During a home renovation last year I added in-ceiling speakers throughout the first floor.
I bought 8 Polk Audio speakers for $45 each plus a couple hundred feet of speaker cable from Monoprice and an 8 channel amplifier off Amazon which takes audio in from my receiver, which supports Chromecast and AirPlay.
I had the opportunity to do this because the ceilings were already ripped down to redo lighting.
The installers asked why I wasn’t going with Sonos and I said why would I replace a device which is literally impossible to become obsolete, requires zero configuration, and is almost impossible to break with a device which will maybe last 5 years if I’m lucky and requires configuration, software updates, and license agreements?
I get it if you have absolutely no way to run the wires then a WiFi system maybe almost makes sense. Otherwise how can you beat hard-wired speakers and a dumb 8-channel amp?
I am just finishing up building a new house, and so many people suggested the same thing (use sonos). Since it was new construction I put in 38 dedicated room speakers all wired to a central distribution system with good old speaker wire. I also ran extra Cat6A to each room for a control pad in the case I want to do system that needs that..and for starting out I'm using an AMP and dist controller from HTD. As Zeroth mentioned above this gives me a great deal of potential future redesigns as things change. Of course I also ran wire and fiber to every room for APs as the future will likely have more LOS wifi in it.
I really like some of the features of Sonos, but when doing 38 speakers and 20+ zones the cost is pretty high.
I am curious to know what it’s the point to have this kind of system?
I can imagine you would want to play the same music through the house when you have a big party. Other than that I don’t see much of need. You can simply have a sound system in each room so each family member can its own music , or carry a movable device with you.
If you've designed the wiring correctly this can be done at the central junction, isolating the that room (or rooms). then, when you setup that sound system in the room you already have the speakers built in. just plug into the port on the wall :D I've seen this kind of setup several times, though it was the early 2000's, before the massive proliferation of wifi audio.
note: one of the reasons i saw a lot of this was the company i worked for acquired a structured wiring company (system in a box) that did lots of home/office AV work
For the wiring path, I did exactly that. In each room the speakers in the wall/ceiling route first to a junction box in the wall, then from there to a central location. That allows central control, or if needed local to room control and use.
The only additional cost was the slight increase in wire length due to the minor path diversion.
I guess it depends on whether you really like music. I find it very nice to just open up the Sonos app and I can play whatever I want wherever I want- and can even play different things in different rooms.
Its not just a holiday thing, its a friday/saturday night thing, or a Saturday/Sunday day thing, or a work from home thing, if I want some instrumental stuff, and its also going outside.
I had a receiver in my old place in my living room, and we were gifted a sonos:1, and the sheer convenience of sonos made us not use our expensive home theater set up in lieu of the $199 bookshelf speaker- and it sounded pretty darn good as well. It integrates with my music library, Pandora, sonos, and a bunch of other stuff I don't use.
I now have Sonos amps that connect to speakers in the ceiling. I am not quite as F'ed as others, but those amps are $600 a piece to upgrade, and I have 6 in the house. I really enjoy it, and its better and cheaper than a receiver in each room, and sounds great. Another benefit to Sonos is that its hidden away- the speakers are in the walls, the amps run down to a central cabinet, and in a townhouse that is not small, but still every sq ft counts, this is a big win.
It may not be for you, but I really enjoy it. This was not a pleasant email to read- especially because I don't really want anything more out of the system, particularly the amps- they need to accept a stream and play it, that's it. I bet this has to do with alexa/google assistant/siri integration that is being forced down our throats in all new devices.
Indeed I thought a lot about that while working on the zoning. The HTD system by default can do 12 zones (with as many speakers as you want). I suspect it would be rare to have more than 2 or 3 different sources across all of those zones, but it would be common to only want a few specific rooms have sound playing.
The idea of a movable source device makes sense, and I suspect a very common use pattern will be playing something over airplay/airplay2 from a iphone. The zone splitting just makes it possible to have more granular control over where that sounds is going.
