Multi Room audio - change to Sonos?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Multi Room audio - change to Sonos?

davidcole

6031 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#175810 12-Jul-2015 19:13

I've moved into a house that has 3 sets of wired in speakers - in a formal lounge, main lounge and a dining room. These all feed back to a central space where I've hooked in my old yamaha amp using a speaker for the main lounge and parallel connections for the formal and dining rooms.

The speakers are pretty inbuilt and pretty unlikely to be removed. ie half built into the roof/wall See this thread where I replaced the drivers in the dining room: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=34&topicid=174920&page_no=1#1322433

So it's mainly for FM, and I do have a raspberry pi with volumio for spotify/streaming/mp3 playback.

Ideally I'd like a feed in to master bedroom and later outside speakers from that dining room.

The concept of the sonos appeals. But I'd imagine some fairly hefty DIY to rip out the drivers and build a custom mount for a play:3 or play:5 into the inbuilt speaker frame. And add power from somwhere? (An extention dc run with cat 5e to replace the speaker wire?

Or I could get one of those sonos connect amps and a speaker switch for the 3 downstairs rooms, and put the bedroom one as a play3 by itself. Would mean that the 3 downstairs would always be the same source - which doesn't bother me too much, they're all next to each other - and in the main lounge you can turn them off.

Any other solutions? I guess I could ignore the inbuilt speakers, or do as someone suggested use 3 connect:amps - but that's way too spendy.

Previously known as psycik

Home Assistant: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, Home Assistant with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Shelly Humidity and Temperature sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4 4k, ATV4, HDHomeRun Dual
Server Host Plex Server 3x3TB, 4x4TB using MergerFS, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Proxmox Server with 1xW10, 2xUbuntu 22.04 LTS, Backblaze Backups, usenetprime.com fastmail.com Sharesies Trakt.TV Sharesight

reven

3743 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1341733 12-Jul-2015 19:19

personally i would do the speaker switch and a sonos connect/amp, they are about $450-500 on trademe. then I would consider getting another one or 2 in the future if needed.

I'm always on a look out for a sonos play/1/3/5 but theyre never on special, and importing them means paying GST and delivery pretty much swallows what you would save on them. and jb hifi never ever put them on sale :(.

so my current sonos system is a single sonos connect to my lounge surround sound system. open plan, so mostly all I need but would like a play 1/3 i can move around where i need it. wish they had a wireless speaker too, be nice for use when in the spa.

davidcole

6031 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1341735 12-Jul-2015 19:23

reven: personally i would do the speaker switch and a sonos connect/amp, they are about $450-500 on trademe. then I would consider getting another one or 2 in the future if needed.

I'm always on a look out for a sonos play/1/3/5 but theyre never on special, and importing them means paying GST and delivery pretty much swallows what you would save on them. and jb hifi never ever put them on sale :(.

so my current sonos system is a single sonos connect to my lounge surround sound system. open plan, so mostly all I need but would like a play 1/3 i can move around where i need it. wish they had a wireless speaker too, be nice for use when in the spa.

So how well would the sonnon:connect amp - there's a sonos connect as well, which doesn't have teh amp component? Deal with 6 8 ohm speakers? Would it power them as well as my current receiver? Ideally I'd like to drop that from the system.

richms

28168 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1341740 12-Jul-2015 19:28

For my multizoneing on a budget I have bought 3 of the dirt cheap class-T leipi amps off aliexpress, 20ish watts is fine for background music and they are very quiet on the output when not playing, and class T means stuff all power when not playing anything.

They have volume controls, so I just use those on the amps, and feed from the analog zone 2 and 3 from the HT amp. Because stupidity on onkyos part means that you only get analog sources from the zone 2, I have put a optical to RCA converter on the TV and have that feeding back into the TV input on the reciever, so I can set zone 2 or 3 to TV and get the sound from the TV which is usually whatever HDMI source I am playing. That also means the TV delays it to match the picture which the amp doesnt when it gets an analog from the same source as HDMI. Spent stuff all on it, and it gets sound coming out the outdoor speakers etc no worries.

Richard rich.ms

davidcole

6031 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1342001 13-Jul-2015 10:53

richms: For my multizoneing on a budget I have bought 3 of the dirt cheap class-T leipi amps off aliexpress, 20ish watts is fine for background music and they are very quiet on the output when not playing, and class T means stuff all power when not playing anything.

They have volume controls, so I just use those on the amps, and feed from the analog zone 2 and 3 from the HT amp. Because stupidity on onkyos part means that you only get analog sources from the zone 2, I have put a optical to RCA converter on the TV and have that feeding back into the TV input on the reciever, so I can set zone 2 or 3 to TV and get the sound from the TV which is usually whatever HDMI source I am playing. That also means the TV delays it to match the picture which the amp doesnt when it gets an analog from the same source as HDMI. Spent stuff all on it, and it gets sound coming out the outdoor speakers etc no worries.

So you have a HT amp, which has zones, and then you run each zone into one of these smaller amps?

So in my situation, if I got a speaker switch, would it go source (fm radio/streaming source into a D class amp) to a speaker switch, to the Leipi amps to each speaker set?

richms

28168 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1342085 13-Jul-2015 12:26

The amps are line level in. I just use RCA splitters on the zone 2 output to drive 2 of them for outside and the third on the zone 3 output for inside.

No need for speaker switch. Just turn the amps on and off as needed. They have volume controls too but I just set that for the max I want and turn down on the reciever.

The onkyo app is ugly and clunky but gets the job done.

Richard rich.ms

davidcole

6031 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1342086 13-Jul-2015 12:28

richms: The amps are line level in. I just use RCA splitters on the zone 2 output to drive 2 of them for outside and the third on the zone 3 output for inside.

No need for speaker switch. Just turn the amps on and off as needed. They have volume controls too but I just set that for the max I want and turn down on the reciever.

The onkyo app is ugly and clunky but gets the job done.

what output do you use on the onkyo amp?

richms

28168 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1342103 13-Jul-2015 12:47

The zone 2 and 3 RCA outputs. Is the option to use 2 of the inbuilt amps for the zone 2 but with no way to cap the power output we all know how that ends up.

Richard rich.ms