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Multi-Room Wireless Sound System? 641

Posted by Cliff from the screw-conduits! dept.
abrinton asks: "I just went into escrow on a new house. Of course, first thoughts are to the sound system. I don't want to wire. Anything. I've got a wireless network, so computers are all sorted. But what do I do for sound? I need ideas for a centrally controlled sound system that can use 802.11g for transport. I'd like to have the same music everywhere, or better still, options to play different things in different rooms. I've got access to tons of old PIII laptops, wireless gear, old computers, sound cards, etc to make this work. Has anyone got any ideas or done anything like this?"
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Multi-Room Wireless Sound System? More

Multi-Room Wireless Sound System?

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  • iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:06PM (#11543667) Homepage Journal
    I am sure someone else will mention it, but I use iTunes exclusively for music throughout our home. A central server with our entire 10k song plus collection ripped onto it resides in the study with an old Powerbook connected up to the main stereo system in the house that spins out the tunes for most to hear (A Mac Mini would be perfect for this task). Others who want to listen to something else in differing parts of the house (or outside) can also tie into iTunes and listen simultaneously to completely independent streams, all wirelessly. In fact, before they moved, my next door neighbors used to stream from our server as well.

    I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes with no problem whatsoever. For those truly particular about their music ( or those with high end home stereo systems possessing digital audio connectors ), Powermac G5's and the new 17in Powerbook also have digital audio out. Combine that with Apple's lossless audio format and you have some kick ass tunage available without ever again having to search through your CD collection for that particular song. A cheaper option is to purchase Airport Express units for differing parts of your house that each have an audio out and can plug into any available power socket.

    • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543720)
      " I am sure someone else will mention it, but I use iTunes exclusively for music throughout our home."

      What, are you famous or something? Why would anybody else be telling us what you use in your home? And BTW, who the hell are you anyway?

    • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

      by over_exposed ( 623791 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543730) Homepage
      Right on - and a PIII should have no problems running iTunes. I would highly recommend this setup. It worked great for me for two years - although my setup isn't as elaborate as yours sounds like it may be. Just make sure to A) Secure your wireless network then B) make sure Remote Desktop or a VNC solution are enabled on all of the machines. That way you can either pick the music you want to play in that room FROM that room, or you can connect remotely and make changes that way.

      • Re:iTunes (Score:3, Informative)

        by iamhassi ( 659463 )
        " Right on - and a PIII should have no problems running iTunes."

        Just to clarify so we don't have to say "should" anymore: I have a compaq e500 p3 700mhz laptop that has no problem running iTunes.

        According to Apple [apple.com.au] you need Windows XP or 2000, 500mhz, 128megs, and of course a hard drive of sufficient size to store whatever music you have.

    • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:12PM (#11543750) Journal
      Your system (as you described it) lacks two things:
      1. A `push' capability - i.e. the ability to select the music being played in a different room, and
      2. The ability to synchronise the music in multiple locations.
      Apple could add both of these very easily with two modifications to iTunes. The first would allow a computer running iTunes to be set as a slave - the machine would appear as an Airport Express station to other instances of iTunes on the local network. The second would allow you to send a stream to multiple locations (Airport Express nodes, slaved iTunes clients and your own speakers). I honestly don't know why these features aren't in iTunes already.

      • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

        by mr i want to go home ( 610257 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:42PM (#11544145)
        iTunes has both these capabilities.

        1. Requires airport express. You name the Airport Express(es) as "Living Room", "Kitchen", etc. You can then select these from any wi-fi Mac and stream to each one (ie - push). Airport Express has digital audio-out, BTW.

        2. You only need one central music library really. You then share that library with iTunes. Any other copies of iTunes on the network (Mac or PC) can the see that library and any playlists on it, and play music from it. I haven't noticed any lag when playing music shared this way, even over wireless networks even with 3 or 4 people sharing.

        If you require true synchronisation of multiple libraries, then a little rsync is your friend. Here's the options I use to keep my 2 libraries in sync (note: I only add music on one machine, so this is a one way sync) - I'm not sure what Slashcode will do to the following, so you may have to remove spaces...

        rsync -v -r -C --ignore-existing --rsh="ssh" /users/my_local_account/music/itunes me@myserver_name_or_ip_address:/users/my_account_o n_the_server/music/

        The one thing that iTunes lacks that annoys me is the ability to remotely control another copy of iTunes (like on the server) from my laptop. I actually have a script to do this through the shell, but I'd really like to be doing it through the iTunes interface.

        • Re:iTunes (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MultiModeRb87 ( 804979 )
          Unfortunately, I think that the first post in this thread was referring to sound synchronization. It's easy to get multiple machines to have access to the same song files, but it's more difficult to get multiple machines to output that sound in phase with one another.

          The only way that you could reliably make that happen would be to calibrate your network of machines via a test sound file and a microphone. And even then, I don't know how well the synchronization would hold up if the machines are running

        • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

          by Phrack ( 9361 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:34PM (#11544822)
          Doing iTunes sharing from a central Linux box:

          http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200 30 711140157143

          Old article, but it'll be a step in a particular direction should someone be looking for that.

          No, it's not a player.. it's just a repository that looks like a shared iTunes to other clients.

