Considering best multi-room system - advice would be appreciated:)

[Michael T]

First post for me here

I'm finally getting around to mapping out an inside/outside 3-Zone iTunes fed (airplay) system - & am looking for advice, insight or current threads to assist on a few key choices.

A bit about me - I'm certainly no audiophile but really appreciate good sound & like to hear (and feel) the full range of the music. I know the term "good" is very subjective - so as an example I listened to a pair of Audio-Engine A5+ speakers the other day & thought they sounded pretty good, at least good enough for my purposes... (although I did notice the mids were a bit weak). The A5+ were being fed by an AIFF in iTunes (there was some kind of DAC in use as well).

I'd like to keep the sound quality within the realm of that set up (if not a bit better).

The system I'd like to build is for general entertainment & daily life... both my wife and I will be using it. It's not uncommon that a dinner will evolve into a drunken dance-party where the volume slowly creeps ups until I usually have to dial it back a notch. We listen to all sorts of music ranging from indie-rock, jazz, classical, hiphop, rock & roll, folk and grunge... you name it (so I'd like the system to be capable of handling whatever we're in the mood for (at least within reason).

I'm leaning towards a "headless" Mac-Mini operating as the iTunes server but am not sure whether to go with powered speakers that can plug directly into the various airport express base stations or if I should use a receiver/ amp to power passive speakers.

Also - I'd like to keep the speakers mostly hidden (or up and out of the way) - so I'd like to stay in the small bookshelf or cube/orb type speakers category (so I'd need to consider a sub as well).

I'm not interested in spending a small fortune and am probably going to build the system one zone at a time. So one of my goals is to keep the price on the individual components down... by the way I am not at all opposed to picking up well maintained gear via craigslist or ebay.


Concerns / Questions

1. Powered Speakers vs. Passive ? Any particular models?
2. DAC at each airport ? Models?
3. Subwoofer (if needed) how many zones can it service?
4. If I go with passive speakers I'll need to buy and amp/receiver.

Thanks in advance!

Michael

 

[bikemig]

Michael: I have a whole house system wireless set up that is based on both apple products and squeezebox (which unfortunately is no longer being produced); they're fun to set up but there are a lot of variables to consider. I'm listening to a pair of audioengine A5+ right now being fed through an HRT music streamer II listening to Pandora streaming through my computer and yeah they sound pretty good

One thing that would be helpful is how many rooms are you thinking about and what is your budget? I built mine up slowly over time.

Airplay is a fairly straightforward way to build up a system like the one you describe. Sonos is a (more expensive) alternative. For each room, you can either have a device that does airplay natively or you can add an airport express or apple tv to add airplay functionality. The dac built into the AE express is, frankly, not all that great so a dac is useful but you have a lot of choices between a stand alone dac, an av receiver, or a stereo receiver with digital inputs. You'll get the most bang for the buck by relying on an av receiver since that is a competitive segment of the market. There are some good stereo receivers with digital inputs as well.

A headless mac mini is easy to set up and it makes a great music server. I am not running mine currently headless as I use it as a video streamer for my home theater as well as a music server. You can use powered speakers if you like but it is really easy to connect the mac mini to an AV receiver using a mini toslink to toslink cable (that's how I have mine set up). My sig line has a few different ways you can set this up.

Two things to keep in mind. First, rip your music right the first time because you won't like doing it a second time. If you are going to rely on apple devices, rip your music in apple lossless using error correction. Second, if you are going to rely on airplay, you are probably going to want to pick up this software from rogue amoeba: Rogue Amoeba | Airfoil | Select Your Operating System. That way you can play any audio (i.e., Pandora, MOG, Spotify, whatever) and not just what plays through iTunes.

Edit: btw, if you want to rely on powered monitors, I'd take a look (and find a way to listen) to Kanto products as they provide digital inputs at a pretty reasonable price. All you have to do is add an AE express and you're good to go: http://www.kantospeakers.com/. The Yaro looks like a pretty good deal with digital inputs, sub out and headphone jack for $299: http://www.kantospeakers.com/collections/yaro/products/yaro