Recommedations for multi-room shop audio system

[Devious]

Hi,

I need some audio equipment to play in 3 rooms in our shop. It generally going to just play relaxing aromatherapy music, the same in all rooms.
Ideally 3 sets of stereo speakers, from an amp which can play from a USB stick and possibly bluetooth/Wi-fi from a phone.

Having more than 2 sets of stereo speakers seems to limit Amp choices, and I have read multi wiring speakers to outputs isnt a good idea as can overload the amp, though the music only needs to be played queitish in 2 of the rooms.

What options are there? Im not looking to spend a fortune and happy to buy second hand. The speakers dont seem to be hard to find its what amp and setup to have.

Cheers

 

[hornetstinger]

How about t amps about £30 each.

 

[Daaaavvveee]

Sounds the ideal setup for Sonos?

 

[hornetstinger]

Sounds the ideal setup for Sonos?

Way to expensive.t amp £30 and some kind of media player £40

 

[lucid]

The issue isn't the amp and any speakers; it's how you get the signal to each room and play the various media sources. It has to be simple. I know that the T-amp solution itself is simple enough, but the media-player bit might not be, not for all the staff delivering the aromatherapy service.

This hasn't been discussed yet, but there's also the questions about music licensing in commercial premises, and also appropriate music choices.

You see, most businesses are image conscious. They're building and maintaining a brand. Everything that the customer experiences either adds to or takes away from the brand. Since the brand experience feeds directly into the customer's perception of the brand value, and that in-turn feeds in to price expectation and repeat custom and word-of-mouth recommendation, the controlling the business image becomes a core activity of massive importance. Giving the therapists the means- and the opportunity to go 'off-piste' so to speak with music choices has to be considered very carefully.

Things to consider would be whether their choice of music reflects the businesses core values; are there issues with explicit lyrics; are they streaming internet radio that might be advertising your competitors?

Even if you keep control of the music you still have to consider lyrics if it's not just instrumental, and how often tracks will be repeated, and who will manage the playlists.


Music Licencing generally falls in to one of two categories. The most expensive option is royalty-free music. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but the music is only free-to-use after it has been purchased. Accessing the music can be done either by track-by-track purchases (typically £35 / $40 per track) or by signing up to a managed music library service for around £100 per month per licence. For that you get the equivalent of Spotify for royalty-free music but with playlists curated by the service provider. Their library size is typically 30,000 - 60,000 songs, and there's a constant churn of new material coming through.

By contrast, a PPL licence is much cheaper. For a salon with up to 10 chairs/beds the cost is around £150 per year. That's a shade over £10 per month, and for that you'll be able to play any music covered under the PPL rights agreement. In effect, that's most of the readily available music released in Britain; so if you can buy it, stream it or listen to it from a UK source then you should be covered.


For playing the music, Sonos isn't a bad shout.

You don't really need stereo. Something along the lines of the Play range of speakers will convert stereo to mono for replay. They have a volume +/- button on the top so that individual therapists can tailor the sound level to suit them. Hook up the devices with Ethernet cable to keep the system secure from casual misuse. Hook up either a NAS drive for ripped content stored locally, or have the speakers play streamed music play lists. Control the whole system from any Android or Apple phone or table, or use the soft player console running from a Windows PC or Mac.

Sonos Play:1 speakers are £140 a piece. Other than an Ethernet cable and a power socket, there's not much to the physical installation. The more advance Sonos One is the same size and performance but adds Alexa voice control. They're £180.


All licencing prices are plus VAT.

 

[Devious]

Thanks for your replies.

Ive never heard of t.amps before, what is different about them compared to other amps and what makes them suitable for 6 speakers or more. Do you have a model reference for me to look at aroudn the £30 mark as most on google seem expensive.

Regarding installtion, we are having the shop fitted out at the moment so having wired speakers isnt an issue so doesnt have to be bluetooth speakers. I did look at the Sonos play as an easy option but looking for something cheaper as it isnt going to be playing loud/pop music.

There will be 2 sperate rooms and require speakers in the waiting area.

Regarding music licencing. The music will be a handful of relaxing songs of thai origin repeatadly played from a USB stick. What would be the licencing rules of this?

