Need some guidance on home audio.

[paperfist]

I was recently in a home with ceiling speakers in virtually every room including the 2nd floor. They had an iPad controlling everything. It was amazing to hear the home filled with audio.

Since to subscribing to Apple Music a couple of weeks ago I've been bitten by the music bug again and now want to redo my aging home audio equipment.

I know in-ceiling speakers don't produce the best sound, but my ears aren't that much of audiophiles.

So I thinking of putting speakers in 3 rooms on the 1st floor and 2 or 3 on the second floor.

It seems like the receivers I looked at are only good for a couple of channels and only having up to 2 separate sources playing independently. I don't mind having a 2nd setup on the 2nd floor for simplicity's sake as they are also independent living areas anyway. Anyway, how do you achieve driving that many separate speaker pairs?

Is getting a 'LAN' receiver the best choice for tieing into my mp3 music collection?

Is Dolby Atmos something that would help out with in-ceiling speakers? From what I've read it seems to work in the opposite way.

I see for controlling everything there's peel.com.

Thanks!

 

[vi edit]

Honestly, just go a couple pairs of Sonos Play 1's and call it day. If you have a really large space to cover you can move up to a Play 3, but the 1's definitely punch above their weight.

Sonos can pull from a Network share or stream from any of the major music services. They can link up in "party" mode and play the same in each area or you can individually zone them and play something different in each room. It runs through android/ios driven controller apps. It's so much easier than trying to chain up individual speakers, power sources, ect.

 

[crof2003]

I've become a fan of wireless speakers for whole house audio: Something like Sonos. I'd suggest looking into those and see if they may fit your needs.

The biggest pro for me was that you don't have to run wires through the walls and mostly they can be controlled through a phone. The speakers can easily be moved later without rerunning wires, and adding more speakers just means another purchase.

Now, I expect a dedicated system would give better sound, and each speaker needs AC power so you likely won't wall or ceiling mount them. There is also audio syncing that you may need to deal with at first that you may not with a wired system. And a few hundred dollars per speaker can add up quick.

I know you said about apple, so my solution won't work, but for me: I recently used wireless speakers and Chromecast audio devices to create a whole house audio system. About 5 speakers and 5 chromecast audios totaled about $100 - $120 per room.

Anything that can send music to Chromecast audio devices can send music to any individual speaker or group of rooms in my house. If I wanted, I could stream different music to each room independently (although kinda defeats the purpose). Usually I'm streaming Pandora to a group or the entire house.

And it isn't always flawless. Sometimes they just stop playing. Sometimes they skip a song. Sometimes they go rouge and refuse to stop playing even though I'm hitting the pause button. But I'd say about 90% of the time the setup works as it should. I'm a tinkerer, so it was acceptable for me to have a setup that needs some TLC

 

[paperfist]

Thanks guys. I read up on the Sonos and they get good reviews, but I haven't heard them in person yet. I know they aren't that big, but I really wanted to have something 'invisible'. I actually have wires already run in the living room, but I got very side tracked with that project and never hooked up any speakers. Currently the 2nd floor is gutted so I have access to run wires pretty much anywhere on either floor.

I know you said about apple, so my solution won't work, but for me: I recently used wireless speakers and Chromecast audio devices to create a whole house audio system. About 5 speakers and 5 chromecast audios totaled about $100 - $120 per room.

So these speakers are already setup for left and right channels within the unit?

 

[crof2003]

Ooooh... So the wiring is mostly there and is accessable to install in the other parts of the house currently. I'd be very tempted to put the wires in and do a wired audio system instead - or at least have the wiring in place in so you'd have options later.

Unfortunately I have no suggestions for wired units that do what you want, but I bet there are quite a few options.

I'm not familiar with the Sonos, but my Chromecast audios are "stereo".....As in the wireless speaker plays both left and right audio out of their two internal speakers so you don't get the "full surrounding effect" of left on the left side of the room and right on the right.

 

[paperfist]

Ooooh... So the wiring is mostly there and is accessable to install in the other parts of the house currently. I'd be very tempted to put the wires in and do a wired audio system instead - or at least have the wiring in place in so you'd have options later.

Unfortunately I have no suggestions for wired units that do what you want, but I bet there are quite a few options.

I'm not familiar with the Sonos, but my Chromecast audios are "stereo".....As in the wireless speaker plays both left and right audio out of their two internal speakers so you don't get the "full surrounding effect" of left on the left side of the room and right on the right.

Ah sorry I meant Chomecast. How does the wireless work, any cutting out?

