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Multi-Room Wireless Sound System?
abrinton asks: "I just went into escrow on a new house. Of course, first thoughts are to the sound system. I don't want to wire. Anything. I've got a wireless network, so computers are all sorted. But what do I do for sound? I need ideas for a centrally controlled sound system that can use 802.11g for transport. I'd like to have the same music everywhere, or better still, options to play different things in different rooms. I've got access to tons of old PIII laptops, wireless gear, old computers, sound cards, etc to make this work. Has anyone got any ideas or done anything like this?"
I am sure someone else will mention it, but I use iTunes exclusively for music throughout our home. A central server with our entire 10k song plus collection ripped onto it resides in the study with an old Powerbook connected up to the main stereo system in the house that spins out the tunes for most to hear (A Mac Mini would be perfect for this task). Others who want to listen to something else in differing parts of the house (or outside) can also tie into iTunes and listen simultaneously to completely independent streams, all wirelessly. In fact, before they moved, my next door neighbors used to stream from our server as well.
I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes with no problem whatsoever. For those truly particular about their music ( or those with high end home stereo systems possessing digital audio connectors ), Powermac G5's and the new 17in Powerbook also have digital audio out. Combine that with Apple's lossless audio format and you have some kick ass tunage available without ever again having to search through your CD collection for that particular song. A cheaper option is to purchase Airport Express units for differing parts of your house that each have an audio out and can plug into any available power socket.
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I'm going to have to agree. Wireless is all well and good, but don't use it if you don't bloody have to. Wireless is for laptops, so you can walk around with internet. Are you going to wander around with a speaker in your hand? Anyway, I can't see a hacked-together wireless sound solution with P3 laptops and whatnot being nearly as good as a few well-placed wired speakers.
Apple makes a neat little device that you can use to stream music to and hooks up to your stereo. This combined with iTunes is a great way to play music all over the house.
You might look into the Sonos system (previously discussed on /. It's wireless and allows unique content at each location. I saw an early demo and it was very impressive. Cost might be a factor, but the system and controllers have a very nice look and feel.
There's a wireless system out there that already does this: Sonos.com. You can check out the review at Engadget and I believe they won an award at CES. plus it was on Queer Eye, I think. It has a pretty damn sweet looking wirelsss controller with a color LCD screen.
I've been playing with this problem for a couple of years now. The problem is that sound streaming over IP is basically impossible to sync properly. As mentioned above, it's pretty simple to stream different streams to each room but if you want all the rooms playing the same thing, each will be off by a few parts of a second. It drove me crazy. We just ran audio over Cat5e everywhere from a central system in the living room. Home Depot's got punch down blocks that convert Cat5e into an unamplified audio output RCA jack.
So it turns out that this is harder that you might think. Getting different wireless audio into different rooms isn't too bad. It's mostly a function of throughput. But getting the SAME wireless audio is into different rooms and keeping it in sync is a surprisingly difficult.
I have the SlimDevices Squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/), and it works great at the first task, but only moderately well at the second. There's a new company called Sonos (http://www.sonos.com/) that just released their product which does both very well.
I had a chance to beta-test the product and it really is as good as described. It's Linux-based, but not open-source. It utilizes a proprietary mesh-network running on top of 802.11g and it worked flawlessly in my three zone setup. All three zones could play high-bitrate audio in perfect sync with no drops.
The downside is that it is fairly expensive. If you don't need sync'd audio, I might go with a cheaper option. But if you do, I've yet to find anything that can top Sonos.
Looks sweet, but expensive:
http://www.sonos.com/
Get the RoadTrip FM transmitter from Griffin(i have one; work's great). It's for your car, but the FM transmitter detaches and connects to your PC, too. Connect it to your PC and start the music. Use cheap FM stereo's throughout your home.
r ip /
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/roadt
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"You had me all the way up to Monster Cable. [Shudder] You're falling for a lot of marketing hype."
ABX testing has shown Home Depot 18 gauge lamp cord to be identical or even superior to Monster Cable in all respects.
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I did this same thing a few years back in a dorm.
I had a server in a closet, multiple machines playing at the same time.
The problem ends up being where you want to put the power (as in Receivers/Speakers.)
Unless you want really bad sound quality, and buy lots of speakers... Anything wireless, laptops, pcs, especially speakers, need a power oulet.
Long story short: You're limited by receivers and power outlets not wires. Continuing to try to be wireless is pointless.