 

[hornetstinger]

T amps are ideal as they are cheap, low power, small units the size of a couple of cigarette boxes, you don't need massive amounts of power

 

[lucid]

Thanks for your replies.

Ive never heard of t.amps before, what is different about them compared to other amps and what makes them suitable for 6 speakers or more. Do you have a model reference for me to look at aroudn the £30 mark as most on google seem expensive.

Regarding installtion, we are having the shop fitted out at the moment so having wired speakers isnt an issue so doesnt have to be bluetooth speakers. I did look at the Sonos play as an easy option but looking for something cheaper as it isnt going to be playing loud/pop music.

There will be 2 sperate rooms and require speakers in the waiting area.

Regarding music licencing. The music will be a handful of relaxing songs of thai origin repeatadly played from a USB stick. What would be the licencing rules of this?

T-amps are small but also low-powered. That's one of the reasons why they can be cheap. They don't have much power before they start to distort. They're not suitable for driving multiple sets of speakers. What @hornetstinger is suggesting is one T-amp per room / area. In your case that means three amps, and of course 3x the cost you might be thinking.

Being low-powered, these amps are sensitive to what speakers you hang off the end and also to the power losses in speaker cable as it transports the energy from the amp to the speaker. Where cable is cheap and thin then it will lose more power than something more expensive but thicker. This is simple physics. Comparing two pure copper cables, thicker wins. When the power reaches the speaker, you're interested then in how much it can convert to sound.

We talk about speaker sensitivity in decibels (dB) per Watt per meter. All you really need to know is the higher the number than the better the speaker is at turning electrical watts in to sound. Budget speakers aren't as good as more expensive ones, so they place more demands on the amp. The sorts of budget speakers you'll see for in-ceiling use often won't quote a dB/W/m figure for sensitivity because the manufacturer knows that their number is very poor. IOW, you're buying cheap because you're buying rubbish. A good figure for sensitivity is something in the range of 88-92 dB/W/m.

The ideal set-up for a T-amp is on a shelf or table-top, flanked by a pair of high-efficiency bookshelf speakers. I wouldn't choose T-amps to drive low-efficiency speakers on the end of long speaker cables.

We haven't even talked about the sound quality of these speakers yet.

Next: Fire safety.

Whenever a ceiling speaker is installed or being planned, as an installer I always have to remind people that they're cutting holes in the part of the room where flames spread to first. Your ceilings are the things that slow down the spread of smoke and flames. Cutting holes in them compromises that. Where the space above the speaker adjoins another inhabited room, then UK building regulations require that the speaker is fitted with a smoke hood. This is to restore the basic minimum fire rating of the ceiling.

Smoke hoods are made from a material that shrinks down to form a seal around the speaker when exposed to heat. You're going to spend £40 per speaker on smoke hoods to meet building regs and avoid invalidating your insurance.

By this stage you should have mentally totted up that a T-amp plus some kind of media streamer plus a pair of ceiling speakers plus cables plus smoke hoods per room comes to way-more than the cost of a Sonos Play:1.


If you haven't seen one in the flesh, the Sonos Play:1 are bigger than you expect. They produce a decent amount of bass for their size and they sound good. They also play in sync. This means as your clients move from reception to the treatment rooms they're not going to hear that strange echo effect that you get when two or more devices are playing the same music but out of time with each other.



Music licensing: I'm not an expert on publishing rights. You'll have to pursue this with the music publisher. All I know is what's needed to stop my commercial customers ending up in hot water.

This bar in London got fined £19,000. That's an exceptional amount, but it does give you the knowledge that this law has teeth. Do you really want to risk it for the sake of £150 per year?

https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk...n-warning-for-playing-music-without-a-licence

 

[hornetstinger]

I doubt you'll want ear splitting nightclub levels, it's just background, so I think several 20w amps will be fine, also they're so small you can install them close to each stereo pair, if you use a regular multi channel amp that means routing cable from the central point (ie office) to each room

 

[Devious]

Ok I have a few options available.

Zone amplifier with multiple outputs (i.e Adastra RM240SB) + 3 pairs of speakers
This seems to be for the purpose of multiple rooms but I don't understand how the speakers screw terminals work for stereo speakers.

3 x Sonos Play 1 + Bluetooth out media player/USB.
Seems a flexible option. Do you have any examples of a cheapish dedicated unit for transmitting the Bluetooth stream to 3 channels? It needs an option to be able to play from a USB stick.