 

[simas]

What are you goals? Audio fidelity? the "coolness" of controlling something from 5 inch screen (which would become fairly boring pretty fast)? the joy of not walking five steps to turn on particular device in particular room? regardless of what your goals are, they are valid for you and that is the only one that matters. what is your budget?

 

[paperfist]

What are you goals? Audio fidelity? the "coolness" of controlling something from 5 inch screen (which would become fairly boring pretty fast)? the joy of not walking five steps to turn on particular device in particular room? regardless of what your goals are, they are valid for you and that is the only one that matters. what is your budget?

No not audio fidelity, a little bit of coolness, but mainly I just want to hear 'real' audio in the living room, kitchen and bedroom. The sound coming out of the TVs suck, you can't listen to the 'radio' in any room except the living room.

Not entirely sure what I need in equipment to quantify a budget. I have all the wire, I planned on spending $200 a room for some Polk 70RT speakers. I figured around $600 for a LAN receiver, but I think I need some kind of amp to drive 6 speakers since I don't see many receivers driving more then 4 speakers.

I don't mind moving around to control the receiver, but to control the TV that's hooked up to the receiver and all the source changes I'd want a remote to do that.

 

[simas]

I am not sure what you mean under "LAN receiver" - receiver with ability to play from LAN/SMB share directly? Every receiver from major brand above the 'junk' level should have ability to connect to your network (wired, wifi, or both).

here is my thread earlier , if interested - https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/help-pick-audio-equipment-for-new-house.2493403/
- I subscribe to buy once , cry once philosophy (vs buying cheap and hating it) so my choices may not be yours, I end up picking Denon receivers (AVRX3300W) using one of the fry sales (which they do pretty often), a set of Elac Unifi speakers with ability to run it in 5.1+2 or 7.1 configuration . Denon (and others) have multi-in, multi-out capabilities (you can provide multiple sources and have them also play in various zones if you want to, all at the same time from the same receiver).

My suggestions to you
- start with the budget idea and your upper limit, without it, all of this is mental masturbation. are you willing to spend $2000? $1000? more? less? what is included in that number? if you are not willing to spend more than X, it would heavily influence your choices.
- describe/write down the experience you want to create. in my case, I would primarily be siting on the coach with voice enabled remote interacting with NVidia shield console (which provides the GUI to Plex server for movies/TV series, KODI/SMPC interface for music and my photo collection) and feeds the AVR which in turn feeds the speakers. I don't want to fiddle with tablet that comes with me TV (Vizio), I am not interested in casting things or playing from the cloud. I am not interested in figuring out the gui for Denon AVR to have it play from my Synology LAN , it can do it but why bother with it if I already have and like using Shield ?

So there is many ways to make this work, it is really what you want to see happen and what you are willing to spend.

 

[ericlp]

http://www.parts-express.com/sure-e...source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pla

You could always get an amp like this, the good thing about this, is, say, you like 3 different types of music? So, you could have classic rock playing on the deck, some ambient beats playing in the kitchen, and maybe some jazz playing in the bedroom...

This is a 6 channel X 100Watt Class D, in my opinion better sound than any mass production reciever. Can drive just about ceiling speaker with this. One could either stream music or just have a few small mini music mp3 players with 256gig MP3 Library on them. Or you could get a nice DAC, and hook them all up via a mini PC that could be controlled from a wireless controller keyboard, joystick interface.

I'd probably look for new speakers that give the best for the bang on the low end in bass reproduction if it were me. Bigger mid/low driver and high crisp silk dome driver tweeter. Could be had for about 40-60 bucks a driver from parts express.

Just make a nice enclosure box maybe big enough to stuff in a small raspberry pi with 3 usb dacs if you wanted to stream 3 different inputs. Load up the Media player on the pi, connect a wireless xbox controller for switching stations, sound control, or loading up different libraries and advancing songs or randomly playing sets of libraries to each input.

Could all be done for less than 600 bucks with good speakers included! This would be a great setup that would last a long time and class D chip amps sound great.

Have fun!

 

[ericlp]

http://www.parts-express.com/lepai-...source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pla

I suppose if you didn't like the idea of buying a power supply and wiring stuff up in your own enclosure, you could buy one of these...

See how you like the sound... and if so, just buy 2 more!

Beauty of this is, if wanted to add another pair of speakers to another room, just add another amp! The ultimate upgradeable amp. still could control it with a raspberry pi.... Tho, these are only 20WPC ... so don't expect to shake the house.

Have fun...