Multi-Room Audio - SONOS, Russound, Nuvo or Other

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Multi-Room Audio - SONOS, Russound, Nuvo or Other - Lets go crazy???

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#604968 4-Apr-2012 11:09

perplu: you don't get any return on the built-in speakers when you sell a house

Sometimes it's quite a negative, in that you can't reconfigure a lounge room etc once the TV is mounted and speakers are installed.

You may want to consider a way to dock with ipods etc too, so people who have their own music devices can use them in their room, rather than select from your music storage. Long term they'd just add their music to yours though I guess.

borgia

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Master Geek

#605129 4-Apr-2012 15:35

i went through this proscess recently.I ended up buying a stack of apple tv's, connected then to an amp for each zone and use itunes and the remote app. Works brilliantly. Best part is i used a series of old but good quality amps I had collected over the years, just bough D/A optical coverters. An old pre hdmi home theatre amp will do this without the a/d converter.

ivan

McCrazy

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#605142 4-Apr-2012 15:51

Hi Ivan, This would leave you with an all Apple system (no problem there) that would only play the one source (your Apple computer) to either one or all of your zones. You would have to have your computer on and you wouldn't be able to play different songs in different zones....am I correct? I'm a little clueless about the Apple TV and it's abilities standard or hacked.

perplu

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#605173 4-Apr-2012 16:47

T Airfoil software allows you to play just about any type of music file from just about any source non-apple included.

Have a search on these two phrases for more details:

Use rogue amoeba airfoil with AirPlay Speakers

How I Built A Wireless Multiroom Sound System airfoil

Dunnersfella

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#605328 4-Apr-2012 21:31

The question is...
Do you ever think you'll need to play more than one track from your music library at a time?
Sure, you may play TV in the home theatre room and music in another - but that'd be it, right?

McCrazy

31 posts

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#605453 5-Apr-2012 08:21

We would definitely be playing more than one song/source at a time. Everyday. Easy example for myself: Gym(Rock) and Kitchen(Radio). I'm also pulling away from having the home theatre room zoned (initially) as, realistically, this area will not require music to be zone often. We currently leave the iMac on 24/7, but I'd really like to stop doing that. Hence have a NAS based music library so the computer doesn't need to be switched on - or the minuscule effort of walking over and turning it on.

Dunnersfella

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#605482 5-Apr-2012 08:44

Having an iMac turned on 24/7 does strike me as overkill...
Why not invest in a MacMini, leave it running as a headless server?
There's A LOT of options, which, ultimately would be the main issues.

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borgia

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Master Geek

#605566 5-Apr-2012 10:31

If you have an I-device you can AirPlay to any apple tv. For example in the gym you can stream the playlist from your iPad to that zone appletv. I use my iPad in the kitchen to AirPlay the radio station (zm) from thier app. I agree it is not perfect, you need to have the content on the airplay device but most people have a large portion of thier content on thier portable device. Of course your whole iTunes is available to one or more zones from iTunes. Also, power consumption from an iMac is not that high, and it's better for the hard drive to keep it spinning.

Cheers ivan

perplu

24 posts

Geek

#605748 5-Apr-2012 15:20

I don't have multiroom setup as yet. But will do one day later this year.

But at the moment I have a Synology disktation NAS (109+) its small, but really effective, my Onkyo receiver has DLNA and can pull music from the NAS, then PC and laptop in the house can access it for music or anything else that's replicated on it.

So that the NAS is not on all the time you can configure it to start up and shut down at any number of times during the day, etc. I have it set to come on about 7am, off 9am then on-off again 5pm 12am, weekends its on all the time. Its connected to a smart powerboard (well a small UPS - mildly overkill I know - but the UPS was only $160.) There are eight power sockets on the smart UPS. Three are controlled by one other. I have the router and cable-modem plugged into the slave sockets and the NAS plugged into the master socket. When the NAS switches off, the master socket details the drop in power and switches off the slave sockets.