I debated a lot about rather to install speakers at all, but I do want to be able to have some housewide paging/notification, and I would rather have each room have stereo speakers in the ceiling ( with a corresponding sub for some locations) then rely on a desk or table held speaker.
Also, the cost of doing in wall is pretty cheap now if you are building new.
Keep in mind it is possible in 3 years I figure out I did it all wrong, but that is the fun of home building. ;)
My home is very much smaller, but I have synchronised playback throughout (through the Apple ecosystem). Living in a condominium, I can listen to my music, audiobook, or podcast everywhere without having to play anything loud anywhere.
Congratulations on finishing your new home. And judging by the timestamps on your first forum post pretty much on/ahead of schedule!
To those who might gloss over the link to the build thread - it’s not to be missed. I’m only part of the way through but will read more after the kids are in bed.
Calling it a “house” doesn’t seen quite sufficient. This is a detailed look at the whole process from plans to excavation to build-out of a veritable fortress.
Here’s just a taste;
> Due to the design of his house, he had to install bedrock pillars. There are 55 pillars in total, and each pillar is a bit over 3 feet in diameter and goes into the ground a bit over 50 feet.
Later on, talking about low voltage design for Cat6 and fiber drops;
> I expect to have a couple of hundred drops in total including for things like cameras, sensors, and the like. I expect there is be somewhere around 10km of wire to pull give or take a few km.
EDIT: Great drone footage of it all as it goes up too. How do you like the DJI Mavic? I was thinking of getting the Mini.
So in this case do you need 1 receiver for every service you want to stream simultaneously? I assume your controller can do on-the-fly zone designations, but how do you control it all from other locations (or is that what you meant about control panels)
Yea, the HTD 'receiver' is seperate from the amps, and it can route one of I think 12 sources to any of the channels (and any mix of them).
For control, there are two options - You can use the app/web page/iphone/table over wireless, and/or you can also use their wall control pads that use a single Cat5 drop back to the central location. For every speaker pair in the house I ran a Cat6A to a wall box in a good place to mount that control pad. That means in every room you have a control pad for that room, but also any control pad can put any source in any zone.
I'm curious to see what I use more.. I suspect I'll end up using the app control more than anything else.. but we will see.
You make a good point, but I have a counterpoint...
My Father-in-law had a house built a couple years ago. The guy that did the A/V used the same setup you are talking about (Denon A/V receiver, multi-zone audio for whole house music, IR blaster for A/V system in a cabinet in the next room, 5+1 surround).
They struggle with that system. It required a dedicated smart remote to turn on and control all the gear. But instead of a Logitech Harmony, he used some other brand that "is easier for installers to program". I had to make YouTube videos to remind myself and my FIL how to operate the system, particularly for less used configurations like playing a DVD or playing music on the deck...
I was pretty shocked, because this was basically the A/V setup I had 20 years ago...
My current setup is: Everything goes to the TV (PS4, Chromecast, soundbar), Soundbar is controlled by the TV remote using CEC (Consumer Electronics Control). Most things are controllable by the TV remote.
CEC allows the TV to tell the soundbar to adjust the volume, the Chromecast to pause or play, though that doesn't seem to work when playing DVDs on the PS4, where we use the PS4 remote. CEC can also tell the TV to change inputs, so all I have to do is start casting to the Chromecast and the TV turns on and switches to the right input, turn the PS4 on and ditto, etc...
Music in the bathroom? That's a Google Home. Music in the garage or back patio? That's a Bluetooth Jambox. Though that comes with it's own issues.
Yes, simple is good. But these days I'd call this sort of CEC setup the simpler option. I appreciate the Receiver option, but I'm reluctant to switch away from this setup. I've been wanting to build some kick ass speakers using my woodworking and electronics skills, but I can't bring myself to introduce an amp/receiver to the mix.
