Streaming Media Monkey to mt older home stereo

[davidbmcintyre]

I can stream my mediamonkey music from my PC to my blue ray and from there to my TV and on to my stereo but I'd like to stream directly from my PC to stereo. Looking for ideas (and not the $500 ones . )

[pushpull]

By what method are you able to stream from your pc to your blue ray?

Unfortunately, most of the solutions to this age old problem are less than perfect. Most involve, of course, money. Also, most involve imposing a manufactures system that over rides what you already have, like Apple with Itunes and now Google with their audio chromecast that makes you use Chrome. Maybe someone can make a plugin for MM to stream via Chrome to the audio chromecast. I have used RF transmit/receiver units (there are bluetooth units as well) with some success. These can have connection issues and interference. You plug the audio out into the transmitter and then the receiver output gets plugged into your audio in. Most of these units don't cost a lot of money so you could google around and see if you can come up with one that has some decent reviews. The best solution is to have a dedicated pc, if you have a spare one, that you can hard wire right into your stereo. Then you can control it from any other pc on your network via a VNC connection and even from your smart phone.

[Lowlander]

Many BluRay are DLNA compatible, which means that you can either stream from MMW to the BluRay (either pull from BluRay or push from MMW) or use a smartphone/tablet with a DLNA control App (MMA can't do this) like BubbleUPnP to stream from MMW to the BluRay using the device as controller.

[pushpull]

OK, so we are talking using either an Ethernet cable or a wireless connection to the blue ray. Thanks Lowlander for that insight. Not having a blue ray, I wasn't sure how the audio was getting to the unit, though I should have figured that out from the "streaming" statement.

One possible solution, though it is not direct as sought after, would to use an audio switch between the blue ray and the tv that would send the audio directly to the stereo rather than routing it through the tv. Something like this would probably do the trick. Not perfect, but a step closer.

[Lowlander]

It depends on the stereo, but some have passthrough. Thus you'd connect the BluRay to the stereo and then the TV to the stereo as well. Thus the TV doesn't need to be turned on for the BluRay to play on the stereo.

[captain paranoia]

You will be able to play music via your BluRay player by using the DLNA Digital Media Renderer (DMR) it contains. I assume you have used Tools/Options/Player/UPnP Player and selected your BlueRay as target.

This works very well.

So, what you need is a standalone DMR. This could be anything that has a DLNA DMR client app and an audio port; an old Android phone or tablet, running any one of the many UPnP/DLNA apps that allow external control of their DMR (BubbleUPnP, UPnPMonkey, UPnPlay, MMA, even...). Or it could be a cheap, dedicated DMR. For instance, I have a little SoundMate M1, which cost me £18 delivered.

I've just added a Chromecast Audio 'Jaffa cake' to the digital media streaming options at Paranoia Towers, and that works beautifully with BubbleUPnP. But Bubble lacks AutoDJ, which, apart from the great library management facilities, is the killer function of MMW for me. If Chromecast multi-room streaming support could be added to MMW, I'd be in media streaming heaven...

[pushpull]

Here is a possible Chromecast solution to streaming audio to a stereo. If this works with the recently released Chromecast Audio device that would be sweet.