Re: OT question about sound cards/chip-sets and high-end music systems
On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 10:38:41PM -0500, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
> Rob Owens put forth on 10/7/2009 8:02 PM:
>
> > When streaming music, if you play it on 2 different computers will the
> > music be in sync? I'm thinking of a sort of "party mode" where I want
> > the same thing playing in several rooms of the house.
>
> Depends on your distance to each loudspeaker. Sound waves travel at
> approximately 1,125 ft/s depending on air temperature and humidity.
> Thus, if you're not standing at an exact same distance from each
> speaker, the sound will arrive at your ears at different times, creating
> an echo effect or a muddying of the material, depending on the time
> delay between arrivals. This doesn't take into account reflections off
> things such as walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture, which all reflect
> sound to a degree, causing additional 'late arrivals'.
>
> In short, if you want decent stereo sound quality, limit the number of
> speakers to two, and sit in one spot equidistant from each. In a "party
> mode", who the f--k cares, you have been and wine and what not, and
> you're playing it loud enough to be annoying anyway. At that point,
> what does it matter?
>
I'm aware of the distance to the speaker issue. I was wondering mainly
about network latency. I ran a test using icecast2 to stream to a
couple of machines, and there was a pretty big time difference (maybe
half a second). I was using one old laptop, though, so I'm not sure if
the delay was due to network latency or due to slow processor and/or bus
speed of the old laptop.
-Rob
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