I'm in startup of designing a client/server audio system which can stream audio arbitrarily over a network. One central server pumps out an audio stream and x number of clients receives the audio data and plays it. So far no magic needed and I have even got this scenario to work with VLC media player out of the box.

However, the tricky part seems to be synchronizing the audio playback so that all clients are in audible synch (actual latency can be allowed as long as it is perceived to be in sync by a human listener).

My question is if there's any known method or algorithm to use for these types of synchronization problems (video is probably solved the same way). My own initial thoughts centers around synchronizing clocks between physical machines and thereby creating a virtual "main timer" and somehow aligning audio data packets against it.

Some products already solving the problem:

http://www.sonos.com

http://netchorus.com/

Any pointers are most welcome. Thanks.

PS: This related question seem to have died long ago.