Aside: Does anyone know of a CEC controller for embedding into DIY soundbars? They make some that do amp+bluetooth+aux in, but I haven't found one that does HDMI in with CEC.
My wife complained that my MythTV DVR was too loud in the living room (I have mild hearing loss, so I believe her, but I can't hear the fans myself). So I moved the box into a utility room and replaced it with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (the newest model at the time) running Kodi as a frontend.
Kodi compiled for the RPi can be buggy, and I wouldn't recommend this setup for a novice, but it works well enough.
Anyways, I was surprised to find that Kodi on the RPi supports CEC. I was controlling it with a wireless keyboard for a month before, one day after I switched the input and absent-mindedly pressed a button on the D-pad, the RPi responded to my input. It works really well (until Kodi crashes).
If you haven't tried it, try https://libreelec.tv/, I got a new Pi 4 to replace my old Pi 3B+ that I had been running Kodi directly (or whatever the original form of it is called) on and it came with an SD card with NOOBS on it so I decided to install LibreELEC and give it a shot since that was one of the easy-install options. The UI still isn't great and feels like no one has thought through anything, but it's way better than Kodi was (I have yet to have it pop up full screen in the middle of watching a movie to ask if it can update itself) and I haven't had nearly as many crashes (or any, in fact).
The key piece of equipment in this is what sits in front of the amplifier. If you could "AirPlay" or "ChromeCast" to a room of your choice, it would be significantly better than a whole house Sonos. If only the protocols was open, so you could use an off the shelf computer with enough audio out, then it would be nice.
I use a mix of Chromecast Audio, Chromecast video, and Google Home devices of varying vintage. The Chromecasts are the audio source to a TV and a handful of stereos in different rooms, some with really old gear. The Google things can be grouped across types.
They used to be unreliable, but before I could get annoyed enough to get Sonos gear, Google seems to have fixed the problems. I have whole house audio with relatively little at risk of being EOL'ed, and individually pretty cheap to upgrade if eventually needed.
The key thing is: Audio is not a moving target. My Klipsch speakers are over 40 years old. They are connected to a McIntosh receiver I found literally on the scrap metal pile at the town dump.
This seems to be a more resilient approach than either going 1970's analog with wiring in the walls, or buying a suite of proprietary speakers with audio distribution built in. The expensive bits have an indefinite lifespan. Sonos decided to combine that with microprocessors, NICs and software that, they discover, has to have the lifespan of a PBX or airplane control panel, not a mobile phone.
Not exactly the setup you’re talking about but I use a series of raspberry pi’s each with these great little hifiberry amps and running Volumio software to achieve whole house audio. There’s a plug-in called snapcast that allows for a server that streams audio to all the clients, keeping everything in sync. I control volumes of various rooms/zones through home assistant. Works really well for me.
a couple of years ago, i finally upgraded to a proper home theater system, with everything connected through a yamaha receiver, and i am pleasantly surprised at how well CEC works (given the many complaints i saw online).
since i'd vowed never to pay into the cable cartel, i watch most things via my apple tv. i just have to hit one button on the apple tv remote and the apple tv, receiver and tv come on automatically, and will switch to the right hdmi input (and tv input) if not already set. even if the apple tv is not being used, i can still use the volume buttons on it (easier, since it's radio and not infrared like the receiver remote). it's great!
The remote can be configured for either CEC or IR, see also: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205225#siriappletv. The only problem happens when not playing from the AppleTV and you use the volume buttons. It’ll switch inputs on the TV/receiver to the AppleTV. So it’s no longer an universal volume control, which can confuse family members as they have to remember which input the whole setup is in.
If I am understanding the poster correctly, Apple TV is just the input. The speaker system itself is agnostic to what the input is. There is no ecosystem for the audio, as they're all 'dumb' speakers connected to a receiver.
Yes, except (presumably) they are using Airplay to the AppleTV for music (which locks out non-Apple products).
