Multiple speaker clients one sound card

[Krumpy]

This can NOT be done with the HS speaker as the HS speaker will want to talk to an audio card, and will NOT allow you to select a specific audio channel via directshow technology.

Whereas Musiclobby and other such applications will.

What I did is have the HS speaker set to the audio card, and then had have the Cinemar products (Musiclobby, Internet media player, Pandora, and such) audio zones select between the front, rear, center, sub channels. The HS speaker will "talk" to all zones at the same time.

Another option is to use two sound cards, and route the audio out from one card to the audio in on another. But this gets complicated fast.

Another option (3rd) is to use multiple sound cards and then use a hardware sound mixer to "mix" all of the audio together. This gets expensive.

[simonmason]

I wish my Nuvo had the intercom feature - but alas it does not!

[rileydogmi]

What I was trying to do with my MAudio Delta (which works but has the stutter) is to connect the Audio to my 2 CAV's audio trigger inputs. Then, announcements will be heard in every zone that doesn't have DND on the CAV set. Works great. I don't use it for music, just for announcements.

I think I will buy one of these USB sound cards to move one of the instances to another computer to eliminate the stutter - for $10 it seems like the least expensive approach.

[Rupp]

Sorry - I put the wink on the iphone but it didn't come through! I am amazed that you can get $7 USB audio devices and they perform as well as $100+ sound cards. It looks like you updated the product link to an even cheaper version through Newegg?

Yes I did update the link. I'm sure these aren't as good a a $100 sound card but many of us are using this for HS text messages so the quality isn't needed.

[simonmason]

Sorry - I put the wink on the iphone but it didn't come through! I am amazed that you can get $7 USB audio devices and they perform as well as $100+ sound cards. It looks like you updated the product link to an even cheaper version through Newegg?

[Rupp]

Wow, that's really expensive! How is the audio quality?

I hope that was a Joke or mistyped. They work as good as any other PC sound I've ever had but are a ton easier to install and manage.

[simonmason]

Wow, that's really expensive! How is the audio quality?

[Rupp]

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

[simonmason]

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.

[Rupp]

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.

[simonmason]

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.

[Rupp]

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.

[simonmason]

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.

[rmasonjr]

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!

[Rupp]

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.