        • Re:iTunes (Score:4, Informative)

          by tgibbs ( 83782 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:55PM (#11545103)
          The one thing that iTunes lacks that annoys me is the ability to remotely control another copy of iTunes (like on the server) from my laptop. I actually have a script to do this through the shell, but I'd really like to be doing it through the iTunes interface.

          The program you want is called NetTunes [shirtpocket.com]. It provides a remote iTunes window for your music server, although the remote iTunes is not as responsive as a local copy. I'm using it to run a "headless" beige G3 as a music server.

    • Re:iTunes (Score:3, Informative)

      by Synthageek ( 232720 )
      I have run up to 5 streams (3 wired) and 2 802.11g from an old 600 Mhz P3 without any need for rebuffering the stream. The only downside to using iTunes is that the functionality to stream beyond ones own network was phased out. It would have been much better had the left in the ability to stream over the internet so I could listen to my collection at work.
      • There are several 3rd party solutions that allow iTunes to share and stream music via the internet.

        Check the big shareware sites.

    • Re:iTunes (Score:5, Informative)

      by redheadedokie ( 841389 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:13PM (#11543775)
      Yep. I had pretty much the same setup in my old house. My G4 lived in my bedroom and we had a PowerBook G3/500 hooked up to the stereo and tv. Sharing MP3's wirelessly with iTunes worked flawlessly. We also used the PowerBook to watch downloaded TV shows (BBC stuff not availabled in the US). It'd stream most formats (Divx, Xvid, etc) wirelessly from the G4...but higher bitrates needed to be copied over first. Everything looked fantastic when connected via S-Video. Also, the only real limitation to the AirPort Express is that they will only play what's playing on the main iTunes "server"--i.e. no different songs in different rooms. Another cool thing that you might consider is to have a BlueTooth cell phone. I never got around t to it, but there is some software called Salling Clicker that'll let you control iTunes (skip songs and stuff) from your cell phone. Here's the link (too lazy to do HTML at the moment) http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Cli cker/

    • Re:iTunes (Score:2, Interesting)

      by steelem ( 694396 )
      As far as i can tell, your setup doesn't require iTunes to work at all - you're just sharing a massive collection on a central server and accessing it via iTunes (unless you are relying on Apple lossless as your format of choice). I do have a question though - if you have multiple airport express units, can you stream different tunes to each? Not sure how this would be done. My problem is that I have apple DRM'd songs that i'm too lazy to burn and re-rip, so i need an iTunes player for each stream, and t

      • Re:iTunes (Score:3, Informative)

        by LincolnQ ( 648660 )
        FYI, you can un-DRM your iTMS songs with Hymn [hymn-project.org]. This is exactly what Hymn is intended for. Very convenient.

      • Re:iTunes (Score:3, Informative)

        by nine-times ( 778537 )
        No, you can't stream different songs to different Airport Express units at the same time from the same computer. In fact, you can't stream the same song to different units from the same computer. IN FACT, you cannot stream a song to your airport express unit and play the song through your computer speakers at the same time. If you're playing a song, and you tell it to play on an airport express unit, the audio coming out of your speakers will cease.

        So, in order to use iTunes and Airport Express for this

    • FM Transmitter (Score:2, Informative)

      by neilb78 ( 557698 )
      Get the RoadTrip FM transmitter from Griffin(i have one; work's great). It's for your car, but the FM transmitter detaches and connects to your PC, too. Connect it to your PC and start the music. Use cheap FM stereo's throughout your home.

      http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/roadtr ip /

  • Hmmm, go wired! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Paolo DF ( 849424 ) * on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:06PM (#11543670)
    Well, if you are serious about sound, you really should go for wired solutions. If you can't go for wires, then you should consider some good (and expensive) wireless sound speakers. If you -finally- are just thinking of PC-like sounds, well, I think I can't help. Sorry. PS: I'd stress you to go for the wired solutions. And wire the speakers with MonsterCable or similar. drop the cheap car-audio stuff. Ciao!

    • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:5, Informative)

      by pdbogen ( 596723 ) <(tricia-slashdot) (at) (cernu.us)> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:08PM (#11543691)
      I'm going to have to agree. Wireless is all well and good, but don't use it if you don't bloody have to. Wireless is for laptops, so you can walk around with internet. Are you going to wander around with a speaker in your hand? Anyway, I can't see a hacked-together wireless sound solution with P3 laptops and whatnot being nearly as good as a few well-placed wired speakers.

      • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:17PM (#11543820)

        Anyway, I can't see a hacked-together wireless sound solution with P3 laptops and whatnot being nearly as good as a few well-placed wired speakers.

        Digital sound. Wired, wireless, whatever, the transport medium does not really make a difference. It's 1's and 0's and whether they get from point A to point B via a wire or via EM it does not matter. P3 laptops should be fine for reassembling that audio and if they have a USB port or other digital audio out and connect to good speakers there is no reason why the sound quality would be any worse than any other solution. The wirelessness just makes it more portable (if you are a renter) and keeps you from having to run wires through your walls, ceiling, or floor.

        • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:4, Informative)

          by borkus ( 179118 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:03PM (#11544444) Homepage
          Wired, wireless, whatever, the transport medium does not really make a difference. It's 1's and 0's and whether they get from point A to point B via a wire or via EM it does not matter.

          As long as the format is digital, you are correct. But typically the signal between between the amplifier and the speakers is analog. For analog, the quality of the connection matters.