The Sonos equivalent is something like the Sonos beam connected to the TV via CEC. AppleTV v2 is now obsolete and I think was sold until 2015, so that's pretty much the same as the Sonos policy.
But it's a fair point - for simple setups this can work fine.
Recent Yamahas are integrated into googles ecosystem too. To me the point is that the speakers are separable from whatever client you want to use. If it’s 5 years from now and you need new support for driving the speakers, you replace that component. You don’t have to throw the speakers away to stay current.
My Onkyo has Spotify streaming support built into the amp. It's dreadful though - just about unusable because the UX and setup is so bad.
Is the Yamaha experience better?
(Also, the Yamaha MusicCast speakers are exactly the same as Sonos in that they are software dependant, and pre-2015 ones don't get the update to AirPlay2[1]. Not clear if you are talking about this or the amps though)
Ack yeah this landscape is too complicated, i was speaking about the amps. I picked up a 2019 model Yamaha receiver and it works really well for AirPlay, I’ve only used it a little bit for Spotify Connect and it seemed to work fine but I just didn’t use it enough to recommend up or down. The receiver doesn’t have to be in an “on” state, if it’s off then AirPlay/Spotify will turn on components and start playing. It’s been really low-fussiness, which I was kinda surprised by.
musiccast speakers are reputed to work well, but they're a little pricey. currently, only the apple tv has an internet connection (via ethernet cable into a router, not wifi). i may eventually extend speaker wire into the kitchen to have two independent audio zones off the receiver.
and to confirm the other responders, i have a set of "dumb" polk speakers connected to the receiver. for audio, i'll often just stream to the receiver over bluetooth from my mbp, iphone or ipad (so yes, i'm apple-dependent, but not in the way you meant =)
airplay works well to stream video via apple tv to the receiver (and then to the tv screen).
While non-Apple products are locked-out (or, require the user to flip inputs on the receiver), at least user isn't forced to spend hundreds (or thousands) on speakers that eventually become obsolete. An Apple TV is relatively inexpensive (in the overall scheme of home theater).
Apple Airport Express is obsolete as well but Apple actually bothered to update them to AirPlay 2. I even tried to buy one used so I could have an AirPlay setup for the entire apartment without Sonos or other proprietary speakers.
I have my system centered around a Denon A/V receiver, with a Sony tv (with a single HDMI cable from the Denon being the only cable to it). Everything works more or less perfect, with the ocassional glitch where the a/v and tv no longer talk to each other (I need to reboot the whole system when this happens).
- The tv and cable remote are both able to turn off the off the tv, which will tell the a/v receiver to turn off
- Pressing home on the fire stick causes the tv and a/v to turn on
- The volume on the tv, cable remote, and denon remote all trigger the volume of the denon to change. The tv and cable remotes do not trigger the denon's volume's "speed up how fast it changes" on the volume (I don't like that feature, so it works out well)
Just pressing the button you would expect to work results in the expected action. I imagine adding sound multi-channel would add complexity (it, picking a channel), but that should be orthogonal to the rest of the setup, and be the same level of complexity between wired and not.
What kinds of issues did you run into?
Edit: To be clear, I'm an a/v newbie, I doubt I'd be able to offer any advice. I was just curious what issues you saw.
I too have a Denon A/V receiver, although probably older than the rest of you (an AVR-1913 bought in 2013). I don't know if the later Denons still have this, but try finding out its IP address on your network (assuming you have put it on your LAN), and then go to that address, port 80, in your browser.
Mine has a built-in web server running there that serves up a status and settings site that lets you do most or all of the things you'd normally do via the remote and on-screen menus, which sometimes gets tedious.
The web server is very slow, so it is still tedious, but a "twiddle your thumbs" tediousness as opposed to "way to much remote button pressing to navigate" tediousness.
They also have some kind of much faster network access, probably still through the web server but without all the GUI stuff which is apparently where the slowness is. They've got an app on the iOS [1] and Google stores that uses this.
