Sunday, 26 December 2010

Remote Speakers Output Plug-In 3.0

Seasons greetings! The holidays have finally afforded me a little free time to take take care of some unfinished business. This gives me a chance to work up a posting to update you on some current affairs. As some of you may know, I was recently married in October, so I haven't had a lot of free time beforehand or since. Thank you all for your well wishes. It is nice to have these little personal connections that just don't come from working at a big software house. In that spirit, I thought I would share one of the more fun-filled photos from the wedding (see right).

It has been a long time coming, but I have finally put the finishing touches on Remote Speakers Output Plug-In 3.0. I have been working on this release for almost two years now and I didn't want to go into the new year without putting something out there. I had to pull back on a few features that were not quite ready, like Windows Media Player support. However, I feel that the base of what is now v3 is strong and will make a great platform for supporting more players and developing new features, including some of the brand new things that Apple has branded AirPlay.

Here is a list of the significant new features in Remote Speakers output v3.0:

Added support for XMPlay with new plug-in DLL
Added support for static configuration of remote speakers; Bonjour is optional
Added device icons to remote speakers listbox in options dialog and in new device configuration dialog
Added display of stale devices in options dialog and remote speakers submenu
Added check for Bonjour daemon status; plug-in will no longer crash if service is not running
Extended international (Unicode) character support beyond Active Code Page in dialogs and menus
Redesigned project source code from procedural C into object-oriented C++
Split core functionality and Winamp plug-in into separate DLLs
Upgraded libraries: Bonjour to 2.0.4, OpenSSL to 1.0.0c, Secret Rabbit Code (libsamplerate) to 0.1.7 and added Poco 1.4.0

Overall, I think v3 is much more polished and I hope to get a chance to make it even better in 2011. Until then, please download the new version, use it and let me know what you think. See you again soon.

Posted by emilles at 3:27 PM in Software

Responses (6)

Friday, 20 August 2010

Remote Speakers Output Plug-In 3.0b7

New beta version released. Sorry for the long delay since the last release — getting married in early October...

Bonjour 2.0.2 (included) is supported but hasn't been tested too thoroughly yet. Won't crash if Bonjour is installed but the service is not running. Added error message for network error during streaming. Added some player integration tweaks (dialog fonts match player's, most dialog boxes center over parent dialog/window and a couple other minor changes).

Download link: Remote Speakers output v3.0b7 – active until September 30th.

Please let me know if you run into any issues with it — including any issues previously reported that are still present.

Posted by emilles at 9:14 PM in Software

Responses (4)

Monday, 24 May 2010

Note on Bonjour 2.0 compatibility

Apple recently released Bonjour for Windows version 2.0. Remote Speakers output v2.5 is not compatible with this update. If you install Bonjour 2.0 on your system, Remote Speakers output will experience connection errors and will be unable to stream audio to you AirPort Express(es). Fortunately, Bonjour for Windows 1.0.6 is still available. If this link fails, you should be able to Google for another download location.

I am working on updating the plug-in for compatibility with the new Bonjour. So far, the changes seem pretty significant, so I cannot be sure when I will have a patch completed.

Posted by emilles at 7:35 AM in Software

Responses (0)

Saturday, 27 March 2010

Remote Speakers Output Plug-In 3.0b6

New beta version released. Startup and shutdown stability should be much better in all players. Volume-change delay should be gone for Windows 7. Remote control toggle from v2.4 integrated. Unicode support added for international characters in device names (and passwords). Windows Media Player is now supported (early stages); should work with WMP 11 (please confirm for XP and Vista) but not WMP 12.

Download link: Remote Speakers output v3.0b6 – active until April 15th.

Please let me know if you run into any issues with it — including any issues previously reported that are still present.

Posted by emilles at 1:51 PM in Software

Responses (5)

Monday, 8 March 2010

Remote Speakers Output Plug-In 2.5

A new version of the Remote Speakers Output Plug-In is available today. Three important problems have been addressed with this release:

Fixed display of non-ASCII characters in dialogs and menus; the fix is limited to characters that can be represented in the Active Code Page.
Fixed handling of Internet radio streams to reduce chance of audio skips and buffer underruns.
Fixed conflict between software protection layer and MediaMonkey that caused the player to freeze trying to load the plug-in on some Windows 7 systems.

If you are or have been experiencing problems playing Internet radio streams through your remote speakers, in addition to upgrading the plug-in, you may need to adjust your input plug-in's settings. The screenshot to the right shows the settings that I ended up using to eliminate skips in Winamp. There is more detail in the FAQ for the plug-in.

Since the software protection layer has been updated for the first time in a couple years, it is likely that you will need a new activation code after installing the upgrade. I am sorry for this inconvenience, but it was unavoidable. Just send me your new site code and I'll gladly (as always) generate a new activation code.

I also took this opportunity to take advantage of some new features in the software protection layer. Namely, you should be able to freely update Windows now without spoiling your activation and you should also be able to update your BIOS once without requiring reactivation. I was not able to test this out, so your mileage may vary.

Lastly, the conflict between the plug-in and MediaMonkey/Windows 7 should be fixed. So, with this release finished, I should be able to get back to work on v3.0 of the plug-in. A new beta should be forthcoming shortly.

Posted by emilles at 7:34 PM in Software

Responses (3)

Saturday, 20 February 2010

MediaMonkey and Remote Speakers output

Many thanks go out to several RSO users who have reported and helped diagnose a conflict between Remote Speakers output v2.4 and MediaMonkey (on recent Windows versions). The conflict causes MediaMonkey to freeze shortly after displaying its splash screen. I believe this is the same issue that was observed during the v3.0 beta trials late last year.

With much help from some of the affected, the issue has been fully diagnosed. I should be able to put out a new release that fixes the issue very soon. In the meantime, you have the option of using Remote Speakers output v2.2, which does not exhibit the issue with MediaMonkey. As far as I am aware, v2.4 works fully with Winamp and with MediaMonkey on Windows XP. There should be no reason to downgrade unless you directly experience the issue.

As always, please post a comment here or send me an email if you come across any issues with Remote Speakers output. I am currently looking into fixes for an issue with streaming audio and with international (non-ASCII) characters in the speaker names for inclusion in the same release.

Posted by emilles at 3:46 PM in Software

Responses (1)