Stardock Introduces Acoustic Bridge

I have a crappy laptop with crappy speakers.  With this, I can now conserve resources on my main box while streaming music from the laptop.  Now I can jam.   

Will both PCs need an internet and/or network connection?  I only have a wireless N adapter on one PC, and nothing on the other. 

It would be nice if I could have sound output on my $400 Lenovo secondary-backup PC without wiring additional speakers (it's a backup PC, so it doesn't really need speakers, but it would be nice).

I installed the software on both PCs and I still can't share audio for either one.  Are speakers required on my Lenovo, or just a network connection?  I want my Lenovo to use the speakers on my HP HPE-400f (my primary PC which is also the primary audio source).

Network access will be required yes, that's how the data is being pushed.

You need to install Acoustic Bridge on both machines.  In the config select one to send and one to receive.  The sending PC will need to enter the code provided by the receiving (and playing) one.

Sounds like fun.....

Get it? ....SOUNDS like fun......:)

well Will this work if one PC is let's say 50 miles away or do the PC's have to be in the same house?

aka use home PC which has Music and listen to the music on your office Pc

Well if the receiving end has a DNS entry and the right ports are open it should connect, though you would want to increase the buffer size.

Also this only sends sound, so you have no control over the remote machine.

Methinks apple air is gonna get smasheded

oh ok thanks  nice catch on well Will 

there is a way to make it work on windows xp?

No.  Windows XP is not supported by this application.

This Rocks!!!!!!        Pun intended.....

OK, unless I'm completely stupid, shut up Yrag, there's no way to turn it off. Other than task manager, of course.

You can also stop the sendign PC from sending by right-clicking on the systray icon and choosing "Send audio when receiver is online"

I didn't say mute. I said you can't turn it off, as in not have it running in systray. I now have a service running on two machines that I'm not using. There should be a way to turn it off and on.  

You can stop the service and set it to manual if you wish and then when you want it just start the service.

Stopping the service will disable it, though you should be aware that no setting changes will be saved if the service is not running and you open the config UI.

So you're saying stop it in services, set to manual,run it when you want, then turn it off via task manager every time I use it? Or reboot? Seems a tad much.

Can I assume that a future build will have a on/off switch? If not, thanks for the trial, I'm probably not a buyer.

I know it seems simple, but why not right click/exit?

You do not need to involve taskmanager at all.

Once the service is set to manual it will not start unless you want it.  Start the service to start it running, stop the service to stop it running.  On stop it automatically closes all the processes and on start it starts all the processes.

From a command prompt "net stop acousticbridge" stops it and "net start acousticbridge" would start it, though it needs admin rights.

BTW what issue do you have with the service and child process running all the time? 

They are not using much memory when doing nothing or any cpu.

WindowBlinds, WindowFX etc all work in the very same way.  A service and a process running.

Well, I guess , if everything I install does the same, then what? I mean, if I had my way, WindowBlinds, and WindowFX wouldn't have any running processes while unloaded. Where is the line drawn? How much is too much?

One of the reasons we users "customize" our rigs is to have it look good, work well, AND have it run fast.  Given, a few things running all the time isn't so terrible, but if all software did that, medium to low end rigs would slow down.

I like having control of what runs and what don't. Especially if I'm not using it.

When I turn something off, I would prefer it to be off.

It's just me, I guess.

Seriously, why so hard? Why not a simple button/checkbox to turn it off. Some people I know have no business messing around in services. Or command prompt, for that matter.

I agree with the Redneck.  It seems more and more software wants to add itself to startup, add a service or two and as many running processes as they deem fit. (IE9 and NVidia are both good examples) Add all the updaters and before you know it ,taskmanager is a long, confusing list of mostly unneeded, unused processes.

The first thing I did with both my rigs was to shut down a load of these or switch to manual Good software will at least let me do that. Great software will make it easy for me by giving an option, like r-click the systray and exit, restart by clicking on a desktop icon the program created.

Simply put, casual users with low end rigs don't need any extra load of things running when not needed and the power users with high end rigs don't want them.

One thing I've already noticed that makes this not very useful for me is that you have to have speakers (or headphones) plugged into the PC that you want to stream music from.

I was hoping that you could use this on a PC without speakers to stream the music to a primary PC (since I use Input Director to control multiple PC's from one).

Problem is, the secondary PC's don't have speakers... so Windows has the sound on mute because "No speakers or headphones are plugged in".

You may have an option in your sound drivers to disable this feature.