Music player on HTPC with remote control from phones/etc.

[Babbage]

Right - I hope this is the right bit of forum to ask some advice.

I've got a little HTPC that does a great job. It run's windows (that's not going to change, very happy with that, before anyone kicks off )

I need to have a secondary audio out. The primary (movies, music) goes to my amp for my living room. The secondary one goes off as a source for my amp's zone 2/zone b functionality (my dining room).

I run XBMC for media playback. Again - works great. However XBMC is limited to 1 audio output stream. I can't have e.g. `movies goes through hdmi/spdif and music goes through headphone out socket`. I might also want to play music in another room while the kids xbmc in the living room.

So I need to run a secondary app for the music side (which has its audio output set to a different output than xbmc uses).

As the HTPC is tucked away, its display can be off, and its controllers tucked away, so I want to be able to control the music playing on the htpc from my phone/laptop/tablet/whatever (I have a windows phone, so no native android/iPhone apps).

My preferred pc music player is foobar2000 - and I've had a play with its httpcontrol plug in which allows web based control of music. However the working templates I can find aren't fab, and can't find anything that work decently on a small phone display

Winamp - same kind of thing. I've found surprisingly limited in its web based control offerings.

Searching around for both of the above returns way to many 4-5 year old links that don't work, are out of date, miss too much, etc.

So - any recommendations from you guys as to what to use? Could be different players/some recommended plugins. Looking pretty, playlists and quick to browse round things aren't too much to ask for in this day and age I think And an equalizer to help with my amps audio limitations with zone 2 sound. (Audio output on the pc is a bit limited in its h/w drivers).

Any advice appreciated!

Many thanks

 

[next010]

Not so sure about controlling the player/audio output on the PC directly from the phone, there probably is software out there that might do it.

I'm not at all sure on this but I think mediaportal supports multiple audio outputs as it's designed for windows only so you can set audio for movies and one for music, what you'd need then is a remote which supports that and I've no info on that, mediaportal forum/website would be place to ask.

The way I would be familiar with is with a UPnP/DLNA server and there are a few music focused ones out there like Asset that might be better than going with a general purpose one like Serviio or Plex for instance.

Then you install a DLNA controller on your phone, however I don't know what ones are available on windows phone store try 'play to receiver' if it's on the store. The DLNA controller will allow you to push media to any other DLNA receivers on the network and in some cases play locally on the phone.

Your other audio output needs to be a DLNA receiver or have a device plugged into it that acts as the receiver like this.