I wish multiroom DS systems, and the songcast source, were made more manageable.
It's not exactly hard to use now, but it is a faff. Here's an everyday example: wake up in the morning, want to make coffee in the kitchen and drink it in the living room, listening to radio 4 all the while.
Steps:
What I would like to be able to do is preconfigure these settings such that all I would need to do in the morning would be to select Source: Radio -> Radio 4 and select a preset, perhaps called something like 'Whole House - Breakfast'. I'd then like to be able to turn the whole house up or down by spinning a single volume control.
Then, once I'm done listening, instead of navigating to the primary songcast sender (the bedroom DS) and stopping it, I'd like to be able to end the 'Whole House - Breakfast' listening session. This would return the DSs involved to their previous source, so that they're ready to play from e.g. the Playlist or Radio sources, and not remaining on the stopped Songcast Bedroom source.
Of course there's a number of ways to skin a cat and this is just an example to illustrate the point. There's also a large number of scenarios to handle, e.g. what happens if someone else turns down the volume in just one room which is being governed by the 'Whole House - Breakfast' session? Not difficult to solve in itself in my case, but covering all the scenarios well is definitely a significant project.
One of the great advantages of DSs (and networked audio generally) over asynchronous USB DACs is the possibility for multiroom. I've never used Knect but I get the sense that it required some effort to set up but was then relatively easy to use. It seems that in the vast majority of households, there is a broad spectrum of techno-patience, leading to aberrations such as this:
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=7076]]()
A layer of management placed around the Songcast source, which makes multiroom really easy to use, would be excellent. There's usually at least one person in a household who would be capable of doing the setup, and failing that, a dealer could do it. Then, everyone can use it. Not only that, but I myself don't want to spend one minute turning on the radio in every room. I'd like it to be as quick turning on the whole house as it is to turn on one room. And I imagine that dealers would love to show something like this off.
I'm certain that something like this has already been considered, but though the DS is quite a mature platform, and even though Songcast has been out for a while, I've seen no mention of improvements to multiroom, including in any of the Kazoo talk or at the preview at the 40th (and I didn't think to ask). Is there much of an appetite for it?
Cheers,
Matt
It's not exactly hard to use now, but it is a faff. Here's an everyday example: wake up in the morning, want to make coffee in the kitchen and drink it in the living room, listening to radio 4 all the while.
Steps:
- Open Kinsky
- Select bedroom DS (as want to get it playing there first)
- Select radio 4
- Set volume
- select kitchen DS
- Select Songcast source
- Select bedroom DS as songcast sender
- Set kitchen volume
- Select living room DS
- select Songcast source
- select bedroom or kitchen DS as songcast sender
- set living room volume
What I would like to be able to do is preconfigure these settings such that all I would need to do in the morning would be to select Source: Radio -> Radio 4 and select a preset, perhaps called something like 'Whole House - Breakfast'. I'd then like to be able to turn the whole house up or down by spinning a single volume control.
Then, once I'm done listening, instead of navigating to the primary songcast sender (the bedroom DS) and stopping it, I'd like to be able to end the 'Whole House - Breakfast' listening session. This would return the DSs involved to their previous source, so that they're ready to play from e.g. the Playlist or Radio sources, and not remaining on the stopped Songcast Bedroom source.
Of course there's a number of ways to skin a cat and this is just an example to illustrate the point. There's also a large number of scenarios to handle, e.g. what happens if someone else turns down the volume in just one room which is being governed by the 'Whole House - Breakfast' session? Not difficult to solve in itself in my case, but covering all the scenarios well is definitely a significant project.
One of the great advantages of DSs (and networked audio generally) over asynchronous USB DACs is the possibility for multiroom. I've never used Knect but I get the sense that it required some effort to set up but was then relatively easy to use. It seems that in the vast majority of households, there is a broad spectrum of techno-patience, leading to aberrations such as this:
A layer of management placed around the Songcast source, which makes multiroom really easy to use, would be excellent. There's usually at least one person in a household who would be capable of doing the setup, and failing that, a dealer could do it. Then, everyone can use it. Not only that, but I myself don't want to spend one minute turning on the radio in every room. I'd like it to be as quick turning on the whole house as it is to turn on one room. And I imagine that dealers would love to show something like this off.
I'm certain that something like this has already been considered, but though the DS is quite a mature platform, and even though Songcast has been out for a while, I've seen no mention of improvements to multiroom, including in any of the Kazoo talk or at the preview at the 40th (and I didn't think to ask). Is there much of an appetite for it?
Cheers,
Matt