My hallmate and I both have very loud speakers, and always argue about
who will play music. We want to link our computers so we can have both
speakers going when one person plays music.  I've tried internet
radio, but the buffer time causes the music to be out of sync. The
tricky part is that she has a Mac and I have a Dell.  We are on are
both on the college network. We both use itunes, and the synchronizing
media player would have to work on both my PC and her Mac (ibook G4).
I understand computers fairly well, but any networking details would
have to be broken down into steps.  If any other information is
needed, let me know. Who ever can solve this problem will be my hero.

I have a solution for you (I think O_o). Have you ever considered
getting a Airport Express?

(http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/90101/wo/fU1eDztNUw2I3TTuvCj19QkxH9Q/1.0.11.1.0.6.12)

This allows you connect some speakers (or a Hi-Fi) to it, and then
using ITunes you can feed the music to the base station, which then
outputs the music to the speaker system.  One of you would need to
have a wireless card installed in your computers, but that should not
be a problem :)

Hope this helps 

David Ambler

Just thought... maybe that doesnt help you at all... oh well :(

That is a good idea, but not exactly what I was looking for. I am
looking for more of a way to network the speakers. Thanks for your
comments though.

I don't think it's very easy to sync up 2 computers via network for
audio. It's hard enough for people making music to not get any delay
on one computer!

I think maybe something simple like a FM transmitter might do the job
like this one here....

http://sportsimportsltd.com/wifmtr1.html

Make sure the FM transmitter has a big range unlike those cheaper iPod
ones that only work about 5 feet. The one linked above says it will do
about 70 feet at any FM frequency.

You would both have to buy the FM transmitter and some audio cables
and only one of you could broadcast to both of your speaker sets at
one time. If you watnted to swith music you could just AIM or ICQ to
message your freind to turn off their FM transmitter to let you take
over with some tunes...

This might sound a bit tricky so I drew a picture.

http://www.soundmonster.com/img/stereobattle.gif

Goodluck!
Toucan

There is actually a fairly simple solution to your idea, we've done it
many times here at UT throughout multiple buildings and rooms.

Go to http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and download your client's version
of VLC (which you will also love for playing absolutely any video
file.)  Make sure you download it on all the computers you wish to
steam music to as well.

I would suggest doing a quick readthrough of their instructions
(http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/streaming-howto-en.html)
as they'll describe what to do better then I can.  This has always
produced a synched output on all computers, barring the occasional
problem when switching between songs (simply hit stop then play on the
receiving computers to re-synch.)

Let me know how it goes!  Good Luck!