          In sound terms, you typically have four parts -
          1. Source (in this case digital music files).
          2. A Digital to Audio Converter.
          3. Amplifier
          4. Speakers

          Wireless between points one and two (say a music server and a laptop playing the files) can be digital. However, at some point, you have to convert to analog.

          In my option, a good setup for playback in each room would be an old laptop hooked up to an old stereo receiver/amp wired to a nice pair of bookshelf speakers - something with at least 5/12-6/12 low drivers. If you look around, you can probably find some nice used stereo amplifiers - pioneer, onkyo, yamaha. You can even buy decent new stereo amps for a small amount of money these days. I'd spring for new speakers in any event.
        • Clearly digital is digital when you're looking at the data and hence the sound quality will be identical regardless of wether you use a different network link for delivery. I think the questionable aspect is the continuity of the delivery those 1's and 0's. Anybody who frequently uses wireless knows that there can be lag problems due to RF interference or heavy traffic on the wireless network segment. Dropped and late packets causing pauses for rebuffering aren't going to sound great with high fidelity s

    • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Matey-O ( 518004 ) <michaeljohnmiller@mSPAMsSPAMnSPAM.com> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543731) Homepage Journal
      You had me all the way up to Monster Cable. [Shudder] You're falling for a lot of marketing hype.

      I've got a hybrid house with wireless iTunes going to the kids' iMac upstairs, the Wired Xbox playing audio in the family room (cat 5 to the xbox, optical from there to the home theatre). You do NOT want to pipe video over 802.11g. You can do it, but if the main living spaces can be wired, leave the wireless bandwidth for better uses. The 'College Audiophile stereo' is hooked up to the music server in my office.

      Any other music needs (garage) are handled by my iPod and an iTrip.

      • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:5, Informative)

        by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:18PM (#11543836)

        "You had me all the way up to Monster Cable. [Shudder] You're falling for a lot of marketing hype."

        ABX testing has shown Home Depot 18 gauge lamp cord to be identical or even superior to Monster Cable in all respects.
        • You had me all the way up to "or even superior". :)

          • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Jerf ( 17166 )
            I didn't know if he was joking or not, but I considered it likely enough that it was worth googling. It actually took a bit, but I believe he was referring to this [pcavtech.com], wherein it is basically revealed that there is no difference between 16 gauge cabling and, well, anything, even up into the thousands of dollars.

            I have no counter examples to offer up. I see no reason why this shouldn't be true.

            I believe the snarky comments should be saved for those falling for the hype, not those who do actual scientific test

            • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:3, Interesting)

              by winkydink ( 650484 ) *
              Mot that I'm advocating Monster cables, but 2 listeners doing a "blind test" who cannot distinguish anything proves nothing. What was the source? What are the qualifications of said listeners? 2 is very small sample size. Who were the 2? The guy and his wife?

              • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:4, Informative)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:03PM (#11544441)
                Professional "golden ears" refuse to submit to blind tests. However, some tests using a placebo cable while the real cable was hidden showed that the "golden ears" consistently claim to hear what the marketing information for the cable they think they are testing says they should hear. When the placebos are swapped and the actual cable being used is left fixed they consistently pick the best looking placebo.

                http://home.austin.rr.com/tnulla/duncable.htm

        • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:4, Informative)

          by jwdb ( 526327 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:04PM (#11544450)
          Well, any cable's fine as long as it has negligible inductance and capacitance. A bit of resistance is ok - it'll just reduce the ammount of power reaching your speakers, but as long as your amp can handle a variety of load resistances it shouldn't be a problem.

          Distortion due to cables mainly arises when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent. At that point it will damp some tones more than others, and everything falls apart. I suppose you could fix it by playing with the equalizer, but that is far from a good solution.

          Prognosis: use a braided cable (many small strands, not one solid) with decent quality copper to keep the resistance down and your music should sound fine. The braids will reduce the increase in resistance due to the skin effect (where high-frequency current migrates to the surface of the conductor, reducing the effective cross-section of your cable).

          Jw

          • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:5, Informative)

            by eggoeater ( 704775 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:10PM (#11544533) Journal
            I use to run a pro-sound company (we ran big sound systems for bands and DJs). Every now-and-then I'd get to a gig and find out I was missing a speaker cable or not have a long enough speaker cable to get to the speakers they owner wanted outside on the deck,etc.

            Whenever that happened I just ran to the nearest Lowe's or WalMart and bought two 16 gauge extension cords, chop off the ends and put Neutrik speaker connectors on it. Worked great and got a 100ft speaker cable for 8 dollars. You actually don't need more than 16 guage unless you're pushing serious wattage (>150 RMS).
            Of course for any install job I would use 14 and 12 guage.

          • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:3, Informative)

            by Webmoth ( 75878 )
            "...when the cable resistance becomes frequency dependent..."

            I believe this is known as impedance. If I'm wrong someone will correct me, so I'm posting AC just in case.

            On another note, "skin effect" really only becomes apparent at high frequencies. Low frequencies, such as those in your subwoofer channel, are less impacted by coarser-stranded cable.
        • "ABX testing has shown Home Depot 18 gauge lamp cord to be identical or even superior to Monster Cable in all respects."

          what about the "cool sounding name" respect? Did they do a survey to see which name sounds better? I think not, I'm sure "Monster Cable" sounds better than "Home Depot 18 Gauge Lamp Cord".

