Subject: From: Date:

Internet Audio A.J. Griglak Fri, 8 Sep 2000 18:05:56 -0400

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First of all, I have a Diamond Monster II sound card that will allow
multiple audio instances at one time.  For example, I can have an internet
radio station on (using Windows Media Player 6.4) and still hear the ECS tts
messages, as well as any Windows sounds.  Winamp, WMP and ECS use 'separate'
volume controls, so I can also 'mute' the WMP and let ECS talk by itself.  I
setup the phone message event this way.  ECS will mute any audio that is
playing (WMP, Winamp, etc.), play the message, then 'unmute' the audio.

RealPlayer and ECS use the same volume control - for example if you mute
RealPlayer, you won't hear ECS's tts.  A real bummer!  Obviously, I don't
use RealPlayer often!  Another MP3 player program [www.muzicman.com] with
excellent library support also does this - another bigger bummer.  I'm not
sure why these work this way or how to fix it, but I'd pay to find out!

Secondly, I setup items to control any audio.   [Hmmm  how to put this
without being too confusing]

I setup a custom item (Aud-Control) that has the following states - Play,
Stop, Next, Prev, Mute, etc.  Any ECS event or X-10 remote can set
Aud-Control to Stop.  I then have separate events for each type of audio
player (for example Winamp and Windows Media Player) with lines at the top
of the event like this:

If   Aud-Player     Is Not    Winamp
Then Event Exit     Set       True

[Aud-Player is another custom item type]

Then for each audio player, I use lines like this:

If   Aud-Control    Is Now    Play
Then WMP:Play       Set       Down/Up

[the individual commands are all set with Keyboard-Event items corresponding
to the keyboard shortcuts for the particular program.]

This all might seem complicated, but I have full control from any ECS
event - for example, in my "Away" Event (when leaving the house), I have the
line:

Do   Aud-Control    Set       Stop

And whatever is playing will stop.

Someday I hope to setup a web site to explain all this.  If I ever install
Front Page and have some 'spare' time, I'll do it.

To summarize, if you want to do this, get a sound card that can handle
multiple audio streams, and then play around.  I think the Sound Blaster
Live series sound cards work this way also.

Good Luck!

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Stephens [mailto:donstephens@101freeway.com]
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 5:42 PM
To: ecs-list@netbloc.com
Subject: Re: [ECS] New upgrade experiences / Access


A.J.

I have toyed with internet radio stations but I can't figure out how to have
the radio cut out when I have ECS make announcements. I remember Dan Hoehen
(ACE mailing group) figured a way to do this but I don't know how. I would
really like to see the Access code.

Don

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