Did any of you have trouble getting ARC to work? It simply would not work for me, until I finally noticed that the Denon manual very specifically says you have to use a “Standard HDMI cable with Ethernet” or “High Speed HDMI cable with Ethernet” for HDMI. I was using a regular HDMI cable. Switching to one "with Ethernet" made ARC work.
This puzzles me. Everything I've been able to find says that for the version of ARC available in 2013 it should not require a special cable. It should work with any HDMI 1.4 cable. A "with Ethernet" cable should only be required for eARC. I don't think eARC was even in the pipeline in 2013, and didn't start showing up on receivers until 2019.
I've checked some Denon manual for later models, and they also have the explicit "with Ethernet" requirement. What is going on?
ARC (and CEC) is famously temperamental. Even if you have used the correct HDMI port on your TV and receiver, and enabled the functionality both places (keeping in mind that different brands use different terms for these technologies), it may still not work.
I use it between my LG OLED and Denon AVX4300, and it is still a wonder to me why it takes 10-15 seconds upon start-up for sound to make it from TV to receiver.
Oh, that's neat. For those who want to play with this, Denon documents it in the manuals and downloads section of their site. Go here [1], find the page for your receiver, and look for the document with "protocol" in its name.
If they don't have it listed for your receiver, a couple I know have them are AVR-1913 (Rev 8.5.0 of the protocol document) and AVR-X4000 (Rev 10.0.3).
I tried it and it worked.
echo -ne MVUP\\r | nc denon 23
increased the volume by one notch.
The remote app on my phone is able to get a listing showing my favorite stations in the internet radio app of the receiver, and I didn't see offhand how that is done via the telnet interface, so I watched via tcpdump while the app did it, after some difficulty [2].
It turns out that the remote app for my AVR-1913 is not using the telnet interface. It's doing HTTP POST to the receiver's web server. All the ones I saw were to /goform/AppCommand.xml. What it posts is some XML with one or more commands. For example, it posts this periodically to get information:
The response is XML with the root element being <rx>, then one or more <cmd> elements. The number of <cmd> elements in the response seems to be the same as the number in the request, and they contain the response for the corresponding command.
Here's what is coming back for the <tx> shown above (formatted a bit nicer):
[2] I set my switch [3] to mirror the port the receiver is on to my Mac, but was not seeing anything with tcpdump on the Mac. Took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that if you don't explicitly specify the interface to monitor, it monitors them all but not in promiscuous mode, so you only see traffic to/from yourself.
[3] TP-Link SG-108E. I highly recommend this or the SG-105E or others in the family. They are unmanaged switches, but they do support port mirroring, some VLAN features, and some QOS features that you normally have to go to an expensive managed switch for. My 108E (8 port) was only $30. The only thing I don't like about it is that the status lights for the ports are in the back, above the connectors, rather than on the front.
I don’t have really any remotes at all for this setup.
The amp I bought [1] has a volume dial for each channel, one speaker is wired per channel.
I walked around the house one day to normalize the perceived volumes from each speaker. I’ve never touched the volume dial since. I don’t see the point of wiring volume controls in the walls of each room. I can control the AirPlay source volume on my phone.
The A/V receiver in my living room is a 2-zone system with a Zone 2 Preout. So there’s a 25’ RCA cable ($10 - do not waste money on fancy cables) going from the receiver to the amp.
The amp has two “main” inputs which go to all channels, and then each channel can also take its own dedicated RCA input — but I don’t currently use them. Since all the speakers are on the same floor, there’s no point in driving different sources to different speakers at this point.
If my Receiver had pre-outs for each channel of Zone 1 then in theory I could drive two of the living room ceiling speakers as rear/surrounds when watching movies by just wiring up the RCA jacks.
When I AirPlay from any phone in the house to the receiver it just defaults to playing on Zone-2. There’s an app which lets me change the zone that a source plays on, but I never use it.
