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Simple, Cost-Effective, Multiroom Audio?
jimicus writes "I'd like a multiroom audio system but I'm thoroughly confused by the options available — and the difference in prices is huge. For instance, Philips have a wireless system which starts at around £280 — and Russound have a product which comes in around £1,000. I've already got all my music as MP3s and it lives on a NAS box — I don't really want to repeat that process. I also have a perfectly capable amp and speakers in my living room, so I don't really need anything else there. Whatever I go for has to pass the wife test — so something which requires a separate amp, speakers and PC in each room and requires a keyboard to control is right out. I don't mind spending a little money but I don't really want to find that every little extra thing adds up to £thousands. Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem? How did you solve it?"
Would it be possible to send the audio signal through the mains in the house? I guess that would only send it to every room on the same circuit... And would likely be a terrible idea. Why don't you just wire your house for audio?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Any internet connected machine will control the audio programming, and any old FM-radio will do the trick of receiving the signal. Simple. Effective. _AND_ Wife-Friendly(TM) (at least, according to my wife ;)
Because of FM-modulation, this technique is not hi-fi. But a decent transmitter does an admirable job in retaining audio quality.
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C Crane sells an FM broadcaster which has a variable potentiometer which can be easily adjusted to boost the range beyond what the FCC allows.
If you attach this to your NAS as an audio output or your main stereo, you can relay what you're listening to in nice FM stereo throughout most of a large size house (goes well through my 3-story house and even our detached garage).
FM broadcast is cheap, it's easy to add new devices that are easy to use, and the music is perfectly in sync.
If you're broadcasting from a NAS, add a usb sound card to broadcast the music, and control it with MPD, which will allow you to change music via a lot of clients, including an iphone.
I second this. If you're already using iTunes, it's a no brainer. They're cheap ($100 new, ~$60 on eBay), contains all the networking stuff inside the box. I connect them to small powered speakers in the remote rooms (Klipsch ProMedia 2.1) and it just works. I've had Crestron and Control4 stuff before for TONS of money, and it just always seemed like overkill for my needs.
If you have stopped using your landline like most people I know, you can attach your amp to the phone lines and small speakers anywhere in your house that's near a phone jack. You need a reasonably sturdy amplifier if you want to drive more than 6 speakers or so, and the sound quality won't be dazzling, but it's real cheap and easy. You can also attach a cheap potentiometer to each speaker for volume control.
(Disclaimer: I actually DID used to work for a place that set systems like this up, and have designed several myself as well) To determine what you need, a little bit more information is needed. Do you simply want on/off speakers in each room, all listening to the same thing? Or, are you looking for a system that lets you listen to different sources in each room? If you want different sources/songs/whatever in each room, you're actually looking for what is called a "multi-zone" system, which is where you start seeing the higher price tags. You mention you've already found the Russound products, which is actually quite a flexible system that gives you a lot of options. It looks like they recently came out with what they are calling their Collage system, which will pull music from any uPNP server on your network. In addition, the keypads have a FM reciever, and built-in intercom between keypads. It also uses HomePlug for communications between the various keypads and the media source, so once your individual keypads are connected to power, they will not require any additional wiring for data. The keypads also have a built in amplifier, so all you will need to add beyond the cost of each keypad and the HomePlug adapter for your server are speakers and wire from the keypad to the speakers. Russound has older systems that are quite cheaper, but not all of them are designed to handle the music being on a server like you currently have. It appears that Collage is specifically designed for this type of setup. The downside is that the cheapest price I could find for keypads was $549USD.
The Rocketboost system at best buy is a wireless solution that will work for you: http://www.bestbuy.com/rocketboost gives a good summary of how it works.
You can add speakers and audio sources around your house, and the speakers have a "next source" button that lets you flip between your audio sources. It is modular, where you can buy as many units as you need and they all join together into one big network in your house. It isn't super-cheap, but it is cheaper than other products that are equally as flexible in how you set them up.
Disclaimer: I worked on this product (wrote the protocol stack for moving the audio data over the air), so you may want to take my recommendation with a grain of salt, but I am happy with how well the product turned out and I think it's pretty neat.
