Slashdot Mirror
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.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
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 :-)
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.
The ______ Agenda