In theory I could play a movie on the “house” speakers but then it wouldn’t be 7.1 surround; my receiver anyway can’t do 7.1 on the Zone 1 speakers while also doing a basic Stereo downmix over Zone 2. But I have never missed this.
Basically the use case for the ceiling speakers is listening to music during breakfast or dinner. The kids love choosing songs and having little dance parties morning and afternoon. Anyone can start whatever song they want from their phone. Of course sometimes that results in the children trying to override each other, but usually all in good fun.
IMO it’s definitely worth the ~$600 for dumb speakers, dumb amp, and dumb wiring to have absolutely future proof ceiling speakers throughout the house. The same exact system could easily be pumping tunes 30 years from now.
The AirPlay receiver that drives the amp doesn’t count toward the cost because it’s the same home theater receiver you’re going to buy anyway. It’s also the only piece of the puzzle that runs software and hardware (WiFi) that will become obsolete in a relatively short time frame. It does support CEC and it is also the source selector but honestly the only source right now is the AppleTV. All that is really kind of “besides the point” you could say when it comes to the house speakers. Anything could sit in front of it, as long as you can get an analog stereo output from it. It could be a Raspberry Pi even. The only requirement is being able to AirPlay/Chromecast to whatever is providing the RCA source.
It can be a huge mood boost and a great way to start the day before rushing the kids off to school to blast some tunes while cooking pancakes, and with eight 8” woofers the sound is a lot more immersive than a single “smart” speaker could muster.
Even combined with a Logitech harmony remote the Denon user experience remains terrible, the need to turn on devices in a specific order otherwise the a/v gets confused is serious disregard of ux. I wonder if they ever tested their products outside the lab in the wild.
I just went through this as well. I found a used HTD Lync 12 (12-zone multi-channel amp) on craigslist for a steal from a person who never had the time to set it up. I was notified of it about a year after I created the search notification and jumped at it.
This past fall I spent a week crawling around in my attic wiring up every room on the 2nd floor with some JBL 6" speakers, that were also somewhere around $50 per pair. I figured if they weren't good I could very easily upgrade them in the future, but they sound great. I ran the wires to a DIY network cabinet in my basement.
We have two Chromecast Audios hooked into it, so my wife an I can stream simultaneously. We use it daily: Podcasts in the shower, white noise in whatever room the baby is sleeping in, music in whatever room we want, whenever, and the guest room TV is hooked up as an input so we can put the news on and listen anywhere. There are never sync issues, and the quality is absolutely excellent.
Wiring it all was not fun, since this was all done in finished rooms - which meant a lot of drywall patching and a fairly concerned wife. But it was so absolutely worth the time and effort for the system as-is. Also, I'm getting pretty decent at patching drywall.
Obviously, I get the draw for a wireless system. It's significantly easier to set up, and the features are lovely. But I'm glad to know my whole-house-audio will continue to work for many years regardless of what happens to any entity outside of my home. I can upgrade the speakers as needed. I can replace the receiver as needed. In a similar vein, it's mind-blowing how much better wired ethernet performs over wireless, especially in the realm of video streaming.
As for overall cost - I'm just under $1k, but that's because I found the amp for a great price on craigslist, which is pretty rare. If it weren't for that, I probably would have gone with the Monoprice Amp and still fit into that budget. Full price would be significantly more, but not much more than a Sonos system.
However, my chromecast audio stopped working (possibly related to the product sun-setting?), and I was surprised to learn that Apple no longer manufactures the AirPorts. What kind of audio receiver did you use?
I ended up purchasing a "new" AirPort Express on Ebay, but how else does one use AirPlay these days with off the shelf audio equipment? I couldn't find anything helpful via googling.
While you can't easily buy chromecast audio anymore, mine are working just fine (so hopefully not sun-setting!) I have dongles and speakers that support chromecast. Playing right now
My home theater receiver (Denon) supports ChromeCast and AirPlay.