You want a "distribution amplifier". These usually downmix to mono (seriously - You want mono for this purpose. Stereo coming at you from several direction at unbalanced distances will get annoying fast), and have a large number of channels (12-16 would work well for most houses, unless you really need it in every corner of every room including the attic, basement, and garage).
They don't cost all that much, which leaves you to spend your money on decent speakers. Depending on your home layout, you may want surface-mount, or recessed, or just cube-in-the-corner. As for wires - Keep in mind you either have signal, or power, or both going to them. So wireless doesn't really buy you all that much unless you absolutely positively cannot make discrete 1/8" holes hidden in the corner/wall/floor/ceiling/whatever. Personally, I consider speaker-wire easier to hide than power, so have chosen to just run an array of speaker wire through the basement up through small holes between the floorboards (old-style New England house with a decent gap between floorboards, so as close to invisible holes as you could ever want).
But yeah, you don't want a high-tech solution, you want an old-school distro amp. What you feed it with depends on what the wife will put up with, but you can find a huge number of digital car audio solutions that provide minimalist interfaces with decent functionality.
What are some other things that she loves?
I have 3 airport express', one in the bedroom, one in the dining room, and the other in the kitchen. They all work wonderfully and it has replaced our stereo to the point where we simply don't use anything else. That was great, but the thing that kicked it into overdrive was the remote control app; with the iphone or ipod touch, I can control everything wherever I am. Absolutely brilliant setup!
I assume there are other setups like this, but I don't know of them.
I don't get why all you people are suggesting computer-based solutions.
Running wires to each room in the house would be both cheaper and have sound quality independent of network quality.
Sorry - my bad. Guilty as charged.
And there is also the issue - was the hypothetical 256 kilosample/second MP3 made from the analog original or resampling the sampled source.
If interested, my other post in this thread may be useful - http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1435342&cid=30018812
I tried a number of sampling schemes with a number of program sources on my system. Then had the sources switched for me (electronics are in another room from my speakers, so it was blind). On some material, I could hear significant differences from the original - where the original was an audio CD - sampled in the first place.
That's not scientifically acceptable - but perhaps it's a probative anecdote.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Yes ... but ... At least two problems. First, the AC power frequency -- 50 or 60Hz in most countries is in the audio range. Second, the US (and Canada?) wire houses with a sort of split 220 volt system where the house has two sets of circuits with the hot wire on one circuit set at 220 volts wrt the hot wire on the other set and ground half way in between. That allows stoves, driers, heaters to operate at 220 volts while most appliances and devices see 110 volts. The problem is that without some sort of coupling between the two hot wires, signals on one circuit set don't get to the other circuit set.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Check out the T-Class amplifiers. Cheep, but with audio quality almost unmatched.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Running multi-room audio can be challenging. Some things to consider... a typical amplifier will only work at 8 or 4 ohms per channel. This means you can only run 1 or 2 speakers on each channel before you run into trouble and put too much load on your amplifier. That being said, consider a 70v amplifier and speakers. A 70v system allows you to run multiple speakers from one amplifier and select the speaker wattage at the speaker. you still need to do the math to make sure you don't go over the amplifiers rating, but this is how restaurants and grocery stores do it. Since the feed signal is always at 70v, the speakers can be run in series. The speakers have a small transformer on them to select the wattage for each one. You can also get a volume control that does the same thing. One thing to note, Audio quality can suffer with a 70v system, but the trade off is long speaker runs in series and wattage selectable speakers. TOA makes a good 70v amplifier as does Peavey. Here is a site to get you started... http://www.allprosound.com/catalog/viewproducts~m~Amplifiers~s~70-Volt-Power-Amplifiers~fsubcatid~9.htm
If you're using a Mac, you could send the output of iTunes through Soundflower to a streaming server, and connect to it from other machines.
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Sonos just launched a new product that helps keep things affordable - the $399 ZP S5. It's really all you need to get started (assuming you have a home network) -- you don't even need an iPhone/iPod Touch. You can use the free Windows or OSX controllers. Once you get hooked, though, you're going to expand to every room in your house.
It's priced to compete with Bose, but frankly, it's better sound quality, easier to user, and more versatile.
--NerdMachine