Multi-Zone Audio Problems

[hjackson]

My test setup is a 3 zone system. I am using 2 external USB soundcards with builtin amps, and my internal soundcard. I am having a few problems.
1) The Zone buttons on the multizone screen do not properly select the zones they are assigned. I cannot get the 1st zone button to summon the 1st zone instance of Winamp. (The arrow selectors work fine though.)
2) Each instance of Winamp is showing the different audio cards that I have selected in the options, but all the different zones' music are mixed into the one system default sound card.
3) I don't know how to create events (ie. "music:zone 4" etc) for additional zone buttons, so right now, I'm limilted to 3 zones
Thanks in advance for your help. This program is turning out to be killer!

hjackson

[rhinoman]

1) not sure I'll have to leave that to someone else
2) have you selected the ouptut in winamp/options/preferences/output/directsound and then the card from the dropdown list, if that doesn't work and they still all play the same then try selecting waveout instead od directsound, on my setup it showed the card differently.
3)even without knowing how to create events, if you add more than 3 zones you can still select them from the arrow keys.

[hjackson]

I originally had it set up the way you described. So I changed Winamp to waxrout and that didn't help. I also unchecked the "Allow multiple instances" box on Winamp and that didn't help either. It just appears that everything is being ported to my default soundcard, sespite the settings in Winamp. Does anyone know if there is something that has to be done in Windows (I am running XP Media Center) Audio settings to get this to work?

hjackson

[hjackson]

Well, now each instance of Winamp will play out of the designated soundcard, as long as I don't use them through Xlobby... Something is happening with Xlobby that causes my instances of Winamp, to all use the same soundcard despite being designated to different ones. Is anyone else having this problem?

hjackson

[stevenhanna6]

what version of winamp are you using? I remember helping someone who kept loosing the settings in winamp 5, I made a post about it near the end of the multizone thread.

[hjackson]

Yes, I'm using Winamp 5. Are you doing this with Winamp 2 ?

hjackson

[stevenhanna6]

I tested it with winamp2 a while ago, did you follow the steps for winamp5 in the thread?

looks like winamp has disabled the ability to give multiple copies different output devices All is not lost though....you just have to do a couple of extra steps to get it working.

Winamp is somehow storing the selected device for a specific output plugin...lets say you use the output plugin "out_ds.dll"...well anytime you change that plugins decive the change will be global to all other winamps. So we can arround this problem by simply renaming the "out_ds.dll" to "out_ds2.dll" for zone2 and "out_ds3.dll" ect...for each zones winamp installation....you then load up your zone....configure winamp to use the new "out_ds2.dll" plugin...set the device...close winamp to save changes...and your done....each winamp can use its own device again.

[rhinoman]

Hi Steven

Do you think this may be a similar issue to that I have with winamp 2.xx and my 2 delta 410's, direct sound workd fine on the first card but not on the second, I'm having to use waveout for the second card?

Does it matter, sounds about the same?

Cheers

[hjackson]

stevenhanna6, renaming the plugins did not work for me. Any other ideas? As well, do you have any other ideas as to why the zone buttons do not properly select the zone it's assigned to?

hjackson

[hjackson]

After much fiddling, it would appear that the problem is that on startup, Xlobby loads Window's "default device" for "sound playback audio" for all the different instances of Winamp. There is a check box in the "audio properties" window that says "Use only default devices", but this box is unchecked in mine so it can't be the problem. Because running Winamp individually (without Xlobby) or with other frontends does not cause this problem, I believe the problem is with Xlobby, not XP. Can you fix this problem please?

hjackson

[stevenhanna6]

that is very strange, you've created multiple winamp installations...then for each install you set the proper audio output then exited right? with all your winamps closed...when you load one up randomly the audio ouput setting is the way you set it right? but when xlobby loads up the multiple winamps then the settings are back to "default" for all of them?

I just want to make sure this is the behaviour your seeing.

[hjackson]

That's right. Whatever I switch the default Windows XP audio device to, will be the only device to play sound. If I switch the default audio device without shutting down Xlobby, the new default audio device will be the only one played.

hjackson

[stevenhanna6]

I'm going to run som testes myself after dinner to try this out...I will download the latest winamp to make sure we are on the same page.

Check back tonight and I should know more. What confuses me is why xlobby is causing winamp to loose its settings....I never saw that before when I designed the multi zone stuff....so I really think it has someting to do with the new versions of winamp. And xlobby isnt launching winamp in any special way as far as I know...it should replicating a launch just like double clicking the winamp.exe file.

[stevenhanna6]

Whatever I switch the default Windows XP audio device to, will be the only device to play sound

don't play with your windows xp settings at all. The only setting you should be changing is the device setting in winamp itself, thats why you need multiple winamp installations.

I just downloaded the latest winamp 5.03...installed it to a directory, then made a copy of that directory. So I ended up with

C:\test\zone1\<winamp.exe etc here>
C:\test\zone2\<winamp.exe etc here>

then I loaded the winamp.exe for zone1, configured the device output, enabled multiple allow instances, then quit. Then loaded winamp.exe for zone 2, configured the device output, enabled allow multiple instances, then quit. Then loaded xlobby, added C:\test\zone1\winamp.exe then added c:\test\zone2\winamp.exe. Something wasnt working so I quit and reloaded xlobby...it loaded both zones....I minimized xlobby to check both winamps to see if they had retained the original device settings and they did. So as far as I know it works.

what kind of soudcard are you using? are you using multiple sound cards? or just one with multiple outputs?

another thing to try if you did exactly what I did...load up each of your zones one at a time outside of xlobby. Is the device setting configured properly when you do this?

[hjackson]

Steve, once you checked the Winamps to make sure they were still configured correctly, did you then actually play music through each zone to make sure it was coming out of the different soundcards? I ask this because when I do what you did (minimize Xlobby and check the winamp configs), winamp IS still configured correctly for each soundcard, yet they are all still playing out of one. Bizarre!!! I then have to delete the playlist, to get the different winamp zones to play out of their selected soundcards again.
And I am using a 3 zone setup, with 2 external USB soundcards.

hjackson