[94Danstang]

All - my wife is really getting on my case over the last few weeks about our whole house audio distribution (or lack thereof). Currently I have a 400 disc CD changer, which is nice becuase I get full quality audio and I don't have to worry about ripping. However it does have it's issues - it is slow, the shuffle kinda bites, and there is no playlist option.


I have been looking over the past few months at the new music servers offered by several companies (Nuvo M3, Russound SMS3, Speakercraft MODE Jukebox, etc) and I REALLY like the feature sets. My big thing is multi-outputs and FLAC encoding. The bad part is the cost - holy cow! Does anyone know of a product that does a similar thing (multi-outputs) but at a price that is a bit more reasonable? Let me know if I have overlooked any viable vendor or product. Thanks in advance for the help.


DAN

 

[cavu]

Sonos ! .... http://www.sonos.com/demos/house_demo/en_gb/?tref=home1

 

[IVB]

DIY it using an old PC you have laying around.

1) Get a whole-house receiver/amp that's serial controllable (ie, NuVo Concerto) to drive all the various speakers in various zones, now that it's the older model you can get them inexpensively at places like automatedoutlet.com.

2) Get something like the M-Audio Delta 410 or 1010 multi-output cards for multiple concurrent CD streams

3) Get any other audio source, ie the Polk XRt12 XM tuner that's serial controllable.

4) Plus the NuVo, Polk, into your serial in the PC

5) get the HA software of your choice, bada bing!


Here's 2 of the screens I created, but you can build whatever you'd like. Check out the site in my sig for more details.

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[94Danstang]

Cavu - thanks for the input. I have looked at Sonos several times. The reason I don't think it will work for me (and correct me if I am wrong) is I have in wall/in celing speakers all run to the basement. The Sonos needs to be plugged into speakers locally in each room.


IVB - I have been following your project for some time and quite honestly, it baffles and confuses me! Don't get me wrong, I think it is cool as hell, however I have trouble following along.


Let me check out the sound card recommendation you made and see what that is all about. Can I PM you if I have questions moving forward?


Thanks all for the help - any other input would be appreciated! Thanks.


DAN

 

[94Danstang]

Cavu - I take back what I said - I went back and looked at the Sonos with a different perspective - I think it might work - I just need to place all the Zone players in the basement where my speaker runs are. I don't need to have them in the room (I don't think). However - to get enough zones the Sonos stuff can get pretty expensive. Thanks for input!


DAN

 

[Somewhatlost]



Quote:
Originally Posted by 94Danstang /forum/post/12905372


Cavu - I take back what I said - I went back and looked at the Sonos with a different perspective - I think it might work - I just need to place all the Zone players in the basement where my speaker runs are. I don't need to have them in the room (I don't think). However - to get enough zones the Sonos stuff can get pretty expensive. Thanks for input!


DAN

you may need a couple of their repeaters for remote coverage... and yes Sonos gets expensive quickly...


but, you won't need to train your wife/guests/etc on how to use the system... it is super simple..

 

[stickyfingers]

The other option, unveiled at CES, but not yet available is the Squeezebox Duet .


I'm really hoping this product is as good as it might be, as it's ~50% the price of Sonos.

 

[IVB]

Yeah, you can PM me, but honestly if you post the questions in public you might get options that I don't think of.


You don't actually have to use CQC, there's a guy by the name of jwilson on cocoontech who's doing supremely cool things with Girder/NetRemote. The software bit is irrelevant though, first get your mind around how to use an HTPC & software to do this job, then decide on that bit.

 

[mowensmd]

if you have speakers in each room already, run to basement, purchase the nuvo noted above and use just one or two zone players as sources. You won't have more than that going in different areas of the home at any one time.


Select the sonos/slim as the source for the rooms you want using the nuvo (or russound) keypads, remote, etc. Control the music from a web interface or a sonos/slim remote (or emulated remote on a web interface...etc.)


Biggest expense is the Nuvo/Russound.


If you don't want sonos/slim to stream your music from a computer to your network, use netremote, casatools or just the slimserver (softsqueeze).


Key is to get your tunes on a hard drive somewhere (best yet, a NAS). You don't even need a soundcard now...