Multi room audio system

[Topender]

We have a Yamaha Multi Zone receiver in the lounge with Zone 2 in the Family and Zone 3 outside with more than enough power to well and truly P everyone off if need be.  Highly recommend Yamaha.  Not cheap but you get what you pay for.  The wired system is fantastic, but can be a real pain if your not keen on running wires everywhere, that's why the Sonos etc. are very popular now.  Mine was fairly easy to wire as we have conduit in the walls and double brick everywhere else.  Worth looking into the wiring side before you discount wireless.

Dave

[The punter]

Trust me on this, having had a succession of systems, receivers and media systems. Go the Sonos.

I have just bought a sonos after trying squeezebox, apple, media player etc etc over many years, user friendless is the goal. Bloody expensive but delivers, they even have amplified zones so just require a set if speakers.

+1 SONOS

it just works, plus apps for iphone,ipad and Android. I have two of the connect boxes and they are fantastic

[WilSurf]

With the Sonos, can you listen to your standard stereo or is it internet radio only?

[achjimmy]

Yep I have a big arse Yamaha multi zone receiver. It works through iPhone iPad or home automation input. Works well but you still need a music source.

Please just look hard/get a demo on sonos, Before discounting it. I'm not joking when I state I tried/bought all of the others. as I mentioned all sonos devices have an Ethernet port if you are anti wireless.

The hardest part about any streaming music is ripping and organizing your files, take the time to get this right. A great simple rip and stream box can be made by getting a PC and installing an OS  called vortexbox. You just open the disc tray, it rips CD or DVD to Flac, MP3 apple lose less etc then gets album art etc and catalogs it ready for you to stream, all without you doing a single thing other than loading the disc tray.

[achjimmy]

With the Sonos, can you listen to your standard stereo or is it internet radio only?

What do you mean? The sonos just simply streams the music from a PC, NAS, iTunes, vortex box. Then depending what sonos you get. A zone 90 is connected to your stereo inputs and layer through that. A zone 120 is same but with amplification, so you just hook up a set of speakers and it plays , then there is a host of newer play series stuff that is self contained with speakers, so you just get a play 1 and put it on your desk then stream music through that.

[WilSurf]

The questions is can I listen to my old trusted radio over the Sonos gear?
Listening to the radio in the back yard and have the iPod playing music in the dining.

[achjimmy]

The questions is can I listen to my old trusted radio over the Sonos gear?
Listening to the radio in the back yard and have the iPod playing music in the dining.

There is a line input on the connect series so a tuner or cd can be fed in.  you can also pick up all the local radio channels as well though the sonos as long as the radio station streams To the internet which is all of them I think. You can also listen to just about every radio station in the world that streams to the internet. I just discovered the " sports" genre. A heap of sports broadcasters from around the world.

[WilSurf]

How does this work?
Do you need to leave you computer on/

[achjimmy]

How does this work?
Do you need to leave you computer on/

If using a PC yes. Most use a NAS drives (network attached storage) , small box's containing HDDs. The vortex box works really well and is cheap to run if you use an "atom" based PC (like running a 60watt globe)

[Jasman]

Just did the exercise myself in decking out our new house.

I really like Sonos but thought that the best outcome was via a Yamaha amp/receiver, I went with a 2030 (about $2-2.5k) which gives me 3 zones (inc hdmi to two zones) and they can all run independently.  I looked at the other brands of amps and whilst they all have a model that can do the job none of the others have an app that compares to the yamaha's (you can download and demo the different apps for yourself).

The Yamaha also includes all the on board apps for tuned-in, spotify etc and has about a thousand inputs on the back for all your old school sources.  Personally I grab my music from a four bay NAS.

I think the Reciever/Amp is a better option because it can handle your home theatre requirements as well as the multi-room audio, it has much more grunt and depending on what speakers you run and the amp you pick it should come in a bit cheaper.

If you need more than three Zones or you don't really want to run cables the Sonos is probably a better option.

If you do go the Reciever/Amp option you can always incorporate sonos down the track by using a sonos connect as a source to the Receiver/Amp or using sonos amps to run the speakers and keeping your Reciever/Amp to run the surround sound in your lounge. 

