Sonos / wireless solutions

J0hnb0y

J0hnb0y

J0hnb0y

Associate
Joined
25 Oct 2006
Posts
587
Location
London
Hiya guys. I live in a small terraced house in north London. On the ground floor I'd like to be able to have speakers in the kitchen/dining room/living room. Because we are in a terraced house I have to consider the neighbours when it comes to volume so rather than blast music from the living room is prefer to have smaller speakers in the kitchen and dining room and be able to keep the volume down. I'd prefer to be able to mount some small speakers on the wall/ceiling corners rather than have a small hifi/docking station taking up valuable surface space. Can anybody recommend some small satellite-type speakers that I could use? They don't have to be particularly great quality because I don't need a great deal of power, but I won't bother if all I'll get is the equivalent of some £5 PC speakers.

The next question is, how do I got about creating a wifi setup? I'd like to have no wires at all but I'm not sure this is possible! I'm soon to be acquiring a NAS and would like to play music off this. I was looking at the Sonos solution but I think this is going to cost rather more money than I really need to spend.

The living room sound is not so important as I can play music from the WDTV through my amp/5.1

The other rooms though would really benefit from smaller speakers with minimal cables attached to the walls. I'm not about to go hacking the plaster board away because I think I would end up with a terrible mess!

Cheers,

John
 
Using the Sonos you could play the same music in all 3 rooms at the same time in sync, not sure you could do that by employing the WD for the lounge. Also look at the Play3, it can be stood on one end and won't take up much room (it won't be very stereo though ;))

As long as one Sonos device is attached to the wired network then it establishes its own Wifi network linking all the units. Absolute breeze to setup and then controllable via free PC/Mac/Andriod/iOS apps.
 
Wouldn't I have to purchase 3 individual Play 3's? I'm reluctant to do this because the house is small and I could probably hear one Play3 pretty reasonably in the kitchen if the speaker was in the living room with the sound cranked up. I think the neighbours on both sides would hear it too, this is the problem! I'm not fussed about playing music in sync in all rooms. But if I'm in the kitchen I'd like to be able to listen to the kitchen speakers and have the others muted. Docks would be the easiest way but our house is very small and there are 5 of us. Sad thing is I'm not a student. London.......
 
http://www.aqaudio.com/us

These are along the lines of what I'm after but they are more pricey than Sonos and I wonder if you can sync them if I bought 2 sets. I'd rather buy Sonos but am wondering if I can do it for cheaper. It's my understanding that I'd need 2 Play3's to setup the kitchen/dining room. £600 is a lot of money to save the neighbours whingeing as there is very little distance between the kitchen/dining room. 1 wall in fact as they are adjacent
 
You would need one Sonos in each location so it's not a cheap solution. I think the Logitech Squeezbox system does a similar thing.

Those Aqaudio speakers look interesting but more from a portability POV for me.
 
Thanks for your help picnic. I've had a good rummage around on google and not come up with much. I think I'm going to pick up a Play3 and bridge for £230 and just see if Sonos will develop some small wall mounted speakers. I recon some Bluetooth speakers might suffice for the kitchen as a temporary measure. I suppose the advantage of Sonos is that I can always add to it should I move house etc.

Cheers again
 
Get a cheap amp with multi zone speaker outputs like a Technics SUV 300 and run to sets of speakers to kitchen and dining room

Then buy a logitech Bluettoth hifi adaptor for 29.99 or 23 if you look...Plug this is an amp and play your music from your mobile phone

I do this with speakers in my shower...I stream my music from the server to phone and play

Alternively you could play direct from phone but my music collection is over 1.2TB lol so wouldn't fit on my SD card. :p

Alternatively still upload some tracks to Google play and play from the net

Total cost was 20 quid for the amp and 23 for the logitech adaptor

best thing I have done in years love listening to music in the shower
 
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