- #JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS HOW TO#
- #JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS PORTABLE#
- #JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS SOFTWARE#
- #JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS TRIAL#
Casa Tunes is expensive in its own rights, however for the same amount of money, roughly $1000 – $1200 you can get a fully functioning 6 zone whole home audio system that fully integrates into your Windows Media Center ecosystem including Media Center Extenders as well as supports any pc that runs a web browser as well as any portable touch screen device with a web browser.
If you run more than two audio zones like I do it’ll run you another $350 or $500 depending on if you get amplified or un-amplified zones, and that doesn’t even include an additional remote control. For only two audio zones, and a single remote it is upwards of a thousand dollars and the second zone still requires an external amplifier (AV receiver or two channel amp) as well as speakers. Sonos is considered the top of the top when it comes to multi-zone audio and easy of use, however it comes at a steep price. Squeeze box is another solution similar to Sonos, however it is not a true multi-zone system as you can’t control the entire system from a single remote like you can with Sonos. Jriver is a great system as it manages all your media content in a nice easy to use interface, and allows you to remotely control your music from a htpc via a web browser.
Over the years I’ve played around with Jriver Media Center, Logitech Squeeze box, and have even played around with a sonos system. I contacted their customer support to see about getting a review unit, and to ask about some issues I had (will cover that later) and within a few days I had an XLi unit to review.
#JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS TRIAL#
I contacted them to get a review unit of their XLi system after I tested out and played around with the 15 day trial period. I spend a lot of time on AVS Forums and I was catching up on what people are doing for DIY projects in the whole home audio and distribution solutions and trying to figure out what I could do to rejuvenate my whole home audio project, which is when I came across a post about Casa Tunes. Casa Tunes allows you to add their hardware (sound cards) to your existing htpc and instantly turn it into a true multi-zone/whole home audio system. With their XLi (6 zone) and their XLe (12 zone up to 48 zones) audio hardware. Last year all that changed when Casa Tunes came out with their own hardware to support multi-zone audio.
#JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS SOFTWARE#
This became cumbersome to use and eventually the novelty of having multi-zone audio lost its appeal, until now that is, after learning about Casa Tunes.Ĭasa Tunes originally was a software solution that integrated Media Center into Russound and NuVo multiroom audio systems, where you could control and send audio from your htpc into a Russound audio system. If I wanted to the channel on change to another song, or change my cable box to another music channel I would have to go all the way to the basement, and change the channel on the cable box or turn my projector on so that I could see what music I had on my htpc.
#JRIVER MEDIA CENTER AND SONOS HOW TO#
Another issue other than not being able to separate the audio source was how to control all the audio. For what I had at the time it was great, I could feed audio into my home theater room in my basement, my living room up stairs, as well as my garage. In those early days I really only had three audio sources, my receiver that had FM Tuner, my cable box that had the on-demand music channels, and my HTPC connected to my receiver playing back mp3’s stored on my network and even then I couldn’t get each zone to have independent audio. Later on I expanded that to also feed audio into my kitchen/living room area, but was still only based off of two audio sources so the garage and living room still only played the same audio. The first system I had was based off of my Yamaha AV receiver that had a second zone output, to which I used to feed speakers in my garage. For years I have been slowly building up a multi-zone audio system in my home.
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