I waited in line Friday, and got my iPhone 3G. I went to town and downloaded a ton of apps. Although there are many awesome ones...my absolute favorite, and most useful is the "Remote" app to enable control of my entire iTunes library wirelessly (almost like a cheap Crestron). I've got a pretty good sized house, and when I had it built, they pre-wired for speakers in most ceiling locations. I dont have much of a budget, but have wanted whole house audio control since we moved in. So, I'm excited about the possibilities of what can be done via Airtunes now that the missing link is there (elegant wireless control now in the iPhone).

The way my house is set up now is I have a 24" iMac (my iTunes hub) in the Family Room. Also on the other side of that room connected to my 55" Sony HDTV and Onkyo 805 receiver is an AppleTV. Hanging off of a seperate zone of the same receiver is a pair of ceiling mounted speakers back in the pool area. I just think the coolest thing is how the zones can be individually controlled (not the pool speakers the way I have it set up now), so, I'm trying to figure out how I can do this through airtunes if I'm primarily using ceiling mounted or in-wall speakers.

At first I was thinking I'd just drop an Airport Express in each location (Den, Master Bedroom, Dining Room, Bonus Room, and get the audio cable maybe in the wall and up to the speakers, until I realized, "duh!" they need to be amplified! Anybody have any ideas for how I can do this without breaking the bank? My preference is to do ceiling or in-walls speakers. Are there any type of mini-amplifiers that would be OK up in the attic? If so, maybe put both an Airport Express & mini-amp in the attic at each speaker location for wireless control? Is Airport Express even the way to go for what I'm trying to do? I guess this is kind of how Sonos does it (?), but cheaper. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

I waited in line Friday, and got my iPhone 3G. I went to town and downloaded a ton of apps. Although there are many awesome ones...my absolute favorite, and most useful is the "Remote" app to enable control of my entire iTunes library wirelessly (almost like a cheap Crestron). I've got a pretty good sized house, and when I had it built, they pre-wired for speakers in most ceiling locations. I dont have much of a budget, but have wanted whole house audio control since we moved in. So, I'm excited about the possibilities of what can be done via Airtunes now that the missing link is there (elegant wireless control now in the iPhone).

The way my house is set up now is I have a 24" iMac (my iTunes hub) in the Family Room. Also on the other side of that room connected to my 55" Sony HDTV and Onkyo 805 receiver is an AppleTV. Hanging off of a seperate zone of the same receiver is a pair of ceiling mounted speakers back in the pool area. I just think the coolest thing is how the zones can be individually controlled (not the pool speakers the way I have it set up now), so, I'm trying to figure out how I can do this through airtunes if I'm primarily using ceiling mounted or in-wall speakers.

At first I was thinking I'd just drop an Airport Express in each location (Den, Master Bedroom, Dining Room, Bonus Room, and get the audio cable maybe in the wall and up to the speakers, until I realized, "duh!" they need to be amplified! Anybody have any ideas for how I can do this without breaking the bank? My preference is to do ceiling or in-walls speakers. Are there any type of mini-amplifiers that would be OK up in the attic? If so, maybe put both an Airport Express & mini-amp in the attic at each speaker location for wireless control? Is Airport Express even the way to go for what I'm trying to do? I guess this is kind of how Sonos does it (?), but cheaper. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

The only issue is that I dont think you can create separate zones with airport expresses. The synced audio for airport expresses works well. reception with my airports is my biggest problem. They work well in one house and not so well in my other house. I have ethernet everywhere except the garage so I wish I could figure out how to make the airport work over ethernet. Sonos forms a mesh and you supposedly should be able to get this to work with an airport extreme router. I tried getting this mode working with a buffalo and netgear routers with no luck. If you are going to run a lot of airports this should really improve your reliability. something strongly to consider. Wifi reception is a strange thing. Anything to increase its robustness IMO is a good thing and should be considered. Especially for the setup you are considering.

Getting powered speakers/clock radios etc is not hard. Apple has the Apple powered speaker if you wanted to stay all Apple. I have my xboxes and airports and SB3's plugged into everything from high end 2 channel rigs to home theaters to Jam boxes...

BTW: Check out parts express for all your in wall speaker and amp needs on a budget. They have everything you should need....

www.partsexpress.com

Sean

Sean

good point with the above post. Sonos does form a mesh so it extends the range of your wifi reception. But if you can get wifi everywhere, and you don't need separate zones, then I think the itunes remote will work fine.

For amps, you need an amp like a Parasound ZAmp. It has auto detect so it only turns on when the signal is detected.

In case you didn't see it, here is a step by step guide to doing exactly what you want to do:

http://lifehacker.com/400235/turn-your-iphone-or-ipod-touch-into-a-multi+room-wireless-music-remote

I am planning on doing the same thing as you and it does seem that the hardest part is picking out the right amp that will be good enough and not overkill for this very specific one function. The airport express will also output digital, so a mini amp that can take a TOS link input with two basic speaker outputs is what I am looking for.

You should also be able to extend your wi-fi network - though you will probably need to use an Apple router to start as the article says that specific functionality can vary based on the hardware.

This is how i'm going to do my set-up, on the cheap. I'll be moving into my new house next week and I hope to have all this done by mid September.

1. Sherwood RX-5502 Receiver/Amp.

($170ish online) What's unique about this amp is that it's a plain stereo amp with two seperate amplifiers and four zones. This means that in one room I can be listening to my itunes controlled with my iPhone and another room my wife can be listening to the FM tuner or a CD. There are up to 4 zones with two inputs at a time, so you could have two rooms streaming iTunes and two rooms on an FM tuner at the same time, etc, or all four rooms streaming iTunes. The limitation is that you can only have up to two sources at at time.


2. MonoPrice 6.5in Kevlar In-Ceiling Speakers. $40/pair. Reviewed very well, and I'm not an audiophile snob, so I will start with these in the garage to see if I like them.

3. iPhone w/Remote App. (Wife doesn't have iPhone, so will probably get her an refurb iPod Touch)

4. Airport Express streaming music to the Sherwood amp from my MacBook Pro, or, as an alternative, I may just use an old PowerBook G4 I have laying around and plug it directly into the amp using a headphone to RCA dual cable.

5. Next Generation Remote Control Extender ($35, Amazon) :
This is an RF remote control extender, allowing me to control the Sherwood AMP anywhere in the house with the factory sherwood remote. While the iPod will allow me to change songs, it won't let me change source. For example, I'm in the garage and I'm listening to iTunes and I want to change it over to the FM tuner to listen to the football game: I use the Sherwood remote to switch sources over to FM tuner for the zone I am in.

6. Wireless Router. I already one obviously but I don't think you would need it necessarily. I'm not sure if you can control the airport express/airtunes directly without it being on a network. I'm pretty sure you can.