          Which would you wanna tell your friends you wired your house with, hmmmmmmm?

    • MonsterCable? What's wrong with solid core mains wires?
      • I have a 5.1 Dolby/DTS setup sound system with gauge-16 monster cables hooked to a Onkyo receiver.

        I have tried to spend $$$ on all these Soundblaster audigy etc on the PC, and nothing even rivals my living room 5.1 Dolby/DTS setup. Don't get me wrong, things sound good on the PC, just not insane.

    • Re:Monster Cable (Score:5, Informative)

      by futuresheep ( 531366 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:18PM (#11543847) Journal
      Here comes the flame war about cabling, but you'll get the same sound quality by wiring your house with lamp cord as you will with Monster Cable. Monster is an outstanding marketing machine. The product are good quality, but the bang for buck ratio is pretty bad.

      If you don't want to belive me, and since I'm just some schmo on the internet you shouldn't, do a search on Monster Cable at either of these websites, and read the consensus opinions.

      Avs Forum [avsforum.com]
      HDTVoice [hdtvoice.com]

      If you're looking for high quality cables at an excellent price, try Bluejeans Cable [bluejeanscable.com]

      • Yeah, I think "GOLD PLATED CONNECTORS!!" on optical audio cables is all I have to say about Monster Cable. [shudder]

      • Re:Monster Cable (Score:3, Informative)

        by Webmoth ( 75878 )
        There's more to cabling than oxygen-free copper, pair twisting, and stranding/braiding. Most people seem to ignore insulation and installation ratings.

        If cable is installed inside a wall without conduit, it must be rated for in-wall use. Most lamp cord and extension cords are not, as well as your typical clear-jacket lamp-cord-style speaker cable. If installed in a plenum (air-handling space, typically the space above a false ceiling in your office building), then the insulation must be plenum rated. This

    • Re:Hmmm, go wired! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tbase ( 666607 )
      Absolutely. If you haven't even closed on the house yet, chances are you're going to be there long enough to make the little extra effort of running wires worthwhile.

      Even forgetting about quality issues for a moment, totally wireless is going to be way more of a headache than crawling around in the attic for a couple afternoons. It's not like a lack of interference now means it won't be a problem in the future.

      And if you plan ahead and think out every possible configuration, and run all the cabling at onc

  • revealing quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by halfelven ( 207781 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:07PM (#11543681)
    Of course, first thoughts are to the sound system.

    Geek. :-)

  • Same music in every room (Score:5, Funny)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:08PM (#11543689)
    This is so easy, I don't even know why you had to post it to Slashdot.

    So, here it is, how to have the same music play in every room in your house, in 3 easy steps:

    1.) Buy stereo system with very large speakers
    2.) Put stereo system in one room of your house. Orient speakers so they face toward the rest of the house.
    3.) Turn volume up all the way.

    If you still have some "dead spots" in the house where the sound doesn't reach, you'll need my specidal educational pamphlet "Sledgehammers and You," available for only $9.95, plus shipping and handling.

  • wi-Fi grumble (Score:2, Insightful)

    by va3atc ( 715659 ) *
    I bought a MR814 V3 & WGR614 V4 Netgear to play UT2004 wirelessly with my wired server. *cough* to Say the least its not pleasant with LAN parties on WLAN cards.

    For some odd reason I can't share the LAN wirelessly, only the gateway/NAT (internet) on the WAN port. Can't even ping any LAN connected computers while connected wirelessly, but loads slashdot like a charm though.

    So, whats this wireless resource sharing everybody speaks of?
    • Um- I think you need to be a bit less security concious, especially if you want to play UT2004 over a combination LAN/WLAN connection. Here's how: Your access point is a 2nd NAT router. It needs to be within the same subnet as the rest of your system. You need to open up so that no TCP/UDP ports are filtered. In addition to that, you'd probably need all the computers for the LAN party in the DMZ. If none of these acronyms are familiar- you need to learn about networking.
  • put that escrow BACK!

    Next year they'll ask for it back x2, at least

  • New House? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CommanderData ( 782739 ) * <kevinhi@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:10PM (#11543706)
    When you say "new house" do you mean that it's being built for you right now? If so, forget the wireless idea immediately. Go to Home Depot, buy boxes of Cat5/6 cable, spools of coax, and heavy duty speaker cable. Pick out a closet somewhat close to your living/family room and make it the distribution hub for your new home. Get your butt down to the construction site and run coax, network, and speaker wires to all the rooms of the house from this central location. It also wouldn't hurt to run RCA, S-Video, and maybe even VGA or DVI from the closet to the expected location of your main TV.

    Any wires that you do not plan to use right away can be left inside the walls (Take pictures of EVERYTHING before they sheetrock the place, you'll be glad you did later when you want to find the wires!). The rest of the stuff should have standard boxes that you can add the appropriate wall plates to later.

    Smarthome [smarthome.com] is your friend for a lot of the finishing touches. I recommend a box like the ChannelPlus that allows you to insert your own audio/video on an unused cable channel. I did that and now I can watch DVDs or Movies coming from the computer in the closet on any TV in the house. ChannelPlus thoughtfully has IR devices that feed back up the coax line to the source so your remote controls will activate everything hidden in the closet.

