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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?"
Just set numrooms = 1 (or even better, 0). Makes the problem much easier.
I haven't tried it myself, but this looks like a very interesting product. http://sonos.com/
The squeezebox family from Logitec (used to be slim devices) rocks. It will read all of your music + internet radio stations plus more, available as inexpensive component audio, boom boxes and even high end audio components
nothing is real
I have the Boom and it works great. It also comes up with server software that runs on Linux or Windows so you can serve your music. You can read more details on the Logitech website.
If you want good class-a amps, you'll have to pay for them. If you want good electrostatic speakers, you need pay for them and sample your CDs at 400kb otherwise what's the point?
'Good' relative to a high end system is about 'good enough.' Nothing is simpler to configure and operate than physical cable connecting your consumer-grade speakers to your class b or class d amp.
After that, it really doesn't matter what your source is 128 vbr is effectively indistinguishable from higher on consumer grade sound gear.
I just replay the music in my head. This helps avoid copyright infringement suits.
Be sure not to get carried away, and hum or whistle because that's a performance not covered by Section 117.
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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I like the combination of iTunes and Airport Express - http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/ - devices. Each Airport Express can join a wireless or wired network and has an optical digital and analogue audio output which you can connect to a hifi / radio with aux input etc. Each Airport Express appears as a remote speaker in iTunes and you can tell iTunes to play to any / all remote speakers. And you can control everything with Apple's free Remote app - http://www.apple.com/itunes/remote/ - on an iPod Touch / iPhone. It all works rather well.
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 hired a band of six-piece midget mariachi band to follow me around. I had to buy a mini-bus, but it's by far the best solution.
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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.
My S.O. and I are KCRW.com freaks. We also have FM radios throughout the house, along with the living room stereo system - where my S.O.'s PC also lives. I split the audio line from her PC: one line goes to the living room stereo, the other goes to a cheap C.C.Crane FM transmitter. This is the absolute cheapest way to get a single source of audio (CDs, MP3 library, streaming audio) into every room of the house. Note: the FM signal strength from the Crane transmitter sucked at first - then I found a web page that showed how you can open up the Crane transmitter and tweak the signal strength to maximum. Works great now.
If you want decent audio you need oxygen free speaker cables. Hand made valves for the amps are a given.
Oh sure, if your gear is CONSUMER GRADE then you could hook it up with a coat-hanger wire.
I personally avoid anything digital, because I inherited superior hearing, and those 70 kHz frequencies are conspicuously missing from digital compressed audio made for mere mortals.
Enjoy your 44.1 KHz on your CONSUMER GRADE gear you PEASANT.
About five years ago I, spent about $75 on a low power FM transmitter from CanaKit. I can get music anywhere in my house (or at close neighbors' houses) with a simple radio. CanaKit's transmitters cost from $20 up to $300 and have about a 150 meter range (about 500 feet).
Recently I added the "Remote" app to my iPhone. Now I can chose songs and playlists without needing to walk over to the computer. Obviously this will not work if you can't, or won't, use iTunes.
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(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.
I just replay the music in my head. This helps avoid copyright infringement suits.
Nay, you only think you are...
I say you are guilty of illegally creating a derivative work based upon copyrighted material.
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.
I filled one of my houses with sound simply by using a 500 watt P.A. system with some 15", 12", horn, speakers purchased at a flea market for around $500.
Another house I put the same P.A. in the basement, eq'd it for low end and split the signal to my home stereo upstairs. Basement as a sub.
Neighbors will love ya. Bathe in sound.
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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.
In the upcomming months plenty of companies will start offering DLNA DMR devices (https://coherence.beebits.net/wiki/MediaRenderer).
You can stream the music from your NAS directly to this devices, as long as you have the software (ushare, twonkymedia, windows 7 has it as 'Play To').
There are not many devices available as of now, but they will be in the next few months.
DMR software: foobar2000 (need a plugin), rythmbox (needs a plugin)
Just an idea, you can google the rest.
Mu
Maybe you could clarify your requirements. You say "something which requires a separate amp, speakers and PC in each room and requires a keyboard to control is right out." Which of those things do you have to avoid? You certainly can't avoid speakers. When you say you don't want an amp, do you mean you don't want any amp at all, or you just don't want one the size of a traditional stereo amp? If you don't want any amp at all, then you're going to have to run speaker cables around the house, and that's that. When you say you don't want a separate amp, speakers, and PC in each room, do you really mean you just don't want a PC in each room? What kind of audio quality do you need? If all you want is the ability to play some tunes while you're cleaning the bathroom, then a portable music player would probably do the job.
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Assuming that each of the rooms is a proper room with proper walls and a proper door, stereo bleed shouldn't be a problem. But perhaps the submitter should have clarified whether "ambience throughout the house", or "easy access to music from several scattered locations" was the goal.
Sonos = cheese when you factor in cost, flexibility, freedom. Squeezecenter runs on Windows, Mac, Linux. Web interface. Internet radio. Quite affordable. Very flexible. They're so damn good that most people don't own just one. I have four at home and two at work. One is the BoomBox which is perfect for the kitchen or other small rooms. The newest models have touchscreens which I'd love to get my hands on (literally too!!). You can keep a setup small and the sound big when you pair a Squeezebox with a T-amp and a nice set of bookshelf speakers. You could buy a unit with a speaker built in. You can even get a unit without a display and a pretty remote.
And flexibility in Squeezecenter is unmatched! You can stream FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, AAC, or darn near anything else and choose what to transcode and where to do it, server or client side!
Seriously, Sonos can even come close?
Sonos is the answer. The problem with all of the lower priced squeezebox-style systems is that they save money on components by not having the decoding hardware inside of them. That is the reason that even with a stock-standard samba share, you STILL need to install their "server software" on the system you store your music on.
In reality the "server software" is actually doing some or all of the transcoding of the music format because the units themselves don't have the horsepower to do it.
The sonos systems, OTOH, have the necessary horsepower, so you can just point them at your A/UX based fileserver (or whatever else you want to point them at) and say "just work".
I've had a 5-zone sonos system for 4+ years now and could not be happier.
And it definitely has that audiophile look to it.
It looks like it does absolutely nothing usefull but is made of overly expensive materials?
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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