Multiroom music

Shelster

Shelster

Shelster

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3 Aug 2003
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Location
Plymouth, UK
Have a feeling I will go down the SONOS route for this, but want to have mutliroom music in my new home, when it is built.

Am looking ot get it for kitchen/diner, en-suite bathroom, master bedroom and also 2nd and 3rd beds and family bathroom eventually.

Looking at the SONOS it appears to be very easy to install /setup, yet silly expensive, but guess you get what you pay for.

Are they really that good in terms of sound quality / volume / fidelity etc?

As a test am wanting to start very small in current house just to see how things are and was wondering if the folling would work. Would get an SONOS Play 1 and a bridge. Then (if possible) would put music on external USB hard Drive and have this plugged into my router (ASUS Dark Knight)

One thinng that I am finding it hard to get my head around is that the speakers come as indivudual units, not pairs. Surely this has to have an impact on stereo? (realise that you can pair them up for greater seperation, but is the sound good form a single unit)

Was also thinking of ceiling speakers for bathrooms too, but may sway away from this depending upon quality vs cost (will install cabling on the off chance that I go for it though) A SONOS Connect Amp would serve these speakers
 
I use sonos and would recommend them 100%, I have a similar setup to what you are looking at. Currently:

Living Room: Playbar: + 2xPlay:1 (5.0)
Study: Play:3
Kitchen: Play:5
En-suite/Bedroom: Sonos:Amp + Monitor Audio CT165

The sound quality from all are superb, clear, good bass response and volume, although I haven't tried the Play:1's in a single set up they get brilliant reviews and I'm sure they have enough punch to fill a small room so would be ideal for spare rooms etc. I am definitely thinking about getting a few more if I can get it past the wife.

For larger rooms I would go with the Play:5 or a pair of 3's.

I would also highly recommend the connect amp and bathroom speaker, I wouldn't have it any other way now. Love having music in the morning shower.
 
Can do this far cheaper using raspberry pi and squeezebox plugin, allows all music to be played synced, then you can choose whatever you want to output the sound.
 
If it is a entire new build house then there is another option. Around three years ago I fitted a ceiling mounted system throughout a customers house.

Essentially you break it down to how ever many speakers you want per room, and of various sizes etc all flush form recessed into the plasterboard. The cables all run to one central av unit that you can easily link to a bunch of systems. The customer in question just wanted his set to work in connection with his cinema av system in the living room, but the main head unit had the option to flick on and off each room or any combination. This system was pretty basic in that the volume was controlled only from the av unit but you could get setups with variable channel controls.

Again due to the cost of this system being quite low it meant control was mostly done from the main av unit, but today you can easily get setups to work from an ios or android phone in conjunction with a small form factor media pc.
 
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I'm also an avid Sonos user.

We have:
2x Play5
2x Play3
Playbar+Sub

My wife loves it, it's the easiest gadget for her to sell, she doesn't normally get on with Tech, but the easibility of use is second to none. Grab a phone or tablet in the house and you can change it.

Will be adding some Play1's for the kids bedroom soon.
 
rich.h said:
If it is a entire new build house then there is another option. Around three years ago I fitted a ceiling mounted system throughout a customers house.

Essentially you break it down to how ever many speakers you want per room, and of various sizes etc all flush form recessed into the plasterboard. The cables all run to one central av unit that you can easily link to a bunch of systems. The customer in question just wanted his set to work in connection with his cinema av system in the living room, but the main head unit had the option to flick on and off each room or any combination. This system was pretty basic in that the volume was controlled only from the av unit but you could get setups with variable channel controls.

Again due to the cost of this system being quite low it meant control was mostly done from the main av unit, but today you can easily get setups to work from an ios or android phone in conjunction with a small form factor media pc.
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CocoPops said:
I'm also an avid Sonos user.

We have:
2x Play5
2x Play3
Playbar+Sub

My wife loves it, it's the easiest gadget for her to sell, she doesn't normally get on with Tech, but the easibility of use is second to none. Grab a phone or tablet in the house and you can change it.

Will be adding some Play1's for the kids bedroom soon.
Click to expand...

