I've seen this question posted in various forms but nothing really directly addresses my (apparently unique) issue.

I'm looking for a way to "roll my own" Cart Machine emulator. For those who don't know, a Cart machine is like an 8-track audio player...radio stations use 'em. Or used to...most have switched to minidisc or hard-disk-based systems.

There are lots of cart-emulator programs out there (Mixopia.com, web-jock.com, AudioCart, etc - some of the cheap ones...there are $1k to $10k solutions like BSIusa.com's WaveCart and Broadcast Electronics' AudioVAULT).

Where am I going? Well all the cheap or free programs don't support multiple sound cards (they use DirectX or DirectMedia). Meaning, each "virtual cart deck" could be bound to a specific sound card, and therefore could be wired to a specific fader/control on a station's mix board. Winamp *does* support multiple cards across multiple instances. I've done it (albeit with only two cards). Just change the output choice on the WaveOUT plugin. BUT - having a bunch of instances of Winamp just floating on a computer screen is begging for trouble with my DJ's.

So I want to embed instances of Winamp into a webpage that is just a local HTML file - so I can organize the instances. In addition (if possible) I'd like to make the play/pause/stop/etc keyboard shortcuts different for each instance (so all the instances can be "hot-started" without having to switch between them via ALT+TAB or clicking each instance to highlight it.

Thoughts, folks? Is there a skin-based way of accomplishing this? Or, better still, anyone know of a cheap (under $200) software program that functions as a cart emulator and uses the WaveOUT plugin instead of DirectX?

Aaron
WMFO-Radio Operations Director
wmfo.org