This is SAI's support page for WRQ® Reflection® X users who would like
to use MAS® to enable networked audio applications. MAS will allow
you to play sounds and audio files from and to remote computers and to
have two-way conversations if your computer has a microphone and
speakers.
If your machine type is not included in our list of currently supported machine types, please contact us at mas@shiman.com.
You need a network connection to a system with MAS and a MAS client
application in order to control audio streams to and from your MS
Windows PC. Since MAS typically uses the X DISPLAY variable to
specify the media data target, the MAS application will often be
executed on the associated UNIX-like X application host.
For a more in-depth understanding of the following examples we recommend reading the documentation that comes with the source download and the on-line documentation at http://www.mediaapplicationserver.net. For information concerning native MS Windows MAS applications please contact mas@shiman.com.
The following describes some examples of MAS usage supported by WRQ Reflection X. We use the mp3 player demo as a reference application.
Please download the executable installer mas_mp3_codec.exe.
Note: this installer copies files into the default Reflection location
for MAS, C:\Program Files\Reflection\MAS. If you chose a
non-default location for Reflection X when you installed Reflection,
please use the same path now. (The mp3 codec installer has a
"Destination Folder" box for this purpose. You want the
MAS folder inside your top level Reflection
folder.)
Make sure MAS is running on both machines. Then, using Reflection X, start an XDMCP session to the UNIX machine. Inside that session, start the masplayer program that came with your MAS installation, and load some mp3 files into the playlist. When you hit the "play" button the sound will come from your Windows PC speakers just as you would expect.
DISPLAY environment variable to figure out that the audio should
really be directed to the machine where the user is sitting, and thus
routed the audio there. MPEG frames are read from the UNIX machine's
disk at the right pace and sent over the wire to the MAS server on the
MS Windows machine, where they are decoded into raw audio and sent to
the sound card.
There is another environment variable, MAS_HOST, which you can use
to explicitly "point" audio output to any MAS enabled machine on the
network.