Just run the wires through the a/c vents & put the speakers in the vents. It will still sound better and require less work than a wireless setup. Plus..., no visible wires...
-JT
If you don't want to belive me, and since I'm just some schmo on the internet you shouldn't, do a search on Monster Cable at either of these websites, and read the consensus opinions.
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HDTVoice
If you're looking for high quality cables at an excellent price, try Bluejeans Cable
I had similar aspirations for a central sound server, but found that the latency issue can be hard to get by. If you want to use wireless, you're going to have to have independent decoding at each wireless access point. Problem is, each device is going to decode at it's own slightly different rate. The result is speakers in adjacent rooms that are a millisecond or two off. If you happen to be standing where you can hear both sets of speakers, the sound is going to be pretty nasty. Its difficult to get around this any way other than having the wires all come from the same box.
Wired or wireless shouldn't make any difference, as you can use a wireless to ethernet bridge for any "wired" device. I had my house built within the past year, and made sure every room was wired. Here is what I used to get music to every room:
xbox media center Optical out, lots of other options.
Rio receiver running yarrs I have been using this for years, just a small device to play mp3's off of the network. You can hook speakers up to it directly or just use it as a component.
qcast lets you stream mp3's to your playstation 2. Not as useful or functional as the xbox media center.
netjuke this let's me stream music to any other computer in a nice and tidy web interface.
you can also go with a squeezebox but I have no experience with it. The rio is much less expensive.
It has its issues, but the Squeezebox works well in the Living Room because it's unobtrusive and self-contained: you don't need a computer or a TV to control it. In the Office, the Airport Express is perfect because it can be controlled by any computer in the room, and being an office, there are plenty of them.
The biggest downfall, actually, is the wireless. Wireless just isn't as reliable as wired. Once every few weeks, I'll find that one of my base stations needs to be power cycled. Sometimes all of them do. And this is something that's a pain for my wife, who just wants to listen to music.
The problem is worse in the Living Room, which is close to the kitchen, which contains the microwave. As you know, microwaves interfere with 802.11. That's not a big deal when you're surfing the web, but it sucks to have your music drop everytime you make a bag of popcorn.
This problem is only going to get worse when sharing movies starts becoming possible. Ethernet totally has the bandwidth for this. Wireless does not.
It's a pain, for sure, but now's the best time to do it.
Do some research. There is no reason that wireless cannot transmit sound as well or better than wires. (After all, look at the wireless microphones used on all sound stages.) There have been transmitters to send audio from the sound system to remote speakers for years. Even go visit Radio Shack, check with Bose, or take a look at the audio magazines. Are you an audiophile? If so, be aware that each room will have different characteristics, even with the same speakers, and we still have to deal with that "sweet" zone. Large wire cables are indeed best for the connection from the amplifier to the speakers, but only because low speaker impedance requires a lot of current for any power levels. (Power=I^2*R, where I is current and R is the speaker impedance in ohms) Also large wires reduce the inductance which can cause some delay for the highest frequencies, but unlikely that you will hear it. I expect that the computers can provide you with what you need, but again, remember that the computer systems require amplified speakers.
There are several websites on converting laptops into "picture frames" http://www.likelysoft.com/hacks/pictureframes.shtm l,
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/27/023922 2&tid=222&tid=1,
http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.JunktopRevival
Which you could modify slightly to add built in powered speakers and hang one in each room.
- Mike
Pros:
Cons:
What, me worry?
If you have a network, and a stack 'o PIII's then you have what you need. It doesn't really matter what kind of network, as long as everything connects via TCP and has enough bandwidth for your needs.
Setup a linux server, with enough disk space for your media collection and whatever else you want to store there. Install gnumpd3 from
here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/
Install a desktop linux distro on the machines in each room. Aim a web browser from any machine at the URL of the gnump3d server and viola! you have music from your collection on demand in any room!
Streaming radio style music is easy as well. Install icecast from here:http://www.icecast.org/
and aim the xmms player from here: http://www.xmms.org/ and you have streaming media! woohoo!
If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
I use secure shell from my zaurus wireless pda and mpg123 and aumix to operate this from a pocket sized device. For everything else I just browse the music library with gnump3d's web interface. FWIW, I use SuSE linux. It came with all the above except for the Darwin Stream Server (or whatever it is that Apple calls it these days). I had to download and compile the icecast source, but what the heck, it wasn't to hard to do either.
HTH
This sig kills fascists.
Buy a box for each room that needs music, add any old (active) speakers (or a hifi amp), and you're good to go.
