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milf · Dec 23, 2002, 12:39 PM

Is there any way to share a set of speakers between two computers? I'm sure there has to be a hub of some sort just for this type of thing. Is there any way that I could play mp3s from iTunes on my Powerbook over the speakers hooked up to my PC? Is there a way to stream what I am playing on my PB to my Windows machine?

ghporter · Dec 23, 2002, 12:49 PM

I'm sure there is a way to stream the audio through a network connection from your Mac to your PC so you can listen through the PC's speakers. Pardon my asking but why would you want to do that?

If the PC's speakers are that much better, plug 'em into your Mac. If you want to listen to the MP3s in the room where the PC is, copy the files to the PC and use a PC MP3 player to listen to them through the PC.

I guess I just don't get the point of your request.

milf · Dec 23, 2002, 06:45 PM

I'd have to get a special connector to connect the speakers to my mac, so I'd rather just leave them connected to my PC. I want everything to accessible through the network so that I don't have to continually plug and unplug stuff. My printer for instance, that is hooked to my PC, but I can access it from my Mac.

I could just use my PC for listening to music, but I like my Mac too much and don't ever want to touch my PC again! :-)

ghporter · Dec 23, 2002, 07:01 PM

You've lost me. The PC's speakers don't plug into a micro stereo jack on the back (or maybe front) of the box? You also haven't said what type of Mac you have, but I haven't seen a recent one that didn't have a headphone jack somewhere...

milf · Dec 23, 2002, 08:25 PM

Sorry.

I have a Powerbook and it does have a standard headphone jack which works just fine. The speakers that I have require two headphone-sized jacks in order to get sound to both the front and rear speakers. So, I have two options: 1) only plug in the front speakers. 2) get an adapter to split the Powerbook output into 2 seperate connections.

What I want to do though is have a setup where I won't have to connect/disconnect the speakers from my Powerbook every time I take my system along with me. It would be nice (as with my printer) that as soon as I walked in to my apartment, I would be able to access any of the peripherals attached to my wireless network.

I guess I could have my PC set to play a stream and then use my Powerbook to create this stream. Is there a program for streaming music with iTunes.

Sorry for the lack of clarity, but I had a long weekend and need to catch up on sleep.

ghporter · Dec 23, 2002, 09:08 PM

A four channel system? Sounds sweet. There are probably audiophile products that will let you get all four channels from whatever output you want on a Mac, (did you know that some of the best stereo equipment made was called Macintosh? No connection, but cool, no?), but I wouldn't know where to look for that sort of thing now.

I haven't played with creating things with Quicktime, but won't Quicktime Pro produce audio and video streams? You can run a Quicktime player on the PC, but I don't know how you'd push a stream through a peer-to-peer network.

ringo · Dec 24, 2002, 12:22 AM

Could you use a mixer with your speakers? Something you could run audio-outs from both the mac and the PC into so you could listen to audio from both computers at the same time?

milf · Dec 24, 2002, 08:58 AM

I'll have to search through the audio forum and see if anyone has something along what I'm looking for. I know that the apple store sells a seperate audio card for the powermac that has the correct inputs, but this isn't avaialbe for the powermac.

I'll look in to the mixer idea as well, but I have a feeling that'll be fairly expensive. My friends are all DJ's so maybe they'll have an extra mixer I could snag.

-Q- · Dec 24, 2002, 10:07 AM

iTunes will be able to stream playlists in it's next revision (probably available at MWSF in January) but I think that will require another mac with rendezvous.

This thing is probably a bit of overkill.

You might be able to do what you want by using Quicktime Streaming Server...

wg2499 · 10:18 AM

is there a cable at radioshack maybe that would go from your headphone jack on your powerbook to the audio in jack on your pc sound card? should be pretty simple...I did a search but when I tried to post the link it was dead.. there is a one cablr that I found that goes fromm mini plug to the larger headphone type plug.. and there are adapters to make that plug back to mini headphone again... (couldn't find a mini to mini..... I bet it is out there though...)

wg2499 · Dec 24, 2002, 10:28 AM

ok found one I hope the link works.....
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.as...&sku=21062

ok the link works ... I think this is all you need to use and it is cheap.. unless there is something I am missing(having not ever done this !!)I have my pc hooked directly to my stereo in a similar fashion.. adapted to rca's though.. have fun ..please post your results.....

milf · Dec 24, 2002, 11:20 AM

This thing is probably a bit of overkill.

Over-Over-Overkill.

You might be able to do what you want by using Quicktime Streaming Server...

This sounds like what I'm looking for, but it requires OS X Server to be installed.

is there a cable at radioshack maybe that would go from your headphone jack on your powerbook to the audio in jack on your pc sound card? should be pretty simple...I did a search but when I tried to post the link it was dead.. there is a one cablr that I found that goes fromm mini plug to the larger headphone type plug.. and there are adapters to make that plug back to mini headphone again... (couldn't find a mini to mini..... I bet it is out there though...)

I looked into the cable idea, which I'm sure would be an adequate solution. The only thing is that I am trying to avoid having to plug anything extra in to my Powerbook in order to get this functionality. If I need to go to another part of my apartment, I'd need a pretty long cable to remain connected to the PC.

There has to be a way that I can stream my music over my wireless network. I just need to do more research on such an application. That way I could have the PC connect to the stream and just play whatever is being streamed from my Mac.

milf · Dec 24, 2002, 11:30 AM

Actually, I just read somewhere that QTSS doesn't actually require OS X Server to be installed. It supposedly works just fine on the desktop version of the OS, but Apple just doesn't support this. I'll have to give it a whirl tonight when I get home.

Angus_D · Dec 25, 2002, 06:32 PM

See http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...de_dotmac.html for some stuff about QTSS

superlarry · Dec 26, 2002, 08:57 AM

you *could* install VNC on your pc and vncviewer on your mac and then have fullscreen-control of your PC over the network from you powerbook. then you could just control winamp or whatever on your mac's screen while it runs (and plays) on your pc.

check out http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/