3 x t-class amps with USB or ability to receive Bluetooth or wired from a suitable media player/amp.
I have now found some cheapish t-amps. Again what source/player would you recommend to feed them if using a single source?

Cheers

 

[lucid]

Zone amplifier with multiple outputs (i.e Adastra RM240SB) + 3 pairs of speakers
This seems to be for the purpose of multiple rooms but I don't understand how the speakers screw terminals work for stereo speakers.

It's not a stereo amp. It sums everything to mono. This is a 100V Line amplifier for 4 zones, plus there's a local speaker mono output on 8 Ohm.

100V line is what has been used for decades to send music around factories, warehouses, offices and large shops/supermarkets. Trying to do this with 8 Ohm speakers on long cable runs just doesn't work. The signal loses too much power over distance. (By "long cables" I mean anything up to a couple of hundred metres, but can be longer.) This is because at low Ohms and low Volts the only way to carry a decent amount of power is at high current. The problem with high current is the resistance of the long copper cables.

100 Volt Line amps overcome the current issue by raising the voltage so that less current is required for the same amount of power delivery. (Ohm's Law, Power Equations, basic physics). Each speaker uses a small transformer to convert the 100V back down to the voltage range suitable for an 8 Ohm speaker.

With the 100V Line amp you'll need 100V Line speakers, each with the integrated transformer. You can string several speakers together on each of the amps zone outputs; you just have to make sure not to exceed 80% of the amp's total wattage figure.

Ok I have a few options available.

3 x Sonos Play 1 + Bluetooth out media player/USB.
Seems a flexible option. Do you have any examples of a cheap dedicated unit for sending out the Bluetooth stream? It needs an option to be able to play from a USB stick.

Sonos is a Wi-Fi/Ethernet based multiroom system. It doesn't support Bluetooth.

3 x t-class amps with USB or ability to receive Bluetooth or wired from a suitable media player/amp.
I have now found some cheapish t-amps. Again what source/player would you recommend to feed them if using a single source?

Cheers

If you go for the T-amp solution (and I wouldn't recommend it), then you don't need another amp at the source end. Just go for a media player and a way to split the signals to feed the three T-amps.

 

[lucid]

I doubt you'll want ear splitting nightclub levels, it's just background, so I think several 20w amps will be fine,

Sorry, but if you think you're going to get anywhere near the quoted 20W out of those little T-amps then I have some magic beans to sell you. There's a bench test videos on Ebay where the wattage has been measured in to basic 8 Ohm, 4 Ohm and 2 Ohm loads. The result at 8 Ohm was 5.6 watts. LINK: https://youtu.be/7BQ2W9M4NUo

You have to also remember that a resistor is a far kinder load to an amp than a speaker because it's a static load. The resistance of a speaker varies with frequency and phase. There are also inductive and capacitive elements which add their own problems too. A speaker is a dynamic load, and so the amp could end up putting out far less power than even the measly 5W in the video.

if you use a regular multi channel amp that means routing cable from the central point (ie office) to each room

There isn't the budget to use a proper multichannel amp.

If you're thinking about an AV receiver in 5ch stereo mode then that's not a practical solution either.

 

[Devious]

Thanks for your comemnts Lucis but i'm non the wiser.

It's not a stereo amp. It sums everything to mono. This is a 100V Line amplifier for 4 zones, plus there's a local speaker mono output on 8 Ohm.

100V line is what has been used for decades to send music around factories, warehouses, offices and large shops/supermarkets. Trying to do this with 8 Ohm speakers on long cable runs just doesn't work. The signal loses too much power over distance. (By "long cables" I mean anything up to a couple of hundred metres, but can be longer.) This is because at low Ohms and low Volts the only way to carry a decent amount of power is at high current. The problem with high current is the resistance of the long copper cables.

100 Volt Line amps overcome the current issue by raising the voltage so that less current is required for the same amount of power delivery. (Ohm's Law, Power Equations, basic physics). Each speaker uses a small transformer to convert the 100V back down to the voltage range suitable for an 8 Ohm speaker.

With the 100V Line amp you'll need 100V Line speakers, each with the integrated transformer. You can string several speakers together on each of the amps zone outputs; you just have to make sure not to exceed 80% of the amp's total wattage figure.