It comes with (Free & Open GPL
Each box comes with a remote, and they can all be controlled through a web GUI as well.
They come in both wired and wireless variants; The wired ones cost $200, The wireless ones are somewhat more expensive at $280.
The nice thing about them is that all the smarts are in the server - the squeezebox is basically just a network adapter, an MP3 decoder, and a soundcard (with a nice bright display and a remote IR receiver, of course). It will (knock on wood) last as long as I don't drop it on the floor, and I won't need to buy new devices next time the industry switches media again
Multiple squeezeboxes can be synchronized to play the same stream; You can't sync a software player and a squeezebox, though (no buffering control over the SW player, i guess).
No Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Slim Devices in any way; I just love their product
What is the difference between a real song and a simulated song?
realistically any unbalanced cable will give you similar results because shielding can only do so much to prevent EMI/RFI.
balanced is a much better solution however it is probably more than most people need in their home system. I have it in mine, but I have a project studio that I use for personal listening as well.
First off, in most house construction, both interior and exterior walls have horizontal firebreaks between the vertical studs (ie, an 18 inch 2x4 running horizontally), to provide fire protection (keeps the fire from getting to the attic as quick). So, to drill holes for wires (any wiring) after the sheetrock is on - means a flexible drill and a bit of luck - or punching holes in the drywall and patching (or replacing the drywall). Furthermore, so many damn new houses now have "vaulted ceilings" - where there is no "attic" - so fishing wires through those areas is a real nightmare.
It sounds like the house though, hasn't been built yet - but unfortunately, you run into other problems. You typically aren't allowed to run your own lines (liability issues on the construction site), nor can you hire your own contractor in many cases (liability issues generally, once again). You typically have to use the "approved" wiring contractor for the subdivision - and since he has it "locked up" - he will gouge you for EVERY penny - $100.00 or more per cable pull/drop is not unheard of.
Just several more reasons NOT to buy an overpriced cardboard/styrofoam shitbox they call a "house". Want real value? Buy a pre-1980 block constructed house, or something older. Make sure you get a good inspection before you sign. Check out attic access, etc - see how easy or hard it is to run lines yourself (btw - if you buy too old of a home, you might have more trouble than it is worth - especially if you need to replace the entire electrical system because of age, or you need to drill or make holes in plaster ceilings or walls).
Or, better yet, if you can afford it - have your house custom built. You might want to look into the idea of a steel or alluminum frame building, or precast concrete, or rammed earth, or any of a number of alternative building systems which you might find easier to wire as they are built or afterward. One other thing: if you do build and wire it yourself - run the wiring in conduit with pull strings for later upgrades - you will thank me later...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
This is probably too late a response to get noticed, but having just put a contract on a new house as well (as of today actually), my mind went to similar directions.
After quite a bit of googling, I've found that Sonos (http://www.sonos.com) has a really nice setup. It's not Linux-friendly, but if you're a Windows household, or can have an old Windows box lying around, it'll be great for you.
The basic setup is as follows: You can have up to 32 base stations, which act as both input and output. Plug a base station into your PC and install the software, and voila, it will now interface with the remote. The base stations communicate with each other wirelessly, acting as repeaters, or a wireless mesh, if you prefer.
You can have multiple sources (with multiple base stations, that is), but I don't know whether or not it is available to the other base stations if it isn't coming through the PC (and through their software), so you'll likely want to check into that.
All in all tho, while it is a little pricy, does involve zero wiring (except power, and ethernet if you don't have wireless), and the cost of putting together a 5-6 room thing with 4 remotes is still cheaper to put together a decent quality multi-zone whole house audio system.
-9mm-
I can't agree with this more strongly. I just closed on my house a year and a half ago. About the smartest thing I ever did was to handle all aspects of electrical / wiring first. Added smoke detectors, updated the service, outlets and ran cable. I have a wireless network running, as well. And it's great for surfing from the couch. But for video, audio and "real" computer work, you can't beat a wire.
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Professional "golden ears" refuse to submit to blind tests. However, some tests using a placebo cable while the real cable was hidden showed that the "golden ears" consistently claim to hear what the marketing information for the cable they think they are testing says they should hear. When the placebos are swapped and the actual cable being used is left fixed they consistently pick the best looking placebo.
http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/duncable.htm
Wired, wireless, whatever, the transport medium does not really make a difference. It's 1's and 0's and whether they get from point A to point B via a wire or via EM it does not matter.
