be a good time for me to play with plugin work using the existing one initially and developing my skill before we purchase the second unit.

    With that out of the way, I'm mostly still confused about source management. The Monoprice supports 6 sources. One of these will be for one of their bluetooth wall plates in the living room. But I'm not sure how to best manage the others to be flexible and useful. We've really just been single-threaded here on audio and am behind the curve seriously I feel.

    Here's what we currently have in our home. Usually we just play the MP3s through a computer or download to a phone, or we use one of the streaming services through the bluray player or Roku tv in the living room or on our individual phones.
    1. Storage with about 2000+ CDs burned to MP3 and/or FLAC. I access these very "old style" currently with just pointing a player to specific artists or albums or pulling together manual play lists. I would love to get more "intelligent" here based on final direction.
    2. Pandora - our family shares a single free account with about a dozen stations we've developed over a few years.
    3. Spotify - three separate accounts in the family. One premium and two free.
    4. Physical CDs (through the bluray player)
    5. Random other source...typically youtube music feeds or last.fm or such. Nothing consistent enough to consider dedicated


    So currently, someone may have one Pandora channel going on the TV while I listen to Spotify on my phone while working and my wife has a different Pandora channel on her phone while driving.

    Due to the flexible nature of the streaming services especially, what I was looking for is a solution of mapping some "source devices" to the five available Monoprice channels and then having a software solution to control that device. Each family member would "own" one source device/channel and can bring it up on any of the Monoprice Zones they wanted to.

    I can have my wife be "channel 1", I'm channel 2, and each of the kids have a channel. Then my wife can have her music going on two or three Monoprice Zones while she's in the main part of the house while I and the kids have something different playing in whatever Zone we are in. This is the only option I've been able to wrap my head around but not sure if there are better ones I haven't considered yet.

    Some notes:

    * I will be moving all my music and movie burns over to a basic NAS for redundancy. and pointing a Plex media server at it as my back-end on a dedicated HTPC.
    * I plan to run a Kodi front end client on that same HTPC but it will only be in use when the actual theater is in use, so relatively infrequent.
    * I plan to run additional Kodi frontends on two RPi with one at each of our TV locations.

    This was to cover the "video" portion of life (playing burned movies from the NAS, bluray player, Netflix, Vudu, etc.) but I have not yet considered the audio side. My TV-center designs already incorporate appropriate speakers so I have no interest to tie in those RPis to the Monoprice ceiling speaker system specifically. The Monoprice will be for music and other audio-only use.

    So getting back to the audio source question, I wasn't sure though if it may be best to just run five additional, isolated Kodi clients somewhere, attach the audio output of each to one Monoprice Source and use our phone or local HS3 console to manage the source selection. "Audio Kodi #1" would be Source #1 but could be set to use whatever stream source my wife wants to listen to at that time, etc.

    I've also seen a lot of suggestions on this forum from people that like squeezebox for audio, but am not familiar with it yet and not sure I want to run two media servers and present the family with two interfaces (Kodi & squeeze). In fact, too many different looks will turn off most of us. For example my wife likes to use the universal remote to control the TV, bluray and streaming services, but really dislikes having to use the two separate remotes.

    If I go the route of five dedicated Kodi (or squeezebox ) clients, I think I am either looking at five dedicated RPis or another PC with five installed soundcards, each mapped to a VM running an isolated client...unless I'm missing an option I'm completely clueless about.

    I do NOT mind having to put in time to customize a front-end, develop HS3 screens, etc. if needed. I am a strong in Python and Linux scripting; capable in Java / JS / NodeJS / HTML / CSS / XML / JSON / YAML; work with MQ, Java JVMs, WebSphere, Apache and am building skill in docker and ansible. So I love geeking out on some of this and am never intimidated on the tech side if I have some good references to work from. But to be honest I'm just overwhelmed on the options at this point.

    So I really hope the collective wisdom here can help brush away my final webs of understanding of all these options. As I've had no need to play with real media management yet I feel I'm probably looking at things with an out of date perspective.

    advTHANKSance!!!!!

    #2
    I have not gone through all your post yet but have you seen this : https://casatunes.com/ ? @Spud has a new plugin for it.

    Eman.
    TinkerLand : Life's Choices,"No One Size Fits All"

    Comment


      #3
      I think I am doing something similar to what you're looking for. I have 2 Russound 6-zone amps and use a plugin to control those. I have 2 zones that I switch between (PC Audio and XM Receiver) so each room can listen to either. I'm also using an XAP800 to pre-mix the audio, so each zone also has TTS injected into the audio stream. I'm planning on adding a third source that only receives TTS (which will effectively be my "off" mode for music.)

