Not quite sure I get your point, but the only way I can get the Onkyo to work is by pointing to music loaded into the library. Sounds like you are saying that should not necessarily be the case?? Either way I've arrived a perfectly acceptable situation.

Problem Resolved - Went back to the beginning - loading media library. I had not done this previously. I misinterpreted MM populating my music directory structure in the "left panel" as having loaded them. This was further compounded in that MM would play to the PC directly...so certainly ...

...and and when casting to the Onkyo via Windows Media Player, MM shows the song being cast and its playback statistics in the Play Bar at the bottom. I find a bit of ironic humor in this!

Windows Media Player also sees MM as a target to cast to....

...and if I am casting to the Onkyo via the Windows Media Player, and then attempt to play something from MM it interprets the Media Player stream....but does not play.

Can the Onkyo play from MediaMonkey when using the Onkyo to select files? No. The Onkyo returns a message of "No Item" in all categories, i.e. Music, Artist, Genre, etc... Some other stuff - - In addition to being able to Cast from the Windows Media Player to the Onkyo, I can "pull&q...

Just not getting it to happen... Trying to stream to an Onkyo TX-8160. The Onkyo sees MM. MM sees and is pointed to the Onkyo via Tools>Options>Player. MM "Media Sharing" indicates running via Tools>Options>Sharing. Firewall (Avast) indicates MM is allowed. MM sees the music library and ca...