As long as the format is digital, you are correct. But typically the signal between between the amplifier and the speakers is analog. For analog, the quality of the connection matters.
In sound terms, you typically have four parts -
1. Source (in this case digital music files).
2. A Digital to Audio Converter.
3. Amplifier
4. Speakers
Wireless between points one and two (say a music server and a laptop playing the files) can be digital. However, at some point, you have to convert to analog.
In my option, a good setup for playback in each room would be an old laptop hooked up to an old stereo receiver/amp wired to a nice pair of bookshelf speakers - something with at least 5/12-6/12 low drivers. If you look around, you can probably find some nice used stereo amplifiers - pioneer, onkyo, yamaha. You can even buy decent new stereo amps for a small amount of money these days. I'd spring for new speakers in any event.
Well, any cable's fine as long as it has negligible inductance and capacitance. A bit of resistance is ok - it'll just reduce the ammount of power reaching your speakers, but as long as your amp can handle a variety of load resistances it shouldn't be a problem.
Distortion due to cables mainly arises when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent. At that point it will damp some tones more than others, and everything falls apart. I suppose you could fix it by playing with the equalizer, but that is far from a good solution.
Prognosis: use a braided cable (many small strands, not one solid) with decent quality copper to keep the resistance down and your music should sound fine. The braids will reduce the increase in resistance due to the skin effect (where high-frequency current migrates to the surface of the conductor, reducing the effective cross-section of your cable).
Jw
My gf and I recently had a house built and we wired it with CAT5 and coax. While I'm not happy with the builder we had, they did let us go into the house and wire it.
We also took lots of photos of the house of the house during various stages of the build.
-- Andrea --
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I use to run a pro-sound company (we ran big sound systems for bands and DJs). Every now-and-then I'd get to a gig and find out I was missing a speaker cable or not have a long enough speaker cable to get to the speakers they owner wanted outside on the deck,etc.
Whenever that happened I just ran to the nearest Lowe's or WalMart and bought two 16 gauge extension cords, chop off the ends and put Neutrik speaker connectors on it. Worked great and got a 100ft speaker cable for 8 dollars. You actually don't need more than 16 guage unless you're pushing serious wattage (>150 RMS).
Of course for any install job I would use 14 and 12 guage.
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There are definitely different grades of copper....that is, there are different amounts of impurities that they mix in. However, when it comes to hooking up speakers, it just doesn't make a huge difference.
Where cables DO make a difference is when you're hooking up line-level signals. i.e. the analog output of a CD player to your amp. The shielding of the cables is what makes the difference. And if the signal is coming from a turntable or microphone, it's REALLY important since those signals are boosted in the amp so much more. Even still, you're not going to notice much of a difference between RCA cables you buy at WalMart vs Circuit City. When it comes to hooking up digital outputs (DVD) to your Dolby Digital amp, it doesn't make a difference at all as long as you have a coax cable (with RCA ends) meant for digital use. For this, just get the WalMart version.
The only time cables can make a difference is if they're gold plated which only really helps if EVERYTHING (plugs and jacks) are gold plated. Ask anyone who works in a recording studio and they say gold plating on everything can lower your total noise floor by 2db, which is significant for studios... probably wouldn't notice it in a house.
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a cheaper solution would be to install cable runs. Maybe a 1 or 2 inch diameter pipe that runs to the different places in your house. Put a pull string in for each place you want to go and you have now almost entire "future proofed" your setup. You can pull whatever is new and great with little or no destruction to the walls or anything.
"...when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent..."
I believe this is known as impedance. If I'm wrong someone will correct me, so I'm posting AC just in case.
On another note, "skin effect" really only becomes apparent at high frequencies. Low frequencies, such as those in your subwoofer channel, are less impacted by coarser-stranded cable.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
There's more to cabling than oxygen-free copper, pair twisting, and stranding/braiding. Most people seem to ignore insulation and installation ratings.
If cable is installed inside a wall without conduit, it must be rated for in-wall use. Most lamp cord and extension cords are not, as well as your typical clear-jacket lamp-cord-style speaker cable. If installed in a plenum (air-handling space, typically the space above a false ceiling in your office building), then the insulation must be plenum rated. This means that in the event of a fire, the insulation a) does not support combustion, and b) meets standards for emissions in the event of a fire. If your cabling does not meet the standards for the particular installation, then you'll have to run it in conduit.
In addition, most of your "Home Depot" cord and most audio cables are not rated for permanent installation. Usually, cable designed for permanent installation has individually insulated conductors and a durable outer jacket. (Rule of thumb: interconnects between equipment are considered temporary. If the wire runs thru a wall or is somehow fastened to a surface, then it's considered permanent.)