It has an RCA output for “Zone 2” which goes to the whole-house 8 channel amp.
I already had the receiver in my living room for my 7.1 audio setup for watching shows/movies. So it didn’t cost anything to hook up the Zone 2 other than a $10 cable.
I vouched for Cecja’s comment below. If you don’t have a WiFi device which can output analog audio and receive AirPlay, you can actually rig something up using a Raspberry Pi and open source software. Since there’s nothing to configure ever after the initial setup your family shouldn’t have any issues using it - it should “just work”.
If you want to be able to play different streams to different rooms, I think you could even do it with several RPi’s each as their own AirPlay target, and then each wired to different channels of the amp.
It's a more expensive answer, but I run my Apple TV through the HDMI passthrough of my receiver so I can have audio play without the TV actually being on. It's the closest I have come to the Express days. More commonly I just go bluetooth to the receiver as I live in a small apt
I would need 4 of these things to power 8 speakers...
Why pay $649 for 2 channels versus $250 for 8 channels? My amp is in a rack in the basement.
What’s the benefit of having the AirPlay software integrated into the amp? I already have an AirPlay endpoint in my AV receiver. I just run a $10 RCA cable from there to the dumb amp.
I guess I just don’t get the Sonos value proposition.
What’s the benefit of having the AirPlay software integrated into the amp?
Much lower latency so it can sync with video. Much higher audio quality because analog rca and crappy dac is not involved. You can power up to six Sonos in ceiling, in wall or outdoor speakers on one amp
I really considered that approach.. using a port for each zone or speaker set. The only downside is cost if you have a lot of speakers or zones. I did 38 speakers, so if I did 19 ports that would be $8500, and take up a lot of room.
I do like a lot of things about the Sonos software.
We hardwired our Sonoses to speakers when we installed them in 2006 — the whole wireless thing was irrelevant. We got them purely for the convenience of the wireless controller for playing music from the file server in the basement and the occasional internet stream. There wasn’t anything else like that at the time at a reasonable price.
This is an opportunity to revisit that decision. In 2020, what should I replace them with that’s equally convenient (including for visitors), letting you control all the rooms from anywhere on your phone, can handle all the random streaming services, and can still play my library from the basement?
Once you can AirPlay to your amp, you can do everything wrs wants.
Any streaming service on your phone (or guests phone) will just AirPlay to the amp.
To play music off the file server, I’ve heard Roon app is pretty good.
If you want different music per zone, you can just setup multiple Raspberry Pis connected to different inputs on the amp and give them different AirPlay names.
That’s an awful experience. With Sonos it doesn’t matter what kind of connection my phone has to the network, and music won’t stutter or stop depending on where the phone is. I say again, there is nothing that offers the same experience. Good luck supporting a non-techie with an RPi setup
Secret sauce is source control. You can get a matrix switcher and come up with your own controls but smart remotes like URC and Control4 are way more expensive and IMO are less reliable.
Surround speakers need a priority switch if you want matching amp profiles in the home theatre.
I have in ceiling speakers each pair connecting to a sonos amp. Outdoors, in garage, etc. It’s great - for me. I have Play:1s in bathrooms without mics and it can all sync.
Guests can also control it via phone.
What pisses me off:
- Lack of auto firmware updates at night
- Latency with external sources unless you use a sound bar, maybe fixed with port? The connect sucked
The other great thing about your set up is you can add a $15 Alibaba Bluetooth adapter and you can integrate with any audio client. Rather that using the sonos client to control which room something plays in, you can have different bluetooth devices connected to different amps and you select which audio device you want your client to output to.
Personally I think this more convenient and easier to use that proprietary end to end systems
I use Sonos with a traditional hi-fi system via their connect box (now replaced by the way too high priced port). The only reason is that Sonos is the only system in the world that lets me play different Spotify songs in different rooms from 1 spotify account.