There are simple power-boards around that do much the same thing. But being a proud geek i wanted to have a mini UPS - particularly as the NAS has all data on the laptop and PC replicated on it - there's a piece of software that comes with the NAS that effectively allows you to have your own cloud at home. Any change on one device eventually get replicated on the NAS and any other device I have networked to it.

Enjoy - hope this is helpful.

McCrazy

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#606397 7-Apr-2012 14:41

@perplu Your bag of tricks has proved interesting research and reading. Thanks.

As for the SONOS vs Apple vs Squeezebox: I found the below link to be VERY good. It is a must read for people in my situation:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/173905/build_a_wholehome_audio_system.html

I still require advise on Russound and the NuVo systems. Hope to get that this week when I chat with some AV people. I have also managed to source some really well priced SONOS kit as well as Polk Audio speakers. So cheap, I can actually include more zones now.

McCrazy

31 posts

Geek

#610674 17-Apr-2012 17:10

I'm going to go the SONOS route. One of the AV guys said that was my best option. So did a HiFi store salesman. Laughed at all the other stuff...

I have found a website (usatoday.co.nz) that sells SONOS stuff way cheaper than anywhere else. Costs reduced due to cheaper shipping. With a wait.

His kit is USA kit and he says it is Ctick compliant etc.

Anyone had any experience with this website - usatoday.co.nz?

He also does PolkAudio as well. I'll be getting RC80i's for multi-room audio, Altrium 7 for outdoors, and for the HT: 255c-LS (centre), 265-LS (fronts and backs) and the DSW Pro 550wi for the sub.

Looking in to the receiver. Heading towards the ONKYO TX NR515 (if I can find it).

Dunnersfella

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#610686 17-Apr-2012 17:24

How much does shipping cost for the speakers / amps?

CYaBro

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#610702 17-Apr-2012 17:51

McCrazy: I'm going to go the SONOS route. One of the AV guys said that was my best option. So did a HiFi store salesman. Laughed at all the other stuff...

I have found a website (usatoday.co.nz) that sells SONOS stuff way cheaper than anywhere else. Costs reduced due to cheaper shipping. With a wait.

His kit is USA kit and he says it is Ctick compliant etc.

Anyone had any experience with this website - usatoday.co.nz?

He also does PolkAudio as well. I'll be getting RC80i's for multi-room audio, Altrium 7 for outdoors, and for the HT: 255c-LS (centre), 265-LS (fronts and backs) and the DSW Pro 550wi for the sub.

Looking in to the receiver. Heading towards the ONKYO TX NR515 (if I can find it).

I've spoken to the guy at usatoday.co.nz and he seemed genuine.
He is also correct about the c-tick stuff. The official NZ distributor have tried to "scare" people from buying these or importing their own because they say that don't have the c-tick.
I've checked the Sonos.com website and read through all their compliance files and, while they don't specifically have the AUS/NZ c-tick compliance, they do have the required compliances for Europe.
I took these euro compliance documents and sent them to the RSM and they said that "they are acceptable in New Zealand for “Spread Spectrum Devices (2.4GHz)” and “High Performance RLAN (5GHz)"."

Also as you wouldn't be selling them as a retailer it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

The only thing you need to be mindful of is warranty issues. If something goes wrong with a unit you would have to send it back to the USA for repair under warranty. Unless USAtoday.co.nz are now doing warranties???
However with the money you can save from buying through USAToday.co.nz it probably isn't an issue.
Also the Sonos gear is reliable. Just don't get one of their CR200 touchscreen controllers as they do have issues.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

McCrazy

31 posts

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#610723 17-Apr-2012 18:44

Thanks very much! You've just locked it in - the SONOS stuff anyway. Would be funny if you were the usatoday guy!

McCrazy

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#610724 17-Apr-2012 18:47

@Dunnersfella. I believe the shipping is $zero - he has a few tricks. He is not able to get amps though - that was just on my shopping list.

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