Playing the same music on multiple computers?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I'd like to set up my mac to stream audio to all my roommate's speakers, so that we can all play the same song at the same time. Is there a cheap way to do this? A solution that would work with both Macs and PCs would be preferred.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I saw a JBL booth at macworld a few years ago that did this. Unfortunatly, to get it to work, all the computers had to be exactly the same. (Processor speed, RAM, hard drive, cloned disk images, and the same USB attachments.) It was a very expensive setup, but also very cool.



    Streaming audio has its own problems like network delay and computer reaction time. You would have to establish 2 connections with the server and download at the same time, but the computer can only process one connection at a time. (Yes many users can stream at the same time, but the computer sends info to one single computer and moves on to serve the next. This creates a bigger delay the more computers you have.) There are ways to lower latency, but it is more complicated.



    In short, it won't work like you expect. I've tried. Still, if you want to experiment, download Quicktime broadcaster (free) from Apple's website and set up a server on your mac. You may have to do a little creative wiring since it streams external sources like DV cameras (Put your music on DV tape and only select the audio in Quicktime broadcaster) Both Quicktime for Mac and PC will work.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    Hi, doesn't VLC do this?



    A mate and I played about with it on the work LAN a while back - he could stream a video (or music) from his PowerBook and others on the LAN could connect and watch/listen to it as well. I could view it via VLC on Windows XP too! The person serving the media is in control of playback - by that i mean other people just connect and watch/listen but have no control over the playback etc.



    -indy
  • Reply 3 of 3
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Once you set up a streaming server, lots of people & programs can connect if you have the bandwidth. (Quicktime, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, VLC, MPlayer, etc... ) The problem is that the music will be off sync 1/4-2 seconds, which is not pleasant to listen to at all.
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