Prompts over speakers

Currently indigo runs on my front room mac. It is also the device that we watch TV and do all of our entertainment streaming from. Right now the mac handles all the prompts with indigo's text to speech. It only works when the TV is on and we are set on the proper input, so when we watch antenna TV we lose out on all the normal prompts.

I want to move the prompts to a dedicated speaker so regardless of the TV on/ off or the input selected, the speaker will do all of the indigo prompts. How can I do this without sending my audio from the mac to the speaker’s full time? I don’t want movies to play through the dedicated speaker, just indigo. I immediately don’t see a way to do this, insight?

[jay (support)]

I think it might be possible with Airfoil, but I'm not positive. You can have the output in the Sound System Preference set to your TV (whatever output that is), then run Airfoil and configure the text to speech app as the source and Computer (Line Out) as the connected speaker. This should allow the sound from your Movies to go out through the TV but any speech synthesis would go out through the line out/headphone jack on your Mac. You could also use bluetooth speakers (new in Airfoil 5) and select those instead of Computer (Line Out).

Theoretically. I just tried it with a USB sound output (an Apple Monitor with a speaker in it) as the default output and Airfoil configured as above and it seemed to work. YMMV.

I have a somewhat similar situation -- in my case the Indigo Mac is running the whole-house iTunes audio which includes in-ceiling speakers in my office. However, I needed to be able to get certain announcements even if I were listening to, say, the radio in the office. But they shouldn't both be on at the same time lest you get slightly-non-synced audio (and the computer speakers sound terrible with music!)

SO, my setup is that I have a splitter out of the computer to go to (1) the distributed audio receiver and (2) a small, cheap amplifier (url=http://smile.amazon.com/Lepai-LP-2020A-Tripath-Class-T-Amplifier/dp/B0049P6OTI?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage]this one[/url], no longer available but was like $15). To control the output, I put that amplifier on a SwitchLinc.

I have two triggers - when the office speakers go to iTunes, it turns off the "extra" speakers by powering off the amp; when the office speakers are on another input or muted, the SwitchLinc is turned on so that I get the sound.

This isn't exactly your situation, but perhaps would give you a framework / idea of how to tackle it.

Adam

Although not in my living room, I have my desktop Mac set up to watch DirecTV (via EyeTV), and I also stream Netflix, etc. on it. And sometimes I do actual work on it...

I messed around with Indigo running on the same Mac, and I ultimately decided to bite the bullet and dedicate Indigo and other 'whole house' functions to their own Mac Mini. It got a lot easier to manage the 'house' when I did that. I put off spending money on a Mini for a long time, but after I got it, decided it was money well spent.

In the living room where we do most of our TV watching, we switch between DirecTV, AppleTV and a PS4. Ultimately there, I put in an Airport express with a dedicated speaker for 'house' audio announcements. That also was a huge improvement. I control those video devices with a Global Cache unit, and I track playing source and state. If DirecTV is on and announcement needs to happen, DirecTV is paused for the announcement, and then restarted when it's done. Same for the AppleTV.

I'm not sure I had a point with all that. The tradeoff was spending some money, but the functionality improved greatly.

Thanks guys. Im going to play around with the options and see what works best. I want try the Airfoil method first, but if that wont go, Ill set up something like Rouge pointed out.

And yes gtreece moving indigo off the streaming tv is a goal. We have asked the mac to do more and more tasks so I will be looking into a hardware solution....way later though.