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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?"

2 of 641 comments (clear)

  1. iPod by notany · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    iPod with shoulder speakers.

    --
    Dyslexics have more fnu.
  2. HiFi != wireless by NM156 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If you actually want to have high fidelity reproduction of sound in rooms other than the one that houses your audio system, your only real choice is to run cable. There are some wireless speaker rigs that operate at 900MHz or 2.4GHz, but by the very nature of their design, they are very band limited, and have an onboard amplifier that always has an absolutely horrible harmonic distortion rating (I've seen it as bad as 10% THD). Another words, they sound like crap. If your house is being built, then I would suggest (as others have here) to go buy a spool of speaker cable (and no, it doesn't have to be Monster Cable, any decent copper conductor will do), and run some additional speaker lines in the walls. Even if you don't use them initially, they'll be there when you need them. This is what I did when I had my house built a couple of years ago, and my only regret is that I didn't run even more cable.

    Wireless is great for digital data transmission, but not for hifi audio.