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    Multiple speaker clients one sound card

    I haven't checked in on this in a while and I can find nothing recent on the board but has there been any change in trying to run the speaker client on separate channels of a sound card? I currently have my sound cards outputting different sources on Front, Center/Surround and Rear and would love to have speaker be able to address each channel separately.

    #2
    You're using MusicLobby on separate channels right? Long stort short, the Cinemar products use Microsoft's directshow to output the audio on different directshow channels.

    This can not be done with the HS speaker as far as I know. You have to use different sound cards. Don't believe that the HS speaker uses directshow.
    HomeSeer 2, HomeSeer 3, Allonis myServer, Amazon Alexa Dots, ELK M1G, ISY 994i, HomeKit, BlueIris, and 6 "4k" Cameras using NVR, and integration between all of these systems. Home Automation since 1980.

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      #3
      Sure you can do this. Start two different speaker app instances on that same computer (that info is in the HS2 Help Files). Then assign each speaker app a different sound card.
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        #4
        Correct - I dont think you can assign multiple speaker instances to different channels on the same card. That would be nice, though...
        HS4Pro on a Raspberry Pi4
        54 Z-Wave Nodes / 21 Zigbee Devices / 108 Events / 767 Devices
        Plugins: Z-Wave / Zigbee Plus / EasyTrigger / AK Weather / OMNI

        HSTouch Clients: 1 Android

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          #5
          I was about to post a similar question - I have 2 instances of Speaker and I use a M-Audi Delta 1010T sound card that has multiple outputs. I have one instance using 1 of the Delta channels, the other speaker instance using another. So I am running the speaker app off one sound card, different channels.

          My issue is when I speak to all clients, I frequently get stutters, gaps in the speech on these speaker apps. Very frustrating. I only use the channels for speech, no music. When I speak on one speaker instance, it seems OK - only when I issue a speak all instances I get the issue.

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            #6
            Originally posted by rileydogmi View Post
            I was about to post a similar question - I have 2 instances of Speaker and I use a M-Audi Delta 1010T sound card that has multiple outputs. I have one instance using 1 of the Delta channels, the other speaker instance using another. So I am running the speaker app off one sound card, different channels.

            My issue is when I speak to all clients, I frequently get stutters, gaps in the speech on these speaker apps. Very frustrating. I only use the channels for speech, no music. When I speak on one speaker instance, it seems OK - only when I issue a speak all instances I get the issue.
            What does the cpu usage look like when you hear the stuttering? What are the specs on the hardware?
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              #7
              I haven't checked the CPU - I will do that next time.

              The speaker apps are running on my media server - the speaker apps are the only apps running on this machine - it is a core 2 quad Q9300 processor 2.5GHz with 4GB Ram, running Windows 7 x64 - speaker app is 2.5.0.60

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                #8
                Originally posted by rileydogmi View Post
                I haven't checked the CPU - I will do that next time.

                The speaker apps are running on my media server - the speaker apps are the only apps running on this machine - it is a core 2 quad Q9300 processor 2.5GHz with 4GB Ram, running Windows 7 x64
                That should be more than enough horse power. Maybe the sound card drivers can't handle this setup. I've had good luck with testing multiple usb sound cards in the past though.
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                  #9
                  Originally posted by rileydogmi View Post
                  I was about to post a similar question - I have 2 instances of Speaker and I use a M-Audi Delta 1010T sound card that has multiple outputs. I have one instance using 1 of the Delta channels, the other speaker instance using another. So I am running the speaker app off one sound card, different channels.

                  My issue is when I speak to all clients, I frequently get stutters, gaps in the speech on these speaker apps. Very frustrating. I only use the channels for speech, no music. When I speak on one speaker instance, it seems OK - only when I issue a speak all instances I get the issue.

                  That is pretty cool! I didnt know you could do that on a single sound card.
                  That could open a lot of possibilities!
                  HS4Pro on a Raspberry Pi4
                  54 Z-Wave Nodes / 21 Zigbee Devices / 108 Events / 767 Devices
                  Plugins: Z-Wave / Zigbee Plus / EasyTrigger / AK Weather / OMNI

                  HSTouch Clients: 1 Android

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                    #10
                    How are you telling the separate speaker instances which channel on the audio card to access? I do this with MusicLobby right now, have four separate audio channels going through one audio card. My original question was about this - I want to load four instances of speaker and have them speak through each of these four channels. This way I can have announcements play in any room that theses sources are being played.

                    Of course a more elegant approach is to get a multi room system that allows a single audio source to broadcast over any channel playing - I think Russound and others do this - but I have Nuvo and it doesn't support this.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by simonmason View Post
                      How are you telling the separate speaker instances which channel on the audio card to access?
                      Open the speaker client an select Options. On the speaker options tab choose Audio uptput/Text-To_Speech tab. Select your output device using the sound Device (Usually a WAV audio device) drop down list.
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                        #12
                        Thanks. But in that drop down I only see one option for the sound card. I have this sound card segmented into four separate channels 1-4 using the different outputs on the card. For example, CHA1 is Front, CHA2 is Center/Surround, etc. In MusicLobby I then output separate audio through each channel - creating four separate sources that feed into my whole house controller. I am trying to get Speaker to play independently on each of these channels. I thought Speaker could only work at the card level but one of the previous posters implied that they are running separate copies on different channels on the same card.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by simonmason View Post
                          Thanks. But in that drop down I only see one option for the sound card. I have this sound card segmented into four separate channels 1-4 using the different outputs on the card. For example, CHA1 is Front, CHA2 is Center/Surround, etc. In MusicLobby I then output separate audio through each channel - creating four separate sources that feed into my whole house controller. I am trying to get Speaker to play independently on each of these channels. I thought Speaker could only work at the card level but one of the previous posters implied that they are running separate copies on different channels on the same card.
                          It sounds like it's not going to work with your setup. I know it works if you have multiple sound cards like USB sound cards, or something similar.
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                            #14
                            Thanks. As Krumpy mentioned before I think Cinemar uses a different approach for accessing the sound card - essentially breaking one sound card up into 3/4 output devices. This would be something interesting for HS3? It is a very effective way of optimizing space in the server! I may look into the USB approach to achieve what I am trying to do. I believe I saw some posts earlier about a cheap Pyle USB audio device.

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                              #15
                              Here's one similar to the ones I tested with.
                              http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812705175
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