Play audio on multiple pc's in Sync

google is your friend
http://www.overclock.net/t/378530/ho...iple-computers

I tried a few years ago to get this going, but could never get them completely in sync. I ended up going with multiple logitech squeezeplayers connected directly to each room's receiver. They play perfectly in sync and can be controlled via the squeezebox app on my iphone. They also are easy to control from automation software like CQC if you use anything like that.

The older original units can be picked up on ebay/CL for reasonable prices.

Squeezecenter plus Squeezeslave (or softsqueeze) should be able to.

Isn't the echo from the fact that sound travels slower than the light (electrons in the network). The PC's may actually be playing in perfect sync, it is the speed of sound that is giving you the echo.

Look into setting delays on the PC's sound card, but you will have change that as you move around.

Big places use sophisticated systems to compensate for the slower traveling sound to eliminate echoing.

For the relatively short distances we're talking about in a home scenario, it's not likely that the sound's propagation delay would be a significant issue.

I use sincast 3. It allowes me to sync music, videos, dvd's, youtube etc. videos to all 5 of my PC's. Its only $10 and very easy to setup

http://sinderon.com/software.htm

Key features:
► 8-way simultaneous streaming
► HDHomeRun Prime tuner support
► Internet broadcast via Justin.TV
► HTTP / RTSP streaming server
► Android, Flowplayer, iTunes clients
► Line-in, microphone-in sources

Actually it could. It comes out to something around a millisecond per foot travelled at sea level. Anything that gets over about 18ms to 20ms starts to edge over from something that just comb filters the two signals together into a subtly perceived separate delayed signal, and it gradually gets more distinct from there. Once you are up into, say, the 40ms'ish range it starts become pretty distinctly separate as a delay.

These types of timings are used regularly in music production so they are pretty well tested. At first the two signals just self-interfere heavily causing a phasey sound, then you start to get a feeling that it's changing position (because your sense of direction is based on slightly different arrival times to each ear, something that's used to create subtle panning and space effects in music production), then it starts to get a subtle slapback effect, then you hear it as separate things.

Another trick in lots of songs these days, is that there are parts that are 'doubled' i.e. recorded one and panned to the left, and then played exactly the same and panned to the right. The subtle differences in human timing will make them sound reasonable separated but they don't really sound like separate parts and a lot of the sound will end up in mono in the middle. But if you nudge the left one forward in time around 8'ish ms, and the right back about 8'ish ms, they suddenly become two distinct parts that you hear separately, and they create a very wide and spacious sound.

All true, though you're talking some rather large distances there. For a 20ms delay, you'd need to be 20' farther from one source than another (if you were exactly between two sources 40' apart they'd be in sync), and on top of that they'd have be of similar volumes at that point.

You'd have to have a circumstance where your two sources were say 40 feet apart an you were ten feet away from one, that would put you thirty feet away from the other so you'd have a delay of about 20ms. But if these sources were at about the same volume, the farther one would be on the order of 10dB lower than the closer one.

My point was just that in a residential environment, with "reasonable" volumes it's going to be tough/unlikely to be be far enough from one source relative to another and that their volumes to be similar enough for it to be a big issue.

Untreated and oddly shaped spaces possibly could contribute to non-obvious deviations in apparent volume between the two sources in some cases, in the lower frequencies, or strong first reflections for higher frequences.

But yeh, in general the difference in volume should alleviate most of the problem. Though that does assume that you are playing them at the same volume in each area, which may not be the case. If you are in the kitchen listening fairly quietly and the kids have it a good bit louder in the living room you might get that sort of problem. You'd be maybe a few feet from yours and easily over 16ft from theirs.

I've been looking for a solution to this for a few years and recently found this thread. So based on stranger89’s and redzone’s posts I tried using softsqueeze and the Logitech media server. It’s so easy. It worked fairly well but when switched from softsqueeze to squeezeplay everything ran much smoother.

It all works really well and has all the things I want in an audio player.
- PCs in multiple rooms playback in sync.
- Lossless support (FLAC)
- Ability to randomly play all tracks in the media library
- Nice display of what's playing
- Replay Gain (a non destructive way to match the volume between tracks).
- easily controlled with a free iphone app (made use of two old iphones via wifi)

Total cost - $0. I feel like I should buy an actual hardware squeezebox to contribute to its continued development. I can use it outside.

Couple other things to consider:

- Squeezebox server is controllable by a web interface or by dedicated apps for Android, iOS and WebOS
- Cover art etc is auto downloaded like iTunes
- Its great for internet radio as well as playing your music collection
- Its free!

Check out a thread I made about setting up a server/softsqueeze combo where multiple home audio zones are run off a single PC. This is for the case where you have speakers wired to a central media closet. Other than the PC, an amp per zone is required for power and you have sync'ed whole house audio with wireless control.