    I could go on and on about this- I've done it for my current home and will be building another home this year. I've already started thinking about improvements to my original layout :)
    • Good idea.
      Also remember to leave some pretty stout fishing line in with the runs of cable in case you need to make future runs.
      • If you could afford it, it'd be best to run big diameter EMT from your hub location to your satellite locations. It's much easier to fish through, and even if it gets hard to fish a single new line through you can always empty and re-pull everything at once if you have to.

        In an ideal world the house would have been planned for this to begin with and a wiring plenum would have run been established between all the floors (a riser plenum) and there would be a cross-shaped plenum in each and every room, as we
    • If I may add to your great suggestion. If you are building a new house (already spending a ton of cash) go fibre man! Plan for the future. Imagine in 20 years if you want to sell your house "yes we are fibre ready"....imagine when verizon finally runs fibre to your doorstep.... imagine the transfer rates of all that music/movie/game files over your network.... Fibre man - spend the little extra cash now and be happier later.

      • A gigabit per second should be enough speed for anyone.

        Seriously though, put the money you'd spend running fibre in a bank account and it'll easily pay for the upgrade when it's actually necessary. Between compounded interest and dropping prices due to better technologies, it rarely makes sense to look 20 years into the future when it comes to computer equipment.

    • Re:New House? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jedinite ( 33877 ) <<slashdot.com> <at> <jedinite.com>> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:19PM (#11544643) Homepage
      No question, if you're still in the pre-rough-in stages (i.e. no drywall up yet), wire your house.

      Even if you've got drywall down, depending on your insulation type you may still be able to fish wires through, especially if your ceiling/floor is not directly insulated - you can easily run wire parallel to floor joice if its not insulated, cut a small hole at the ceiling, and fish through the insulated walls - assuming its a spray-in non-hardening insulation, which most people use these days - my house is blown recycled newspaper which is apparently a very common insulation.

      In more detail, I just (this weekend) closed on my new custom-built house. I've got 1.26 miles of wire in the house (easily calculated since everyone sold me the wire I used by the foot). Cat5e for phone, Cat6e for data, speakerwire, multiple coax runs to almost every room (so I can RF-mod signals and broadcast them to any other room), and in appropriate places audio, video, even two 25' DVI runs and two 25' RGB runs. In fact, voice/data/coax terminates to a Futuresmart panel [futuresmart.com] in my furnace room where signals can be routed...

      As someone has already said, wireless is good for walking around with the laptop/etc. Not what you want for speakers. But not to mention when you've got the opportunity to build a gigabit backbone for the majority of the house, take it while you still can. Especially if you're serious about moving music or especially video.

      My recently-received Mac Mini will be taking over as a media center in my home theater, and i'll be pulling MP3s and videos from my WinXP boxes via Samba (cut me some slack on the Windows comments, my dedicated server is BSD but XP still is my best machine for gaming and video).

    • Just did that (Score:3, Interesting)

      by macdaddy ( 38372 ) *
      I just wired my folks' new home this past weekend for voice, data and TV and I have lots to say on this topic. They don't want a sound, intercomm or security system but I would highly recommend considering them. A note on security systems later...

      I did the electrical wiring in the house. If you do it yourself or if you hire it done, believe me when I tell you that you have to put in the extra time to do a neat, clean job. Runs should have square corners. Multiple runs should follow the same path(s) b

  • Apple AirPort with AirTunes (Score:3, Informative)

    by DaKrzyGuy ( 25850 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:10PM (#11543714)
    Apple makes a neat little device [apple.com] that you can use to stream music to and hooks up to your stereo. This combined with iTunes is a great way to play music all over the house.

  • Sonos might be your answer... (Score:5, Informative)

    by klubar ( 591384 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543718) Homepage
    You might look into the Sonos [sonos.com] system (previously discussed on /. It's wireless and allows unique content at each location. I saw an early demo and it was very impressive. Cost might be a factor, but the system and controllers have a very nice look and feel.

  • Don't forget (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543722)
    > I don't want to wire. Anything.

    I suggest batteries.. a lot of them.

  • [tt] lemmie get this straight... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543724) Homepage Journal
    You put down money for a NEW house. Studs still in the walls? Where wiring up speakers and such is a piece of cake. Putting in a full sound system in every room (you can do it yourself for free) is pretty simple and easy to do...

    But you'd rather drop a big clunky P3 in the room with a wireless card.... why? I see no advantage in it. Wire up speakers in every room. All wires go to computer room. Wires then attached to a single machine that manipulates everything.

    But, being a computer geek and having a buncha P3 boxes lying about is what makes you happy, knock yourself out.
    • If it is a brand new house, and built like all the other expensive crackerboxes I've seen - it is anything but a "piece of cake".

      First off, in most house construction, both interior and exterior walls have horizontal firebreaks between the vertical studs (ie, an 18 inch 2x4 running horizontally), to provide fire protection (keeps the fire from getting to the attic as quick). So, to drill holes for wires (any wiring) after the sheetrock is on - means a flexible drill and a bit of luck - or punching holes in

      • I think you're forgetting one tiny little thing: Resale value.

        The demand for pre-1980 houses or custom built houses is much smaller than for new run-of-the-mill houses, so you may end up with a house you can't sell when you need to.