Jason.

[WilSurf]

Personally I grab my music from a four bay NAS.

I am looking into this as well.
What are you using?
I read abouth the WD, Asustor, Synology etc.
Lot of money for only the casing and software as you still need to buy 1 or 2 hard drives.

[Bird]

Lot of money for only the casing and software as you still need to buy 1 or 2 hard drives.

agree
I started looking into them too, bloke at work here has 2 - one for movies, and one for family photos.... I can get drives cheap, but they still don't seem *value* yet.

http://www.myswag.org/index.php?topic=32727.msg517865#msg517865

[WilSurf]

I searched for NAS and Synology but nothing came up.
That while you had asked the question.....

[Jasman]

I am looking into this as well.
What are you using?
I read abouth the WD, Asustor, Synology etc.
Lot of money for only the casing and software as you still need to buy 1 or 2 hard drives.

Hey WilSurf, sorry for the late reply.  I run a Netgear ReadyNas 104 - cost about $300 and will take 4 x 4tb giving you up to 12gb of redundant storage (4tb is used for parity info).  I stream DVD quality video and music from it without an issue.

[boobook]

Really not a fan of wireless systems, so that rules out Sonos.

Symon I was of the same view as you. Wireless can be hopeless for consistent quality and performance. I headed up the Asia wireless group for a large networking company starting with C so I have some experience in wifi.

After originally writing it off, I heard a demo and saw the unbelievable user interface that combines hardware with IOS, Android and Windows like nothing I have seen so I looked into the wireless.

It sets up an 802.11n MESH network for its exclusive use, usually reserved for wireless backbone networking. Being a full mesh network it has multipath and QoS. It's a seperate network and you can't use it for your other data. The more speakers you have, the better the mesh.

The result is that it gets reliable, quality audio in ares of my house that don't even get coverage from my router

Also the way it works with streaming you can set it up and then turn the phone or PC off and it keeps going.

You can even queue up songs from different devices like iphones, android and PC's and it will play them in order.

It really changes the way you listen to music in your home. I even have the adapter so I can connect my existing amp and speakers into it and treat them the same.

It is an unbelievable system. take a look at it.

Usual Disclaimer.....

[WilSurf]

Boobook, that's sounds great.
How does it work if you want to play different music in different rooms?

[boobook]

Wilsurf, go to Hardly normal or JB to see them. You have to see it to believe how simple the whole thing is.

On your Ipad, Iphone, Android or PC there is a free app. It's home page shows your speakers ont he left, and the music on the right. You can name the speakers bedroom, kitchen etc.

You select a speaker then select the music source, tuneinradio, your music files, JBonline, Mog etc. etc. Then for different music in another room just select the room then the music for that room. All the other devices will update themselves automatically to show what you just did. You can join the rooms so say the kitchen and lounge room play the same music. You select the room playing the music you want then join other rooms to it then they play together ( so you could have kitchen and lounge playing your ACDC and the bathroom playing Deep Purple). It's really cool when you join them, you can select the individual volumes of each speaker - say loud int he kitchen and louder in the lounge room, and as you turn the master volume up or down for that group they all stay relative the smae as you set unlessyou change it.

The set up is like no other tech product I have ever seen. This is the installation.
1)Plug at least one speaker into your hard wired ethernet to the router ( or use the bridge),
2)Download the app on the PC Iphone, android etc.
3)Turn speakers on.
4)press button on speaker and make sure app is on your device.
5)They find each other.
6)Play music.

There are no passwords, wifi keys, joining of networks - anything!!

You can go from unwrapping, to having 3 - 4 speakers going in less than 10 mins without touching a keyboard key.

And it sounds fantastic. Forget bluetooth, and if your phone rings during music, it keeps playing.

BUT it gets expensive, I've gone back to buy more and the sales guy said 60% of purchasers go back for more int he first 2 months.

[WilSurf]

Thanks, will do.

[achjimmy]

Wilsurf, go to Hardly normal or JB to see them. You have to see it to believe how simple the whole thing is.

On your Ipad, Iphone, Android or PC there is a free app. It's home page shows your speakers ont he left, and the music on the right. You can name the speakers bedroom, kitchen etc.

