Re: PC Driven MP3 Players

[dharper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Harper)]

In article <me2dnQxbA60v6UzZnZ2dnUVZ_q2dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Bill Kearney <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear about them.  A solid, reliable
>> solution is more important to me than cost.
>
>I use a PC running J.River's Media Center version 11 with multiple USB sound
>cards.  Each as it's own zone, tied into a Russound CAV6.6.  MC11 is about
>the only app that reliably handles multiple zones properly.  Each one gets
>it's own playlist.  I've run it on machines as basic as a P3/800 and it
>worked reasonably well for 4 zones, but even then the CPU didn't get much
>above 50%.

Thanks for the feedback Bill - that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking
for.  I had run across a mention of Media Center in an online forum and it
looked pretty good.  SIIG makes a USB sound card (the SoundWave Optical 5.1)
that also looks pretty good, but when I asked their Technical Support if I
could run multiple units, they said "no - it's a Windows limitation", so I
didn't pursue it.  Glad to hear that it really works.

Thanks,
Dave