    • You put down money for a NEW house. Studs still in the walls? Where wiring up speakers and such is a piece of cake. Putting in a full sound system in every room (you can do it yourself for free) is pretty simple and easy to do...

      But you'd rather drop a big clunky P3 in the room with a wireless card.... why? I see no advantage in it. Wire up speakers in every room. All wires go to computer room. Wires then attached to a single machine that manipulates everything.

      But, being a computer geek and having a bunc

  • Try out Sonos (Score:2, Informative)

    by Viscount9 ( 612677 )
    There's a wireless system out there that already does this: Sonos.com. You can check out the review at Engadget and I believe they won an award at CES. plus it was on Queer Eye, I think. It has a pretty damn sweet looking wirelsss controller with a color LCD screen.

  • Roku Soundbridge (Score:4, Interesting)

    by davegust ( 624570 ) <gustafson@ieee.org> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:11PM (#11543741)
    Roku Labs [rokulabs.com] has a neat solution.

  • Here's how (Score:2, Funny)

    by doombob ( 717921 )
    What you need to do is go ahead and send me all of those PIII laptops you have available, and I'll configure all of them for you and send them back... I promise! While you're at it, you might as well send me the sound cards and wireless gear, too. Do you visit ebay very often? No? Excellent...

  • Ethernet (wired or wireless)... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WonderSnatch ( 835677 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:14PM (#11543785)
    isn't going to work. Since each sound card will have a slightly different version of 44.1-kHz, none of the rooms will match. It won't take long for the songs to get out of sync. Ethernet is also no isochronous, meaning it can't gaurantee the arrival time of packets...
    • isn't going to work. Since each sound card will have a slightly different version of 44.1-kHz, none of the rooms will match. It won't take long for the songs to get out of sync. Ethernet is also no isochronous, meaning it can't gaurantee the arrival time of packets...

      Yeah. For lower quality settings like my kitchen and outside porch. I'm going to buy an FM transmitter. Plug it into the 1/8" out on your computer and you have complete synchronous wireless transmission inside and outside of your house.

  • sound in all your rooms (Score:5, Informative)

    by sidhe7 ( 255129 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:15PM (#11543803) Homepage
    I've been playing with this problem for a couple of years now. The problem is that sound streaming over IP is basically impossible to sync properly. As mentioned above, it's pretty simple to stream different streams to each room but if you want all the rooms playing the same thing, each will be off by a few parts of a second. It drove me crazy. We just ran audio over Cat5e everywhere from a central system in the living room. Home Depot's got punch down blocks that convert Cat5e into an unamplified audio output RCA jack.
    • I've come across this problem as well, and it seems to me that it's really not very hard, just that none of the currently-available streaming protocols are designed to do it. It seems like it would be trivial to timing metadata in the stream, and have the endpoints buffer a second or two of data. Then you just need to synchronize every endpoints clock, but that's a problem that NTP has solved for years.

      Just random thoughts.

      --
      lds

    • Re:sound in all your rooms (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Wugger ( 17867 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:40PM (#11544127)
      Think back, think waaaaay back, before packets, before computers. When you wanted the same music in all your rooms, what did you do? You tuned all your radios to the same station.

      Buy an FM transmitter kit for a hundred bucks, and your problems are solved. Synchronization is perfect, price is low, deployment is trivial.

  • Wireless audio distribution (Score:5, Informative)

    by jnolen ( 24749 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:16PM (#11543816) Homepage
    So it turns out that this is harder that you might think. Getting different wireless audio into different rooms isn't too bad. It's mostly a function of throughput. But getting the SAME wireless audio is into different rooms and keeping it in sync is a surprisingly difficult.

    I have the SlimDevices Squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/ [slimdevices.com]), and it works great at the first task, but only moderately well at the second. There's a new company called Sonos (http://www.sonos.com/ [sonos.com]) that just released their product which does both very well.

    I had a chance to beta-test the product and it really is as good as described. It's Linux-based, but not open-source. It utilizes a proprietary mesh-network running on top of 802.11g and it worked flawlessly in my three zone setup. All three zones could play high-bitrate audio in perfect sync with no drops.

    The downside is that it is fairly expensive. If you don't need sync'd audio, I might go with a cheaper option. But if you do, I've yet to find anything that can top Sonos.
    • The amazingly stupid thing about Sonos is their marketing folks don't scream this time-base synchronization feature. This thread shows how important it is. I've been looking for a multi-zone digital playback system for years and this is the first one I've found. To me it is the ONE thing that makes them stand out. Well, that, and their cool iPod-like remote control.
  • Didn't I read somewhere that it was possible to use your home's electrical system for networking purposes.

    it seems to me that something like that would be ideal for sound systems considering the fact that the speakers need to get power from somewhere... even if signal transmission became completely wireless.. amplification will (AFAIK) always require a cable.. even if it's a short one connecting to a wall jack behind the speaker.

  • Did this. (Score:3, Informative)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:18PM (#11543841) Journal
    I did this same thing a few years back in a dorm.

    I had a server in a closet, multiple machines playing at the same time.

    The problem ends up being where you want to put the power (as in Receivers/Speakers.)

    Unless you want really bad sound quality, and buy lots of speakers... Anything wireless, laptops, pcs, especially speakers, need a power oulet.

    Long story short: You're limited by receivers and power outlets not wires. Continuing to try to be wireless is pointless.

