Simultaneous playback on multiple computers

[OUBobBud]

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Press play from my computer using iTunes, Windows media player, whatever music program and have it play from every computer in the house connected to the network.

I live with 9 other people and when we have parties, it's annoying having everybody play different music at the same time. I'm trying to get the whole house on the same jams.

I know with iTunes you can play other people's libraries so I wouldn't think it would be too hard to find software for all the computers to play the same song at the same time.

Does this software exist? Is there another alternative such as broadcasting a local radio station so everybody in the house can tune in? Maybe a wireless A/V transmitter? (I saw these at CircuitCity) Audio splitters & RCA cables connected to every room?(Don't want to do this)

Anybody have a solution?

 

[nav]

Have you thought about setting up a internet radio (or rather, intranet radio) on one computer and then having the other computers use that as their playback source? If everything is already networked that would save the running of additional cables. If that sounds like something you could do, try looking into something like Icecast.

 

[midna]

I would go with the same idea, some kind of internet radio broadcast that all your computers could tune into at the same time. One of them could be a master computer and the rest would be slaves, just playing back what the master was playing. That route would be much easier then trying to synch the playback on all the computers to start and stop at the same time.

 

[Pwner_2130]

Playback on multiple computers

What is your speaker setup on each computer? Do you have an amplifier networked as well?

 

[OUBobBud]

No were all just connected through a router. I attempted the internet radio thing, but I guess I'm not that computer literate to do it. Everyone just has their own computer, some with computer speakers, some have their computer hooked up to their stereos. I just can't believe there is no software that let's you listen to whatever someone else is listening to while you are directly connected on the same network. I know you can access people's shared folders or shared iTunes, it seems only a few steps away.

 

[MDS]

The issue is keeping all the machines in sync. If you just share the folder on the machine with the music, you could have the other machines point to that shared folder and use any old media player but there is no way to keep them in sync. To keep them in sync you need one machine to act as a server and stream the currently playing song to any and all machines that connect to it.

I've never tried it myself but I think WinAmp supports ShoutCast (meaning it can act as a client to a ShoutCast server). You could download a ShoutCast server and google for info on how to set up WinAmp to stream from it. I'm sure it would work by just using 'Open URL' in WinAmp and pointing to the ShoutCast server.