I am with you on this 100%. Did the same thing in my home remodel.
Investing in any proprietary hardware universe has proven to be a fools errand. As the standards change, I can still listen to music via any system, service or format.
And better: I get the same functionality as Sonos with a few Yamaha receivers and Spotify and/or Apple Music. Oh and my system offers much much, much better fidelity and infinite upgrade options which is far more important to me as a music junkie and musician.
I have been mentally planning our kitchen extension and adding traditional speakers in to walls/ceilings is by far the better and most sane option. Even if you want to use Sonos, you can buy their amp which allows you turn "dumb" speakers into wireless speakers.
I have the same setup, but I have to nitpick on the life expectancy of a dumb wired system. Rubber parts in speakers are prone to deterioration. They stiffen up and crumble. It's 10-20 years, granted, but there's still a lifetime cap.
This is why its better with open source and open standards. With open source less chance of bricked hardware. Ie with climate change i agree its better with simple long lasting devices.
Just to clarify terminology, my 8-channel amp is a dumb device which takes analog RCA inputs and connects to 8 speakers via banana jacks and speaker wire. This thing weighs like 60 pounds and sits in a rack in the basement out of sight.
The Denon receiver is the HDMI switcher + 7 channel amp + Dolby/DTS decoder + AirPlay endpoint which has Ethernet and WiFi etc. It’s in the living room connected to the TV and all the peripherals. But it has a “Zone 2” output which sends analog 2 channel line out audio to the amp in the basement. There are hard-switches on the amp where I have switched 4 of the speakers to be “Left” and 4 to be “Right” from the line-in.
So I can AirPlay to the receiver (most any new receiver will support this) and it will send that 2-channel audio to Zone 2 out to the basement amp.
IMO the best system is a dumb amp which is not on Ethernet or WiFi or Bluetooth or anything. That makes it totally future-proof. It’s also stupid cheap. $45 per speaker, $30 per channel of amplification.
The receiver in my living room I would assume is going to have to get upgraded every few years because it runs software that I have to touch and needs to support the latest HDMI standards, etc. That’s the device which you can connect to via AirPlay or Chromecast or even Bluetooth.
The Logitech one I have from 4 years ago felt that way. Bluetooth is getting pretty rock solid now though. Even a cheap MPow Bluetooth audio jack for the Car works pretty well.
Yeah, it's probably worth my buying an external Bluetooth receiver to plug into my stereo at this point. My current setup works but it would be easier if I could just broadcast from any of my devices.
> Otherwise how can you beat hard-wired speakers and a dumb 8-channel amp?
Because it saves you running wires around the house and getting an 8-channel amp accessible from one place rather than every phone. I can run wires, but... what's the point?
Even if I did want to run the wires, either the time to do that + required tools/materials, or getting an electrician costs me more than a set of sonos speakers.
The receiver manufacturer has the license agreement. The point is that you can swap out said receiver for whatever supports whatever future protocol obsoletes Chromecast/AirPlay.
> Not many people actually use it as multiroom speakers
Source? This is still my primary use of Sonos, I have 4 of the original Play 1s and I love them as much as I did when I got the first because of the multiroom functionality.
I bought 8 Polk Audio speakers for $45 each plus a couple hundred feet of speaker cable from Monoprice and an 8 channel amplifier off Amazon which takes audio in from my receiver, which supports Chromecast and AirPlay.
I had the opportunity to do this because the ceilings were already ripped down to redo lighting.
The installers asked why I wasn’t going with Sonos and I said why would I replace a device which is literally impossible to become obsolete, requires zero configuration, and is almost impossible to break with a device which will maybe last 5 years if I’m lucky and requires configuration, software updates, and license agreements?
I get it if you have absolutely no way to run the wires then a WiFi system maybe almost makes sense. Otherwise how can you beat hard-wired speakers and a dumb 8-channel amp?