    Just run the wires through the a/c vents & put the speakers in the vents. It will still sound better and require less work than a wireless setup. Plus..., no visible wires...

    -JT

  • What's wrong with that combination? Store all your music in MP3 and then just have an MP3 player of some sort on each laptop on the 802.11g connection. Seems simple enough to me....not centrally controlled, but VNC can fix that....

  • Beware of latency (Score:2, Informative)

    by weopenlatest ( 748393 )
    I had similar aspirations for a central sound server, but found that the latency issue can be hard to get by. If you want to use wireless, you're going to have to have independent decoding at each wireless access point. Problem is, each device is going to decode at it's own slightly different rate. The result is speakers in adjacent rooms that are a millisecond or two off. If you happen to be standing where you can hear both sets of speakers, the sound is going to be pretty nasty. Its difficult to get

  • My Home-Grown System (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SlipJig ( 184130 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:20PM (#11543869) Homepage
    I wrote a little Java app (actually three apps) that allow me to stream audio over the network. The cool part (well, I think it's cool, anyway) is that it's in three pieces: a server, player, and controller. The server serves the files, the player plays it out to audio, and the controller (you guessed it) lets you set up playlists and jobs from a central location (there's little point in streaming audio to another room if you have to walk there to start it up). You can play multiple jobs to different rooms at the same time.

    My wife uses this to stream music (in ogg and mp3 format) from my server downstairs to a Linux box in the living room I built for this purpose. She controls it from a GUI on a Windows box on the kitchen counter. I've tested it over wireless and it works fine.

    I was thinking of putting this up on SourceForge - if anyone's interested let me know (msimpson at abel solutions dot com).

  • Don't listen to people who don't know audio! (Score:3, Informative)

    by lcsjk ( 143581 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:23PM (#11543907)
    Do some research. There is no reason that wireless cannot transmit sound as well or better than wires. (After all, look at the wireless microphones used on all sound stages.) There have been transmitters to send audio from the sound system to remote speakers for years. Even go visit Radio Shack, check with Bose, or take a look at the audio magazines. Are you an audiophile? If so, be aware that each room will have different characteristics, even with the same speakers, and we still have to deal with that "sweet" zone. Large wire cables are indeed best for the connection from the amplifier to the speakers, but only because low speaker impedance requires a lot of current for any power levels. (Power=I^2*R, where I is current and R is the speaker impedance in ohms) Also large wires reduce the inductance which can cause some delay for the highest frequencies, but unlikely that you will hear it. I expect that the computers can provide you with what you need, but again, remember that the computer systems require amplified speakers.
    • Also large wires reduce the inductance which can cause some delay for the highest frequencies, but unlikely that you will hear it.

      Another inductance tidbit. NEVER coil up extra wire in a circle. That is basically an inductor which will act like a high pass filter and can kill your bass. If you have extra wire to play with, wrap it back and forth in an S pattern.

      I've never heard about delay in high frequencies, but lower gauge wire is definitely a plus for longer cable runs.

  • MythTV (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mike Miller ( 28248 ) <mikem@computer.org> on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:28PM (#11543968) Homepage
    While the entire app is a bit overkill, using mythtv [slashdot.org] would be a reasonable solution. For just Music, you would need to run a backend server with the music and NFS and then just install the clients on your laptops. There's also a Knoppix distro for it - http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html [mysettopbox.tv]

    There are several websites on converting laptops into "picture frames" http://www.likelysoft.com/hacks/pictureframes.shtm l [likelysoft.com], http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/27/023922 2&tid=222&tid=1 [slashdot.org], http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel 9.JunktopRevival [msdn.com] Which you could modify slightly to add built in powered speakers and hang one in each room.

    - Mike

  • Buy a walkman (Score:4, Insightful)

    by delmoi ( 26744 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:34PM (#11544047) Homepage
    Honestly, you'd rather have a bunch of ugly, old computer equipment sitting around (and plugged into the wall no less) in every room in your house then put in wireing? Are you planning on buying high-fidelity amps and good speakers for every room too?

    As much as I hate apple, just buy an Ipod and cary it around with you if you can't stand to be stuck in just one room listening to music.

  • Cool analog solutions (Score:3, Funny)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:37PM (#11544081)
    Learn to sing. If bandwidth is a problem, hum or whistle. All three formats go with you from room to room, and the hands-free interface is amazingly intuitive.

  • Use Slimserver and Softsqueeze (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ZedmanAuk ( 52694 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:38PM (#11544089)
    Install Slimserver (http://www.slimdevices.com/index.html [slimdevices.com]) on a central server with all your music. Put a P3 laptop (or some other machine) with wireless in every room you will want music. Run SoftSqueeze (http://softsqueeze.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]) on each client, connecting to the server. Get a PDA with wireless and use Slimserver's built-in handheld skin to control your music.

    Done!

  • FM Transmitter (Score:3, Informative)

    by gozar ( 39392 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:45PM (#11544177) Homepage
    In this Slashdot article [slashdot.org] there are listed several ideas for FM transmitters. After reading that article, I am think of setting it up in my house with iTunes.

    Pros:

    • Easy to listen to your songs anywhere.
    • Can use a cheap fm radio/headphone when I'm out mowing the yard, working on the house, etc.

    Cons:

    • Everyone is stuck listening to the same thing (unless you setup multiple sound cards/transmitters)
    • Have to use some sort of remote control software (VNC) to control what is being played.