Had thought of the central located ssytem and also using a Rasp Pi and other bits but as it has to pass Wife Useability and not only be able to be used by resident techno geek, then am feeling that Sonos is the way to go. Yup it will be expensive, but for peace and quiet and the ease of selling the system to Mrs S it pays for itself there.

Will put wiring in for speakers in bathrooms though as is a bit of a no brainer there. If i dont use them, then only have lost the cost of two cable runs, but if I do expand in teh future then have saved myself a whole load of time and effort in the running of them.

May get a PLay 1 and bridge form Amazon next month and see what htey work like. If they are ok, keep - if not, back they go under DSR...hehe
 
I wrote a big reply but it got eaten by the forum...

Basically if the device you buy can't play multiple streams from Spotify et al don't bother with it - imagine listening to my daughters music in the kitchen as spotify only allows a single stream - Sonos wins for ease of use and functionality as a truly multi room audio setup IMO.
 
I was in a similar scenario to you when we moved into our new house but went for a cheaper option however, the quality I still find superb. My PC acts as the media using iTunes airplay, I then have a Pioneer amp in the lounge, a Philips Fidelio speaker in my dining room and one upstairs on the landing (all airplay enabled). From iTunes I can choose which speakers play music, be it just one upstairs or all of them.

I'm going to add one for outside when the weather is nice.

I use iTunes remote on my phone to control my library.

I find the sound superb, the music snobs will of course question the quality but to my ears it's more than capable :)
 
We have a single Sonos Play 1.

At the moment, we just physically move it to other rooms :D

Looking to buy more of them, but we've got other priorities at the moment. Really want to get the Play bar for the living room
 
Yeah, am feeling the pull to SONOS more and more now.

Only other question is will my multi-sorce solution as planned with USB HDD plugged into router work as planned (ie, be able to play different songs from the disk in different rooms)

Edit: did mention in OP but router in question is Asus RT-N66U
 
I use Airplay, Airport Express, Itunes etc with my iPad, while it maybe not as slick as the SONOS it's a damn site cheaper!!
 
Don't have any i devices in the house and don't plan on having any, so Airplay and all that is Apple will not be used.

Have seen it in use at other peoples places and it does appear very slick, but am not a fan of the over-controlling nature of Apple...very good designs and shiny (if a might overpriced and underspecced) products though
 
Shelter, yes that will work, in theory you could probably have 250 sonos systems running from that same hard drive, the read speed would be tiny..

(in response to your USB HDD question)
 
Shelster said:
Don't have any i devices in the house and don't plan on having any, so Airplay and all that is Apple will not be used.
Click to expand...

Sure, understood.

If you already have an iPad, Airport Express etc. this makes it the cheapest option for multiroom music.
 
Sonos.

You really do get what you pay for. Your wife/partner and everyone who visits your house will thank you for it.

My only real gripe is that they haven't yet released a way to control it from a TV either through a SmartTV app or a HDMI output from a Sonos device.
 
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covenantuk said:
Sonos.

You really do get what you pay for. Your wife/partner and everyone who visits your house will thank you for it.

My only real gripe is that they haven't yet released a way to control it from a TV either through a SmartTV app or a HDMI output from a Sonos device.
Click to expand...

Seems to sway me more and more
 
I wanna setup somethinglike thistoo:

Asus RT-N66U is my router with Tomato. Now my plan was mount a drive with music like:

/media/user1/mp3
/media/user1/flac
/media/user1/mp3
/media/user1/flac

Now on mymain pc i have songs which Iadd to the music collection but also I wanna tag everything and stick to a single program like mediamonkey. My sister has itunes and songsare everywhere - she has a laptop,android and ipod so I was gunna extract everything off the iPod and get all her music together then stick it on the routers hdd then tag it and sync it to her samsung gal S3 and/or iPod (iPod touch) using media monkey too?

iPod orS3? IMO S3 and keepS3 for her bedroom like dock it. Now we don't really have decen't speakers or anything,basic hifi that takes ipod via dock or usb - I've wharferdale v9.1and dm39 receiver (broke atm) but also Logitech 5500 for my rom and I have 2 other sets of 5500's and tought one inthe living roomwith new tv and other in loft (sisters room)

I can't help looking at them sqeexebox's - full of apps, any alts?even 0speaker. Most ofuse have Android but one sis has an iphone (no android device either) and got an ipad.
 
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