Anything new for audio streaming like Sonos and Apple Airplay?

[Kaido]

Problem is that Sonos is very addictive. I find myself wondering where else I can put a Sonos box. They are pricy but at this point in my life, I dont want to dick around with making things work. Every time I turn a Sonos box on, it works.

Hah, yeah. I'm the IT guy at work and everyone always asks me why I have an iPhone instead of a quintuple-core 5" UltraHD Android phone. My response is always...because I turn it on and it just works. It's nice to have an appliance sometimes, instead of a tinker toy 😉

 

[Kaido]

A while back I had a little dock station for my iphone 4 in my bathroom....that i would dock whenever I wanted to play tunes in the bathroom. I upgraded to an iphone 5...and thus rendered my dock stations useless pretty much cause of the different connector. So i had to come up with another solution.

I love the airplay concept therefore decided to use it. Installed an in-ceiling speaker in the bathroom. I ran the speaker wire down my plumbing stack to my storage room in the basement. In my storage room....I have the speaker wire hooked up to a little Lepai T-class amplifier. Then have my apple airport express audio output hooked up to the amp as the audio source. Setup the Airport express to broadcast as 'Bathroom'. Now whenever I play music in my house through my iphone.....i can use Airplay to route it to my 'Bathroom' speaker. It works like a charm and has been flawless.

Of course this takes a bit of work to do the install....but it was worth it....and I will be doing one for my kitchen as well. Only thing that i have not experimented with....is trying to get at all the music on my NAS system hooked up to the network. I have just been content with playing whatever I have for tunes on my phone.....which is good enough for me.

Yeah, that's basically my approach...Reemote + Airport Express + Lepai + Full-range speakers + in-ceiling sub. Still working on the sub design (most of my rooms are not accessible through the attic due to the design) tho 😉

 

[Kaido]

I have a wired up RaspPI with XBMC and Airplay enabled......and it works fine for this purpose. But so does my wireless Airport Express bathroom in ceiling speaker setup.

Have you used more than one Pi simultaneously? The only thing I'm wondering about is sync issues with the delay & all.

The pro is that the Pi is nearly half the cost of the Airport and uses less wattage, the con is that you know Apple will always give you future updates whereas who knows with the Pi (although you're probably safe since you still need compatibility on older devices that may never be updated, like the last Airport Express)...

 

[Kneedragger]

I had the squeezebox and it was a nightmare. It never just worked. Logitech would update the firmware and break something else. Every time I turned it on, Id have to play with it to get sound. They have updated the squeezebox but I dont have any experience with the new model/system. Id be very leary of anything Logitech as IMO they have gone downhill in the past few years (ie. Harmony remotes).

A few months back I bought a Sonos Play 5 and was impressed by the sound and ease of use. I bought another play 5 and made a stereo pair and also bought the sub and the sound is incredible. Its also works every time, never had an issue. I recently got the Sonos Connect:Amp and a pair of the Hsu HB-1's and a VTF-2 sub for my computer room. Also have another Play 3 and Play 5 that I move around the house/garage. I have my Sirius/XM and Pandora accounts that play thru everything along with streaming MP3's from my server.

Problem is that Sonos is very addictive. I find myself wondering where else I can put a Sonos box. They are pricy but at this point in my life, I dont want to dick around with making things work. Every time I turn a Sonos box on, it works.

For a Sonos system don't you need to start with a bridge connected to your network then you can add Play 5 etc? What sucks is I have some nice speakers I would like to use, but you would need to spend at least what $300 on a Sonos device also hook it up?

 

[d4a2n0k]

For a Sonos system don't you need to start with a bridge connected to your network then you can add Play 5 etc? What sucks is I have some nice speakers I would like to use, but you would need to spend at least what $300 on a Sonos device also hook it up?

The bridge is only used if none of the other Sonos boxes are near an ethernet cable. If you bought a Play 5 and plug it into your router with an ethernet cable, the Play 5 can then act as a wireless bridge to connect to other Sonos equipment. If you cannot get an ethernet cable to any of the Sonos boxes, then you must use the bridge to have it connect wirelessly to all the Sonos boxes. The bridge is only $50.00 and they from time to time give it away free with a Play 5 purchase. Thats how I got mine.

If you already have speakers then a Connect: Amp is what you need. If you have speaker and Amp then you just need the Connect.

 

[Kneedragger]

The bridge is only used if none of the other Sonos boxes are near an ethernet cable. If you bought a Play 5 and plug it into your router with an ethernet cable, the Play 5 can then act as a wireless bridge to connect to other Sonos equipment. If you cannot get an ethernet cable to any of the Sonos boxes, then you must use the bridge to have it connect wirelessly to all the Sonos boxes. The bridge is only $50.00 and they from time to time give it away free with a Play 5 purchase. Thats how I got mine.

If you already have speakers then a Connect: Amp is what you need. If you have speaker and Amp then you just need the Connect.

Thanks for the clarification!

 

[WHAALE Player]

At the beginning of August 2013 a new iPad-app was added to the iOS-app-store that allows to overcome some of the "problems" that existed for the Airplay solution so far.

Basically, the app allows to
- stream music directly from the iPad to one or multiple Airplay speakers at the same time - real multirooming sound without the need for an additional Mac or PC (all you need is a WLAN, the iPad and the speakers).
- The app also plays multiple sources on multiple speakers simultaneously.

It is called the
WHAALE Multiroom Player
(https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whaale-multiroom-player/id663776918?mt=8)
and it comes with a neatly designed UI...

Most of the network-related problems can be solved by configuring the WLAN-router/Airport-Express properly (or connecting at least some of the speakers via LAN) - see also http://www.whaale.com/index.php/technical-support/item/41-configuration for the experiences we made during the app development).

Currently, the app only supports playing music from the local iTunes library, but other music sources are planned (internet radio, network streaming, Spotify, ...).

 

[luv2liv]

i see many has success with raspberry pi instead of buying the expensive Sonos.

can someone tell me how fast the raspberry pi boots up? if it turns instantly on like a radio, thats awesome! if it takes more than 1 minute to boot up like a desktop, i rather get the Sonos.

 

[Legios]

I do use an older iphone to stream my entire music library to either my Apple TV or Stereo. I use Google Music to host all my media and then use an app to hit any song I want. G-Music is good enough that when I move new stuff into the location it shows up as streamable on my phone. I like it since if there is an obscure song I may have it as part of my library.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'm still listening to my half dozen or so Squeezeboxes around the house (one SB2, one SB3, two Booms, a Transporter, a Touch and a Radio).

There's currently an open source Squeezebox hardware and software project developing a very high sound quality audio board that will utilize the Wandboard dual/quad and Linux as its underlying engine. Should be available sometime next year and will keep the Squeezebox cult alive.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?97881

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?98544