Don't run your cables under a rug or carpet. This is dangerous: the slight bump in the carpet can be a tripping hazard, the carpet does NOT protect and in fact increases the wear on the cable, heat dissipation is hampered by the carpet, and the cable cannot be visually inspected for damage.
Oh, and another thing about twisting pairs -- for speakers, twisting your pairs won't necessarily improve RF rejection (considering the amplitude of the signal), but will help prevent your speaker signals from inductively coupling to your other signal lines. That is, with parallel non-twisted cable, your speaker lines are not a magnet for interference, but rather are a source for it.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Or a slimdevices Squeezebox. http://www.slimdevices.com/ - I've just bought one, and it works a treat. Sounds good, to. And it's cheaper than the Roku stuff.
no taxation without representation!
feeds troll...
Speaker wire is nothing more than fancy AC power cables, and with a good reason- analog audio is represented electrically as AC current. Nothing special, just simple AC. It's voltage and frequency vary considerably (voltage = volume, frequency = pitch), but it's just AC nonetheless. The only reason why it doesn't look like it is because most of the time there's a fancy connector on the end of it... or other times, just bare wire.
The only reason why your dryer has thicker cable than your TV is due to the fact that the dryer pulls much more current than the TV, and to avoid literally melting your cables and starting a nice electrical fire the conductive material is thicker to carry the increased current. The same is true for speaker cables- the cable used on big, multi-kW PA systems is much bigger than the 1 W headphones you've got.
As long as you don't do silly things like running audio parallel to power cables (tends to induce a 60 Hz hum into your audio) and make sure you cross all power cables @ 90 degree (or pi/2 radian) angles, you will get great performance with either Home Depot extension cords or Monster Cable speaker cable, because they are the exact same thing. Keyboard magazine ran an article a few years back on cable comparisons. The listening test, done with at least 10-15 people, showed no superior performer. The only way they could rank them is in how well they lasted (one of their tests: slam the cable in a pickup truck bed door 10 times and see if it still works).
There is differences between different kinds of cable, but the differences are for signal types. Analog audio is AC, so AC cables work just *great*. For example, twisted pair ethernet uses a differential signal to avoid interference problems, more details can be found here. Check up on your stuff next time before trolling so hard.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Kenwood has a networked home theatre system. It has a NIC at the back of it, you can connect it to your wireless router and then use your laptop to play music etc. I use this and its pretty useful to stream music, pics and videos using your home theatre system. You need to install a java based client onto your PC/laptop and create playlists and then you can start listening to music/videos etc. The only limitation is that you need to use it from the hometheatres' remote control and you can't PUSH the audio from the client itself. This idea doesn't seem to be very popular though. Does anybody else have this ? or considered this ? I wish I could tweak this so that I could PUSH the music and control it from the PC itself. Would be cool if you could write up some scripts to control the music! It also has an option for a firmware upgrade, if only kenwood could provide more firmware for it. Just the fact that the firmware is upgradable is pretty cool since just a s/w upgrade could make it ipv6 capable! Pretty futuristic I'd say, but not sure if it is going to reach that phase....
Solder DOES increase conductivity and you can solder wire to a speaker but you have to be VERY careful. I never solder wire to a speaker for two reasons....
1. Speakers can blow. If you need to swap a speaker out, using quick connects works a lot better. I use to run a sound company and sometimes we'd have to swap speakers out in the middle of a gig.
2. Soldering irons are hot! The voice coil of a speaker can easily be damaged (or it's life-time shortened) due to the heat. Especially high frequency drivers...never solder dome tweeters!
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I had a similar project. I built a media server from scrounged parts (533 Celeron mb, scrounged ps, built my own aluminum chassis and hard drive shock mount, etc.) Server software is Debian Sarge, including Glirnath and gnump3d. All the CDs were ripped onto their own partition on the hard drive (Lame-based encoder) The server is hooked up to the A/V unit and the TV in the living room. Using the web-based interface in Glirnath, I can play music on the main stereo. Using gnump3d I can play music at a local console (desktop or laptop). Since both software packages use a web interface, the "client" machine can be any machine with a browser.
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An A/B/X test is a type of blind test used to impartialy show a statistical preference for A, B or Undetermined. The X sample is A or B (random) and is just used to determine the number of surveyed test subjects that could/couldn't tell the difference between A and B.
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