Streaming Audio to Multiple Devices Sync Issues

[whymewhynot]

Hello All, Please forgive me if I'm in the wrong area to post this, but I'm lost for a solution for my problem.

I want to stream audio from my PC to multiple mobile devices in Sync. (I have a bunch of boating friends, about 30, and we all tie up and use our radios on the boats to play music, we all have smart phones so instead of transmitting over FM which has poor quality, I thought VLC would be the answer)
I've tried HTTP streaming, and the issue I get is I have to spend a lot of time playing with the Network Cache on the devices running VLC to get them in sync, and even then over time they will get out of sync by about a second. With multiple radios doing this it can sound bad.

My setup:
Router, no internet with DHCP 192.168.1.x
PC running VLC with HTTP streaming 192.168.1.86
Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) software to use the Capture device option on VLC
Androids, Ipads, and Iphones with VLC app installed, connected to router, playing the HTTP://192.168.1.86:8080 stream while an AUX cable is plugged into the radio head units from mobile device. All devices are within 100' of router with clear line of sight.

VLC 2.2.0 Settings:
Capture Mode : Direct Show
Video - None
Audio - Virtual Audio Cable
Display Locally is not checked
:dshow-vdev=none :dshow-adev=Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable) :live-caching=300
Transcoding Activated - Profile - Audo - MP3 - 256kbs
:sout=#transcode{vcodec=none,acodec=mp3,ab=265,channels=2,samplerate=44100} :sout-keep

So My question is, is there a better way to do this to get rid of the lag/delays between devices? I want one unified sound coming out of the radios. I understand that milliseconds of delay may always exist, but I'm having 1-1.5 second delays/sync issues between the devices. Multicast? I've tried to educate myself of Multicast but with no prior experience, I'm not sure what to do. Do I need to set my router to DHCP addresses in the multicast range? Do I use RPSP, or RTP Audi/Video profile under destination setup? If someone would be so kind as to provide me step by step instructions I would be most grateful. Also if this has been covered somewhere else in the forms please point me in that direction, as I couldn't find it while searching.

Thanks and have a great weekend!
-David

[dispatchhouston]

David,

I hope all is well. I am experiencing the same issues as you were. I am actually experiencing 4.5 seconds of delay. Did you get around how to minimize the delay? and what settings did you change to get it to 1.5 seconds?

[unidan]

Hi,

What you're trying to achieve is actually quite hard. But there are some properties of your situation that you can use.

You have delay between your sources but actually they are just not synchronized, and you probably don't care about the delay.
Maybe you can try to synchronize them with the network-sync instead of changing network caching settings.

If you just want to reduce latency, it's a completely different topic and you'll probably be better opening a new subject describing what you want to achieve and what you're doing.