The shop is about 30 foot max so would it be suitable with this and 8 Ohm speakers??

Sonos is a Wi-Fi/Ethernet based multiroom system. It doesn't support Bluetooth.

Yes, i forgot it was wi-fi. Si, its going to need a reasonabley priced wifi media player then and a broadband connection/Wi-fi network on top so its looking expensive now but probably the best sounding.

If you go for the T-amp solution (and I wouldn't recommend it), then you don't need another amp at the source end. Just go for a media player and a way to split the signals to feed the three T-amps.

Can you give an example a media player that can play from USB to feed these 3 x T-amps? Icant seem to find anything suitable.

Sorry, but if you think you're going to get anywhere near the quoted 20W out of those little T-amps then I have some magic beans to sell you. There's a bench test videos on Ebay where the wattage has been measured in to basic 8 Ohm, 4 Ohm and 2 Ohm loads. The result at 8 Ohm was 5.6 watts. LINK: https://youtu.be/7BQ2W9M4NUo

You have to also remember that a resistor is a far kinder load to an amp than a speaker because it's a static load. The resistance of a speaker varies with frequency and phase. There are also inductive and capacitive elements which add their own problems too. A speaker is a dynamic load, and so the amp could end up putting out far less power than even the measly 5W in the video.

THe music wil only be quiet and never loud, so will that be ok?

There isn't the budget to use a proper multichannel amp.

If you're thinking about an AV receiver in 5ch stereo mode then that's not a practical solution either.

IVe seen these kits on the 'bay' with 50m of wiring which seem to cater for shops with 3 zones. Would they be OK? They seem to be using splitters though for one of the channels.

 

[lucid]

Thanks for your comemnts Lucis but i'm non the wiser.

LOL

Look at it this way then; you want to achieve something in your business but realise you're not an expert, so very wisely you've started to seek advice. Now ask yourself who here sounds like they have more real-world experience of doing exactly what you want to achieve?

There are sayings that we use in business and in life that at first might sound trite, but the longer you're in business the more you realise they have truth in them.

"Do it once, do it right."

"You get what you pay for."

"Buy cheap, buy twice."

In business I have found that there's very little point in spending more than I have to, but at the same time it's vitally important to spend enough to get the job done right the first time.

The shop is about 30 foot max so would it be suitable with this and 8 Ohm speakers??

Yes, but not with the Adastra amp.

Yes, i forgot it was wi-fi. Si, its going to need a reasonabley priced wifi media player then and a broadband connection/Wi-fi network on top so its looking expensive now but probably the best sounding.

Not at all. You don't need a live internet connection to run some Sonos gear. All you need is a router to act as something to connect the Ethernet cables to and to provide IP addresses, and then the shop's PC to run the control and media player software.

Can you give an example a media player that can play from USB to feed these 3 x T-amps? Icant seem to find anything suitable.

Sorry, but no. It's a bad solution. If @hornetstinger wants to recommend something then let him go ahead.

I've seen these kits on the 'bay' with 50m of wiring which seem to cater for shops with 3 zones. Would they be OK? They seem to be using splitters though for one of the channels.

Yeah, it's cheap junk. "You get what you pay for."

 

[Devious]

Yes, but not with the Adastra amp.

Can you recommend an Amp?

Not at all. You don't need a live internet connection to run some Sonos gear. All you need is a router to act as something to connect the Ethernet cables to and to provide IP addresses, and then the shop's PC to run the control and media player software.

We wont have a PC in the shop so im scratching my head finding anything to play the music from a USB stick.
I know you could use an old phone but would prefer some kind of dedicated music player box with a USB port that can transmit to wifi/Bluetooth speakers. There much be something out there?

Yeah, it's cheap junk. "You get what you pay for."

Thought as much

 

[lucid]

"(I) would prefer some kind of dedicated music player box with a USB port that can transmit to wifi/Bluetooth speakers. There much be something out there?"

There may well be. The sticking points though are the money you think it should cost, and wanting to Bluetooth to more than two speakers, and not having Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and wanting all this to run as a standalone system.

The closest you're going to get is something like the Adastra amp and some 100V Line speakers. In fact, with 100V Line and just one source then you don't need zones at all.