First, I'd like to thank Tim for posting here. Secondly, I just want to say that Sincast 3 is pretty dang awesome.
Bear with me here, this isn't a proper review but it's a review none-the-less.
I had been looking for a software solution to sync music to all my computers for quite some time now. I wasn't looking for anything fancy, I'm just a geek who loves his music and values fidelity. I currently live in a small 2 bedroom flat (I say flat because 'condo' makes it sound nicer than it is, heheh). I have a computer in practically every room and I always wanted to be able to sync music between them. I gave up the search a year or so ago after trying some winamp plugins that failed and then tried the built in streaming of VLC (the winamp addins were old and don't work anymore, both were/are a complete pain to get the audio sync'd right). I even
strung cables around the place with splitters for a while until I just
couldn't take the ugly. I found Sincast 3 through this thread in August but all of my PC's were running Windows 7 x64 and it just wouldn't work. Seeing how the Author is so proactive, I guess I really should have just shot him a note asking about it.. oh well. ...This last Thursday, I was trying to get mentally psyched for a home cleaning session for this weekend and the idea of searching for this again came to me.. good thing too, because this latest update works peachily on Win7 x64!
For my current application, Sincast 3 is working perfectly and it makes me happy. So much that after using it for just one day, it's prompted my first post since becoming a member of TGB ages ago. It allows me to keeps music levels down -no need to blast volume to hear something from one room to the next; I'm sure my neighbors thank me for that. It lets me use my hardware; the speakers connected to my PCs don't suck, being able to use them like this is pretty sweet. It's making my winter cleaning much more tolerable, going from music filled room to music filled room today. I'll also add that it compliments the overall geekdom experience of my flat very well. :)
It's super simple to set up if you're a geek and pretty simple even if you're just somewhat computer savvy. Normals prolly wouldn't be searching for a program like this anyway...
- I created some Playlists through VLC -I just find it easier to work with playlists than media files. Fyi, VLC doesn't like .m3u's. To play all your media, just make a playlist of it all (Random is my friend).
- From the Media tab > file browse > Playlist file.
- Add the computer names for the clients (I just use their names, no need for an IP addy).
- Save the config so that you don't have to worry about setting anything when it's run.
- Start the VLC listeners on the all the machines -including the server (make sure you've installed Sincast 3 on the listening machines, of course).
- Tick the 'Enable server' box and hit 'Start Simulcast'.
- Voila! All the comps start playing the stream and they're sync'd spot on. I can't get over how awesome this is since I've been searching for so long! (I know, that's twice I said 'spot on'.. it's fun to say, OK?)
Totally worth it for me. I can think of even more reasons to use Sincast 3 once I score a house. I'm sure it can be used for a plethora of other things when thinking about event or business type activities.
Anyway, hopefully this will help someone better integrate their hardware and
home with their media like it's helped me so far. I've only used it for
music, I am sure there will be more awesome to share about
Sincast 3 as I use more of it's features (i.e. streaming TV from my HDHomeruns).
Ok, I've delayed enough; time to get back to my Winter cleaning. Seriously though, if you have a need or want for something like this, give the fully functional trial a shot. Then support the author and buy it. It's totally worth the 10 bucks.
Sincast 3 is full of Awesomeness. No, seriously. It is.
:edit: I took out the transcoding steps after discovering they weren't needed for audio. :)