Audio Redirection onto 2 or More Computers using XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gus Williams
  • Start date Start date
G

Gus Williams

Hello,

I've been spending some time lately trying to figure out how to play
one audio stream onto the speakers of two different computers. Is
this feasible in the XP environment?

You see, the lab I work in is loud enough such that music played at
one computer (in one person's bay) becomes garbled and distracting by
the time it reaches the next computer. And if two people both try to
play separate music sources, then they interfere with one another. So
the obvious solution would be to play music from the same source.

We first tried playing the same internet radio stations
simultaneously, but inevitably one computer or the other would pause
and buffer and throw the audio out of synch.

I next thought to use XP's capabilities of audio redirection through
the remote desktop connection. After a couple of hours of reading,
and a couple of hours of fiddling I can now redirect the host
computer's audio onto the client computer's speakers (or maybe it is
the other way around). In the process, I lose control of the host
computer's speakers, so I'm not ahead.

At this point I started searching the newsgroups, and lo and behold,
XP's audio redirection capabilities do not seem to be very robust. So
no I am questioning whether it is even possible to split the audio
stream and play it on two different computers in XP. Could anyone
answer this question for me?

In my readings, I also noted several people recommended VPN as a more
robust way of networking computers running XP. I spent 30 minutes
over at the VPN website, and it does look interesting. But before I
sit down and learn yet another package/language, I thought I should
confirm that the package can do what I am looking for.

So, does anyone know if VPN (or any other networking protocols) would
facilitate the playing of one source's audio stream onto two or more
computers' speakers?

Thanks,

Gus
 
Why don't you just string speaker wires between the bays? Connect the
speakers to the wires instead of the computer. While the protocol of
the information flowing down the wires is not as interesting as VPN's,
it may do what you want.
 
Rob Schneider said:
Why don't you just string speaker wires between the bays? Connect the
speakers to the wires instead of the computer. While the protocol of
the information flowing down the wires is not as interesting as VPN's,
it may do what you want.

That would be too easy :) Actually, that is the backup plan right
now, stringing speaker wires between bays. But that solution has its
own inherent drawbacks in flexibility and cost (both in money and
time).

In our particular lab we have three different individuals with their
own collections of music (both on CD and preferred streaming audio
sources). At any given time, any one user might be playing some audio
in his bay. What I would like it the ability for any other user to
tap into that audio stream and pipe it through his computer into his
bay. Stringing speaker wires between bays would either require six
sets of wires or designating one computer as the central audio
players. Seeing as the computers are connected through the ethernet,
I was hoping there would be another solution.

Thanks,

Gus
 
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