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?"