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Poor Man's Whole House Audio?
robtheauditor asks: "I would love to have my music in all the various rooms of our house. I can't afford the thousands for a turnkey system. What are the possibilities for a poor man's whole house audio system? For example, would it be possible to take my PC external audio connector and feed it to a bunch of powered speakers in different rooms? Could I just bring a bunch of 3.5mm plugs wired together in parallel, or would that not work? I was thinking that even if the signal is weak because it is split to 6 different speaker pairs, because the speakers are powered it wouldn't matter. Or will I risk burning out my sound card?"
Use some light switches, so that when you enter a room all you have to do is flip the switch, and speakers come on. You could even get some of those switches where only one can be on at a time.
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The Squeezeboxes are about $200 each for the wired model 2, which is identical to the snazzier model 3 except for the appearance. $250 for the wireless version. (add $50 for Model 3s). Their hardware is extremely good, with top-quality DACs and very low-jitter digital outs. They'll outperform CD players that are much more expensive.
You'll need a computer to run the music server software. You can then easily sync up multiple rooms... and they all come with quite lovely displays and very useful remotes. This would be one of the cheaper ways to do this, and it has a nice side effect of being very, very high-quality.
But you still need amplification and speakers in every room, and that's going to add a buttload to the cost. You're essentially trying to buy six stereo systems on the cheap. I'd suggest repeated trips to pawn shops and Goodwill stores to get the sound gear... and then add your distributed music system from there.
The Squeezeboxes would make a really excellent backbone, but getting the signal to a room won't matter if you have nothing to play it back with.
Take a trip to your local Radio Shack and look for something called a speaker switch box. It would look like a small brick with a knob on the front with the letters "A", "B", etc. on it, and plugs on the back for input/output signals. This would have the net effect of unplugging thhe unused speakers from your soundcard without the need for plugging/unplugging the cables yourself, sparing you the signal degradation.
If you're at all handy with a soldering iron, you could probably make your own speaker switch box with $5 or $10 worth of parts.
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A friend of mine was considering using an FM Modulator from his PC to broadcast the computer's audio across into another room for his speaker system.. In theory you could do this buying 1 FM Modulator and some basic clock/radio's.. Not super high-tech, not super-powerful, but gives you sound in every room ? Problem would be finding an FM modulator running off AC power -- most are designed for Car's to go from CD-players or mp3 players to car audio... Hell, I might try this myself.. being that I spend most my time in my basement / workshop, I don't get a strong signal for any station without the single cable I have running down from my Antenna on the roof... I could easily set this up and broadcast music into my Exercise room, or my Work room.. as well as my home theater system's reciever... Probably would get a better singal then a 6-spliced wire... but not better then a straight connection, or a two-splice connection... but im not an electrician, I just play with sound systems a lot :-)
Google for Boosteroo. It's a one stereo in, three stereo out preamp/headphone amp that you could stick between your soundcard and your speakers.
I thought there was a Slashdot article about hacking it a while back but I'm not finding it.
The reason to need to know how to take it apart is because it runs on a battery or two and you might want to hook up an AC adapter.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Get an old, used 4:1 amp on the cheap with a mono output option. Put a speaker in every room. Assuming you have smaller speakers than the manufacturer was expecting to drive, use two speakers per line, for 8 total.
I wouldn't worry about stereo. When you have music coming from every room, stereo separation gets muddied. Alltogether, the audio is a bit cleaner in mono, if you've got 5 or 6 mono sources from around the house coming at you.
Another way to do it, if you really want to be cheap, is broadcast. Get a low-powered radio transmitter, pick an unused station, and blast it. Tune the radios in your house, and you're done.
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Speakers, whether powered or not, have an impedance that must be watched if you're going to hook up more than two to each channel.
Put two 8 ohm speakers in series you get 16 ohms of impedance. This won't fry your sound card but the volume in the speakers will be lower.
Put two 8 ohm speakers in parallel and your impedance becomes 4 ohms. Volume stays the same but you risk burning your soundcard.
Put 6 speakers in parallel and you start a fire.
The best thing to do is put 4 speakers in series/parallel. Split the channel into two lines and put two speakers in series on each line. This keeps the impedance at 8 ohms and gives you 4 speakers.
Of course, the suggestion below to just buy an FM transmitter is the best one yet. You can buy tiny FM radios to plug into powered speakers if you really want the powered speakers, or just use boom boxes instead.