You select a speaker then select the music source, tuneinradio, your music files, JBonline, Mog etc. etc. Then for different music in another room just select the room then the music for that room. All the other devices will update themselves automatically to show what you just did. You can join the rooms so say the kitchen and lounge room play the same music. You select the room playing the music you want then join other rooms to it then they play together ( so you could have kitchen and lounge playing your ACDC and the bathroom playing Deep Purple). It's really cool when you join them, you can select the individual volumes of each speaker - say loud int he kitchen and louder in the lounge room, and as you turn the master volume up or down for that group they all stay relative the smae as you set unlessyou change it.

The set up is like no other tech product I have ever seen. This is the installation.
1)Plug at least one speaker into your hard wired ethernet to the router ( or use the bridge),
2)Download the app on the PC Iphone, android etc.
3)Turn speakers on.
4)press button on speaker and make sure app is on your device.
5)They find each other.
6)Play music.

There are no passwords, wifi keys, joining of networks - anything!!

You can go from unwrapping, to having 3 - 4 speakers going in less than 10 mins without touching a keyboard key.

And it sounds fantastic. Forget bluetooth, and if your phone rings during music, it keeps playing.

BUT it gets expensive, I've gone back to buy more and the sales guy said 60% of purchasers go back for more int he first 2 months.

Well explained Boobook and boy does it get exy? That's my only complaint. But the ease and simplicity at which you set up another  sound zone makes up for it.

[Glenno]

You guys are making me drool!!!!!  If you don't cut it out, your going to cost me serious $$$ !!!

[koshari]

How does this sonos go with latency if listning to the same stream from 2 zones with overlap?

Oh and for a nas solution hp microserver, barebones 4 hdd capacity for round $300. Low power.
Or $420 for the newer gen8 celeron model.

40watts so at 30$kwh aboit $100/year to run.

[boobook]

Koshari, they manage all that automatically.

If you group 2 or more rooms they are all 100% synchronised so the music has no relative latency or delay. It's like they are all on the same amplifier.

They have through of everything, but sheeze, load up your credit card. It is about 30% cheaper int he US and all the units are 110- 240V, but no retailer will ship to Australia. I squeezed Hardly Normal and got my initial set for $1130 instead of $1550. My mate went back and they met their own price  that they gave me( !!!).

[koshari]

looks a little more comprehensive than my holiday house solution,

of course this solution doesn’t let you stream different signals to multiple outputs, but that’s not a requirement of this simple setup.

2 of these,


the audio is picked up from the TVs line out and piped to the rear of the house.
for the record they work very well but you have to run the cat 5.

Out the back is a vintage akai 50 x 50 vintage amp and a pair of 80w kenwood speakers all picked up for a song at the flea market, $10 for the speakers and $20 for the amp.
inside all the music is stored on a Revo nettop PC


and managed using http://www.clementine-player.org/ over the its android app.

The Revo cost me about $320 a while back and has a 320G HDD more than enough for my library., but given in the early 90s i paid $600 for a 6 stack cartridge CD player I suppose its comparatively well priced.

[WilSurf]

Oh and for a nas solution hp microserver, barebones 4 hdd capacity for round $300. Low power.
Or $420 for the newer gen8 celeron model.

How does that work?

[koshari]

its effectively a low power PC with specific case for removable HDD bays.
load an OS on it,plug up to 4 drives in and share away,
the advantage it has over a stock standard NAS server is you can run background stuff like torrents,
it also has enterprise system monitoring independent to the OS.


So with this sonos system the minimum requirements would be a PC to run the app on, a network , a sonos bridge and a sonos connect and/or sonos play?



iam still not seeing where to pipe in additional analog audio streams?
Edit: the 2 stereo RCA jacks on the right on the connect are line in.

Note: You can listen to music from the external device in any zone, and use the Sonos Wireless HiFi System to control the volume settings. However you must control the playback (forward, pause, etc.) from the line-in source. If you have Compressed encoding selected, you will notice a delay before the music starts to play.

this suggests you would have to configure your amp to specifically use the signal from the sonos system or you could have lack of sync.