Outdoor speakers/audio system

TechMinerUK · 18 Sep 2016 at 15:37

Hi everyone, I've recently been thinking about having a dable in outdoor speakers so I was wondering if there was a system like SONOS which would allow me to have some good outdoor speakers linked in with a system playing music throughout the house. I'm not too bothered about running cables outside and inside however if it can be avoided without a exponential increase in cost that would be preferable

Does anyone have any recommendations/ideas on this or how I could set something like this up and which equipment would be best suited?

sHo0sH · 18 Sep 2016 at 15:45

Sonos connect plus some jbl outdoor speakers? I'm assuming you don't need the amp outside as well?

TechMinerUK · 18 Sep 2016 at 15:49

sHo0sH said:
Sonos connect plus some jbl outdoor speakers? I'm assuming you don't need the amp outside as well?

Nope, the amp can be inside. Just wondering as SONOS is pretty pricey, is it worth it?

Amp34 · 18 Sep 2016 at 17:59

Or Sonos Amp with some standard wired outdoor speakers.

Whether Sonos is worth it depends on exactly what you want and who you talk to. Personally yep it is if you want a decent, easy to control and set up multi room setup (where you will regularly be wanting seamless transitions between which speakers are playing what). If you're more interested in individual rooms and are unlikely to ever have multiple speakers playing the same music then perhaps another cheaper style of system will do (such as chromecast).

Sonos is the more established and integrated of the main multi room audio systems (I.e. The Bose and Samsung systems) at the "reasonable" price point.

james.miller · 18 Sep 2016 at 18:05

Amp34 said:
If you're more interested in individual rooms and are unlikely to ever have multiple speakers playing the same music then perhaps another cheaper style of system will do (such as chromecast)

you can play the same music in every room of the house with chromecast audios if you want.

bsoltan · 18 Sep 2016 at 18:18

Do you already have a system for the music within the house?

TechMinerUK · 18 Sep 2016 at 21:14

bsoltan said:
Do you already have a system for the music within the house?

Nope, I have an amp already and a music server but the system will be from scratch but could use these

james.miller said:
you can play the same music in every room of the house with chromecast audios if you want.

That might work, are they just plug and play?

Amp34 said:
Or Sonos Amp with some standard wired outdoor speakers.
Whether Sonos is worth it depends on exactly what you want and who you talk to. Personally yep it is if you want a decent, easy to control and set up multi room setup (where you will regularly be wanting seamless transitions between which speakers are playing what). If you're more interested in individual rooms and are unlikely to ever have multiple speakers playing the same music then perhaps another cheaper style of system will do (such as chromecast).
Sonos is the more established and integrated of the main multi room audio systems (I.e. The Bose and Samsung systems) at the "reasonable" price point.

It's more for the dining room, conservator and outdoors where I want the music to be in sync but maybe at different audio levels (Apologies if I'm a bit vague)

Amp34 · 18 Sep 2016 at 23:31

james.miller said:
you can play the same music in every room of the house with chromecast audios if you want.

Sonos is more user friendly for that sort of requirement though, which was more the point.

sHo0sH · 19 Sep 2016 at 08:40

I would personally give the Chromecast audios a shot - if you dont like the way it works its a pretty small outlay, and can get most of your money back by selling them on.
I don't know how SONOS works as I have never used it in a multi-room setting, but I am happy with how the multi-room works with the Chromecast audios, and especially that they also have an optical out.
If on a budget then the Chromecast + AMP route is going to save a lot of money, if you get a decent second-hand amp for around £60 + a £25 Chromecast you're looking at a lot less than the £350+ of the cost of the SONOS amp.

james.miller · 19 Sep 2016 at 09:07

Amp34 said:
Sonos is more user friendly for that sort of requirement though, which was more the point.

is it? If you don't want multiple streams to different rooms then the chromecast is as easy as it gets. You create a group or speakers, cast to that group, job done. it's transferring music between groups, or streaming different music to different groups that's really beyond the scope of chromecast audio.

TechMinerUK said:
That might work, are they just plug and play?

It's more for the dining room, conservator and outdoors where I want the music to be in sync but maybe at different audio levels (Apologies if I'm a bit vague)

Indeed, as above, you can create groups of chromecast audios (doesnt work with the standard chromecasts right now) then you have the option to cast to each chromecast individually or to the group. When you set the group up, you can also control the audio delay for each chromecast so you can sync them together. You can set your volumes individually on each amp then the device doing the casting to the group has control over the master volume.

Also, there's no reason why you cant cast different streams to every chromecast, you just need multiple devices and accounts to do so. IE, a google play family sub would allow you to cast music to two or more different chromecasts using two or more devices devices simultaneously.

TechMinerUK · 20 Sep 2016 at 07:48

james.miller said:
is it? If you don't want multiple streams to different rooms then the chromecast is as easy as it gets. You create a group or speakers, cast to that group, job done. it's transferring music between groups, or streaming different music to different groups that's really beyond the scope of chromecast audio.
Indeed, as above, you can create groups of chromecast audios (doesnt work with the standard chromecasts right now) then you have the option to cast to each chromecast individually or to the group. When you set the group up, you can also control the audio delay for each chromecast so you can sync them together. You can set your volumes individually on each amp then the device doing the casting to the group has control over the master volume.
Also, there's no reason why you cant cast different streams to every chromecast, you just need multiple devices and accounts to do so. IE, a google play family sub would allow you to cast music to two or more different chromecasts using two or more devices devices simultaneously.

It sounds like the chrome casts might be pretty decent for what I want to do then, how's the interface for being polished and casting to. Is it buggy or is it relatively polished and functional?

sHo0sH said:
I would personally give the Chromecast audios a shot - if you dont like the way it works its a pretty small outlay, and can get most of your money back by selling them on.
I don't know how SONOS works as I have never used it in a multi-room setting, but I am happy with how the multi-room works with the Chromecast audios, and especially that they also have an optical out.
If on a budget then the Chromecast + AMP route is going to save a lot of money, if you get a decent second-hand amp for around £60 + a £25 Chromecast you're looking at a lot less than the £350+ of the cost of the SONOS amp.

So I'd just pop the chromecasts into wherever there's an amplifier and cast to them? Would there be any audio delay between the different chromecasts?

Amp34 said:
Sonos is more user friendly for that sort of requirement though, which was more the point.

True, there just expensive though but I'm sure they work great

sHo0sH · 20 Sep 2016 at 18:44

Essentially yes, a chromecast will turn each seperate amp and any speakers attached to it into a zone. You can create multiple zones and group different zones together.