      Your idea of an amplifier source for each family member who can each switch between music sources sounds like a good plan. You could then allow any of them to broadcast to the rest of the house without much effort.
      HS Pro 3.0 | Linux Ubuntu 16.04 x64 virtualized under Proxmox (KVM)
      Hardware: Z-NET - W800 Serial - Digi PortServer TS/8 and TS/16 serial to Ethernet - Insteon PLM - RFXCOM - X10 Wireless
      Plugins: HSTouch iOS and Android, RFXCOM, BlueIris, BLLock, BLDSC, BLRF, Insteon PLM (MNSandler), Device History, Ecobee, BLRing, Kodi, UltraWeatherWU3
      Second home: Zee S2 with Z-Wave, CT101 Z-Wave Thermostat, Aeotec Z-Wave microswitches, HSM200 occupancy sensor, Ecolink Z-Wave door sensors, STI Driveway Monitor interfaced to Zee S2 GPIO pins.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by Eman View Post
        I have not gone through all your post yet but have you seen this : https://casatunes.com/ ? @Spud has a new plugin for it.

        Eman.
        I have looked at them in the past and it was decent, but damn are they proud of their stuff. Are you using this and if so, what has your experience been?

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Eman View Post
          I have not gone through all your post yet but have you seen this : https://casatunes.com/ ? @Spud has a new plugin for it.

          Eman.
          I know my post was a bit long, but I wanted to provide enough info to help with the suggestions. I actually am all set on the distribution hardware, which this looks to address.

          I'm more asking how people may suggest management of source hardware, specifically for supporting multiple stream services as well as local audio files.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by reidfo View Post
            I think I am doing something similar to what you're looking for. I have 2 Russound 6-zone amps and use a plugin to control those. I have 2 zones that I switch between (PC Audio and XM Receiver) so each room can listen to either. I'm also using an XAP800 to pre-mix the audio, so each zone also has TTS injected into the audio stream. I'm planning on adding a third source that only receives TTS (which will effectively be my "off" mode for music.)

            Your idea of an amplifier source for each family member who can each switch between music sources sounds like a good plan. You could then allow any of them to broadcast to the rest of the house without much effort.
            Thanks.

            For your PC Audio, is that just a single source of content such as local audio files or do you do service streaming from the PC too? Do you ever have times that two different listening zones want to list two two different content from the same source (such as a different XM channel at the same time in two different zones)?

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by waynehead99 View Post
              I have looked at them in the past and it was decent, but damn are they proud of their stuff. Are you using this and if so, what has your experience been?
              Not yet but had a look. They do offer installers so can spin your own!
              Am just fond of @Spud's plugins.


              Eman.
              TinkerLand : Life's Choices,"No One Size Fits All"

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Beowulf View Post
                I know my post was a bit long, but I wanted to provide enough info to help with the suggestions. I actually am all set on the distribution hardware, which this looks to address.

                I'm more asking how people may suggest management of source hardware, specifically for supporting multiple stream services as well as local audio files.

                I didn't mean it in bad way but if you give me a second chance and take a look at these : https://www.pulse-eight.com/ =====> For video (The top dog)

                And : https://www.leviton.com/en/products/...edia-enclosure ====> Structured Media Enclosure





                Eman.
                TinkerLand : Life's Choices,"No One Size Fits All"

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Beowulf View Post
                  Thanks.

                  For your PC Audio, is that just a single source of content such as local audio files or do you do service streaming from the PC too? Do you ever have times that two different listening zones want to list two two different content from the same source (such as a different XM channel at the same time in two different zones)?
                  The PC source is connected to a Raspberry Pi acting as a Squeezebox player. I can stream Internet content and play local audio through Logitech Media Server. I live alone and entertain family occasionally on weekends, so I haven't had the need for more than one music source at a time. If I did I would just add another Raspberry Pi player.
                  HS Pro 3.0 | Linux Ubuntu 16.04 x64 virtualized under Proxmox (KVM)
                  Hardware: Z-NET - W800 Serial - Digi PortServer TS/8 and TS/16 serial to Ethernet - Insteon PLM - RFXCOM - X10 Wireless
                  Plugins: HSTouch iOS and Android, RFXCOM, BlueIris, BLLock, BLDSC, BLRF, Insteon PLM (MNSandler), Device History, Ecobee, BLRing, Kodi, UltraWeatherWU3
                  Second home: Zee S2 with Z-Wave, CT101 Z-Wave Thermostat, Aeotec Z-Wave microswitches, HSM200 occupancy sensor, Ecolink Z-Wave door sensors, STI Driveway Monitor interfaced to Zee S2 GPIO pins.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by reidfo View Post
                    The PC source is connected to a Raspberry Pi acting as a Squeezebox player. I can stream Internet content and play local audio through Logitech Media Server. I live alone and entertain family occasionally on weekends, so I haven't had the need for more than one music source at a time. If I did I would just add another Raspberry Pi player.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Here utilize Squeezeplayer and Kodi for audio sources for Russound stuff.
                      - Pete