  • Really simple, here's how: (Score:4, Informative)

    by cypherz ( 155664 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:46PM (#11544190)
    If you have a network, and a stack 'o PIII's then you have what you need. It doesn't really matter what kind of network, as long as everything connects via TCP and has enough bandwidth for your needs.
    Setup a linux server, with enough disk space for your media collection and whatever else you want to store there. Install gnumpd3 from
    here: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/ [gnu.org]
    Install a desktop linux distro on the machines in each room. Aim a web browser from any machine at the URL of the gnump3d server and viola! you have music from your collection on demand in any room!
    Streaming radio style music is easy as well. Install icecast from here:http://www.icecast.org/ [icecast.org]
    and aim the xmms player from here: http://www.xmms.org/ [xmms.org] and you have streaming media! woohoo!
    If you want to control a distribution system that plays the same songs things get more complicated, you'll need Apple computer's RTSP server and some client software to get everything sync'd throughout the house.
    I use secure shell from my zaurus wireless pda and mpg123 and aumix to operate this from a pocket sized device. For everything else I just browse the music library with gnump3d's web interface. FWIW, I use SuSE linux. It came with all the above except for the Darwin Stream Server (or whatever it is that Apple calls it these days). I had to download and compile the icecast source, but what the heck, it wasn't to hard to do either.

    HTH

  • Sonos (Score:3, Informative)

    by Issue9mm ( 97360 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:55PM (#11544324)
    This is probably too late a response to get noticed, but having just put a contract on a new house as well (as of today actually), my mind went to similar directions.

    After quite a bit of googling, I've found that Sonos (http://www.sonos.com) has a really nice setup. It's not Linux-friendly, but if you're a Windows household, or can have an old Windows box lying around, it'll be great for you.

    The basic setup is as follows: You can have up to 32 base stations, which act as both input and output. Plug a base station into your PC and install the software, and voila, it will now interface with the remote. The base stations communicate with each other wirelessly, acting as repeaters, or a wireless mesh, if you prefer.

    You can have multiple sources (with multiple base stations, that is), but I don't know whether or not it is available to the other base stations if it isn't coming through the PC (and through their software), so you'll likely want to check into that.

    All in all tho, while it is a little pricy, does involve zero wiring (except power, and ethernet if you don't have wireless), and the cost of putting together a 5-6 room thing with 4 remotes is still cheaper to put together a decent quality multi-zone whole house audio system.

    -9mm-

  • FM Transmitter (Score:4, Funny)

    by DrinkDr.Pepper ( 620053 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @04:55PM (#11544326)
    Instead of trying to use 802.11g and multiple computers, why not just buy your own FM radio station and put a radio in each room?

    • Re:FM Transmitter (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rebar ( 110559 )
      Parent is modded funny, but this is a very reasonable solution; that's what I do at my house and it works fantastically.

      You can get a nice little PLL FM transmitter from ccrane.com [ccrane.com] for around US$70.
      With the addition of an antenna wire that is about 6 feet long on the transmitter, I get hiss-free FM stereo that sounds certainly good enough for me, in every room of my house and out in the shop. I've ripped every CD I own and put that on "shuffle" from the main PC, and have either nice stereos (living room

  • Sync issues (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SilentJ_PDX ( 559136 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @05:25PM (#11544717) Homepage
    I've tried everything to get the same sound in multiple rooms using wifi and I could never get it working.

    I have a smallish 1bdr flat and I like to have the same music playing in my bedroom, kitchen and bathroom as I roam through the flat in the morning (my neighbors must love me). I tried to stream mp3 from a central server but the laptops would all have a different buffer and the sound was out of sync in all three locations.

    My final solution was to use an FM transmitter. The upside is I can use cheap receivers in the kitchen and bathroom. The downside is poor sound quality in those locations (the bedroom is wired to the source).

  • I've already got the low cos[tt] solution at home (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2005 @06:22PM (#11545405) Homepage Journal
    Many of us already have some kind of a system to play music in digital form. iPods, Rios, hell even PCs with some kind of media player on them or... the venerable CD player. A while back I sat thinking about the best way to be able to listen to music throughout the house without needing to either:

    1. Run speaker wires to every room
    2. Cart the music playing system (I use a PC with XMMS on Linux) around the house
    3. Run network cables to each room I wanted to listen to music in
    4. Or just have a device in every room

    All of these seemed cost/time prohibitive. Then I got to thinking... What do I have in every room of the house that I could use to get music into the room without a lot of effort? It dawned on me: heating/cooling ducts. (If you have steam heat or baseboard heat, then my post doesn't apply to you) What I wound up doing was moving my music playing PC from the living room down to my basement (yeah mine. not my parent's) and putting a speaker transducer in the heater that connects to the main ducts. Then I set the volume high enough the the vibrations travel through the ducts to every room at a suitable volume.

    Pros:
    1. Wireless!!!
    2. Plays music!!!
    3. Answers silly Ask Slashdot question!!!

    Cons:
    1. Tinny sound at best
    2. Too loud when you are closer to the first floor
    3. Can't control what your listening to (I play in random+repeat mode)

    I'm pretty sure that the majority of you have ductwork in your house and could take advantage of this innovative approach to whole house wireless music distribution. Let me know what you think!

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