Sonos vs Musicast

[new2music]

Hey all,

We bought a home a few months ago that has a whole house audio system. It has 11 zones with 22 speakers. The current set up only partially works (one of the amplifiers died) but it was a B&K system with wall controls. I was told that since B&K went out of business the wall controls and system are proprietary so it's best just to replace the components.

I got a quote from a locally company and the guy is suggesting two Yamaha QS5400 (quad streamers) and a new receiver for Yamaha RXA6A. He said would total about $8,200 (plus installation).

Best Buy is suggesting Sonos. It would be 2 Sonance amplifiers.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sonanc...-amplifier-each-black/5683420.p?skuId=5683420

And the 11 Sonos ports

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sonos-port-streaming-media-player-matte-black/6371154.p?skuId=6371154


The total on these would be about $7,000 (installed).

They both said I could reduce a quadstreamer or ports if I were okay with fewer zones. So the quad steamer will do 4 zones and each port would do 1. So technically if I wanted to do 6 zones (which I'm leaning towards, the total would be closer to $5,200 (plus installation for the local guy) or about $5,000 for Best buy.

I'm certainly out of my "circle of competence" on this so I'm looking a decent system but it doesn't have to be very high end at all.

Which offers best quality? Why would one system be superior to another? Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.

 

[Jeepnmon]

That's a lot of money! Not sure if the following would work for you but thought I'd share another option with you. We use Chromecast Audio's for whole home audio. One is connected to a Denon 3-zone AVR that is used for our three separate outdoor zones. For inside, I have a CC-Audio connected to a receiver and speakers in each of three zones/rooms. All or some of the the CC-Audio's can be grouped together into zones in the Google Home app. We can stream to individual zones or multiple zones. We can also stream different sources (YouTube Music, Spotify, etc.) to different zones. Once setup this has worked seamlessly for our family. The largest cost was the Denon AVR which was about $1200 five years ago. The CCA's (x4) were about $35 each IIRC. I already had speakers and receivers that I had acquired over the years. Now, Google doesn't sell CC-Audio dongles any longer, but I have seen them for sale on a few internet sites for around $50 or so.

I'm sure that the the Sonos system that you were quoted would perform very nicely and maybe in a more streamlined manner for your quoted cost. I just wanted to share what we've done and by my estimate we're only into our setup for about $2.5K. FWIW.