                      Auto mator
                      Homeseer 3 Pro - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e 64 bit Intel Haswell CPU 16Gb
                      Homeseer Zee2 (Lite) - 3.0.0.548 (Linux) - Ubuntu 18.04/W7e - CherryTrail x5-Z8350 BeeLink 4Gb BT3 Pro
                      HS4 Lite - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenovo Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram

                      HS4 Pro - V4.1.18.1 - Ubuntu 22.04 / Lenova Tiny M900 / 32Gb Ram
                      HSTouch on Intel tabletop tablets (Jogglers) - Asus AIO - Windows 11

                      X10, UPB, Zigbee, ZWave and Wifi MQTT automation-Tasmota-Espurna. OmniPro 2, Russound zoned audio, Alexa, Cheaper RFID, W800 and Home Assistant

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I really do need to finish that plug in but I never seem to be able to find the time. If need be I could always rebuild the plug in with a different name like Monoprice amp 2 and it would appear as a separate plug-in in-homeseer. not the most elegant Solution by quick and easy.
                        https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/de...plifier-plugin

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by happnatious1 View Post
                          I really do need to finish that plug in but I never seem to be able to find the time. If need be I could always rebuild the plug in with a different name like Monoprice amp 2 and it would appear as a separate plug-in in-homeseer. not the most elegant Solution by quick and easy.
                          What language do you do your plugin work in? As I mentioned above I work with a number of different languages but hardly ever touched anything Windows specific ( C#, VB, etc. ). I started life on C/C++ before moving into Java work for a short time. But then got into "middleware admin" for the last 15+ years. Very enjoyable and a good career but more Linux/Unix admin so most of my coding work has been focused in that direction. I'm getting going again in Java both for work and also writing mods for Minecraft (my kids are big into it...yeah...the kids... ). I'll be honest though, I haven't used Windows at home since Win98 and only use it at work for Outlook and do all my real work on various Linux or mainframe servers. But if I could apply my skills to helping I would enjoy it.
                          Last edited by Beowulf; April 25, 2018, 12:52 PM.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Thanks for the feedback that several of you are happy with Squeezebox for streaming work and some notes people use it along side of Kodi. I will check out some demos of it.

                            As I mentioned, my only hesitation with it was the fear of offering two different interfaces (squeezebox + kodi) but if I can hide some of that behind the HS controls that becomes a non-issue. If the wife and kids can do 80% of what they want through pre-configured options and only need to go deeper if they want to add something new that may be fine.

                            The Russound and Monoprice serve very similar roles and very similar functionality from everything I've seen so if you're having success with your source management with a Russound backend then I would expect it to be about the same with any other distributed audio hardware.

                            Does anyone reading here have some screen shots or posted videos of their HS / Squeezebox / Kodi integration?

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Eman View Post
                              I didn't mean it in bad way but if you give me a second chance and take a look at these : https://www.pulse-eight.com/ =====> For video (The top dog)

                              And : https://www.leviton.com/en/products/...edia-enclosure ====> Structured Media Enclosure





                              Eman.
                              I LOVE those Leviton enclosures! Thanks for pointing that out to me. I have to look more into the Pulse-Eight stuff to see if there's anything they offer that would help simplify things, but I think the enclosures will be a life saver. I have done the "mount components and cables to plywood" method in the past. It's simple, cheap and relatively flexible but leaves a lot to be desired IMO too. I know my wife would rather see organized enclosures when she goes into the service room and I know I would.

                              I'm familiar with some of Leviton's other offerings already but will take a closer look at their updated Audio/AV/Network products. Even just using the nice terminal boxes, etc. really helps clean up a system and makes it more manageable. I was already working on my network specs so I can select an appropriate patch panel, for example.

                              Comment

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