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michael7oliver · 2012-08-11, 13:19

Rather than buy a pair of sennheiser rs 180 I thought I'd make a suggestion on here and see if anything either exists or could be developed.

Basically I was hoping a paired wifi device (iPhone or Android phone) could receive the audio stream from whatever is playing. This way I could watch TV without disturbing others in my house.

I found the apps below for the iPhone all of which use a windows / Mac software to stream the audio. I thought perhaps xbmc's existing protocols might allow an app to be developed for the iPhone / Android. Or perhaps the feature could be added to one of the remote apps for xbmc?

http://mac.appstorm.net/how-to/music/usi...eadphones/

http://m.cnet.com/news/audioin-turns-you...s/10219286

http://m.cnet.com/news/turn-your-iphone-...t/10462312

isamu.dragon · 2012-08-11, 16:09

this would be interesting, start a movie in the bedroom, send audio to iPod Touch, listen to movie through headphones, and not wake anyone.

+1 to this idea.

mftvrocks · 2012-08-11, 16:13

XBMC works like new iTunes?

Bstrdsmkr · 2012-08-11, 18:04

I tried to get this working several times. You can get pretty close, but the problem you run into is the delay in the streaming puts the audio out of sync. It can work for music, but video is too much work.

It MIGHT be possible under linux to pipe your system audio through mpd and and set up an mpd client on your phone. That would give you a constant delay so you could set the audio delay by default not have to fool with it each time you start a video. The draw back would be the audio being delayed for everything outside xbmc as well. I haven't tried this myself, but it's as close to a working solution as I could come up with.

clel · 2012-08-13, 01:45

Maybe developers could add an AirPlay option, so you could use an app like this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...rch_result

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2012-08-13, 04:39

XBMC does have an option on the OSD controls to adjust for audio lag. While watching a video bring up the on-screen-display, select audio, and select audio offset.

Bstrdsmkr · 2012-08-13, 18:37

(2012-08-13, 04:39)Ned Scott Wrote: XBMC does have an option on the OSD controls to adjust for audio lag. While watching a video bring up the on-screen-display, select audio, and select audio offset.

The problem I ran into was the delay was slightly different for each piece of content. That meant dialing in the delay each time you wanted to watch something, which is the "too much work" part I mentioned above

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2012-08-14, 03:01

(2012-08-13, 18:37)Bstrdsmkr Wrote: The problem I ran into was the delay was slightly different for each piece of content. That meant dialing in the delay each time you wanted to watch something, which is the "too much work" part I mentioned above

That's the problem with using Wifi.

Maybe if there was an app that allowed the smartphone to act as bluetooth headphones, as bluetooth doesn't have lag issues.

michael7oliver · 2012-08-14, 11:15

(2012-08-11, 18:04)Bstrdsmkr Wrote: I tried to get this working several times. You can get pretty close, but the problem you run into is the delay in the streaming puts the audio out of sync. It can work for music, but video is too much work.

When you say you got pretty close... Was this using a specific app on your phone, plugin on xbmc?

JRockGotBoppedB · 2012-08-14, 15:59

I would love this feature to be implemented across all the platforms if possible.

I made a similar post (sorry hadn't seen this one) suggesting that people be able to listen to different tracks simultaneously.

As for the out of sync issues the audio offset being built into the device would solve this or maybe a script could adjust it by pinging the device and figuring out the delay automatically?

Bstrdsmkr · 2012-08-14, 21:01

(2012-08-14, 11:15)michael7oliver Wrote:
(2012-08-11, 18:04)Bstrdsmkr Wrote: I tried to get this working several times. You can get pretty close, but the problem you run into is the delay in the streaming puts the audio out of sync. It can work for music, but video is too much work.

When you say you got pretty close... Was this using a specific app on your phone, plugin on xbmc?

I setup VLC as an external player and had it broadcast what it was playing. Then I opened the stream in my Android browser.

Bluetooth could work, but it isn't as robust as a sync'ed wifi solution. It relies on the broadcasting machine having bluetooth hardware, and is usually single client only. The big trick to this concept working well is getting all the clients and master in sync. That's why I'm thinking get xbmc to kick off another program to do the broadcasting, then have the native player tune in to the broadcast, as well as the clients. Then if "program x" which is doing the broadcasting can adjust streaming rates to keep everyone in sync, that would be a truly awesome setup

michael7oliver · 2012-08-15, 09:40

This obviously doesn't fix the lag issues but what if xbmc could act as an AirPlay source (as well as a receiver). That way with an app like Airfoil I could receive the audio. This would have the dual benefit of allowing music to be sent to AirPlay speakers (wirelessly).

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2012-08-15, 13:04

I guess in a perfect world we would have some way to sync audio output from various XBMC installs. Since both iOS and Android now have XBMC ported to them, that would work for this situation as well as outputting synced multi-room audio for music.

Bstrdsmkr · 2012-08-15, 16:33

(2012-08-15, 09:40)michael7oliver Wrote: This obviously doesn't fix the lag issues but what if xbmc could act as an AirPlay source (as well as a receiver). That way with an app like Airfoil I could receive the audio. This would have the dual benefit of allowing music to be sent to AirPlay speakers (wirelessly).

Actually, I believe Airplay (server version) has syncing builtin. The trouble is Apple is stingy with their protocols and all the work that's been done so far has bee reverse engineered. I haven't seen any third party service that's able to take advantage of the syncing yet, so I gather it either hasn't been cracked, or is a major PITA

(2012-08-15, 13:04)Ned Scott Wrote: I guess in a perfect world we would have some way to sync audio output from various XBMC installs. Since both iOS and Android now have XBMC ported to them, that would work for this situation as well as outputting synced multi-room audio for music.

In a perfect world, we could sync video too =D
But yes, being able to sync audio between instances would go a VERY long way toward my ideal setup

**Memphiz** · 2012-08-15, 23:16

Mythtv has implemented the airtunes audio sync. Its just that its hard to merge this with xbmc audio stuff. I don't know anyone who is willing to even think about it.