[The last thread is 10 years old]
What is the easiest way to blast music all over my house? Like… I want to play Spotify or whatever in 2-3-4 rooms at once. I’ve been considering Echo/Homepod/Nest but I read that to use 4-5 speakers at once requires that song to be streamed 4-5 times over my broadband and it can be somewhat flaky.
Is there a receiver/wireless speaker option that makes more sense? I know Sonos works well but it’s also very expensive.
Well, we staged Twelfth Night on the patio once, does that count?
But seriously, no, I have no clue. I’ll just leave now.
I have echo devices in 9 rooms. I just create a group using the app, and then they all play the the same music in every room , hence whole house christmas music. I have no idea as to the bandwidth used to do this, I am on 1 GB unlimited cable internet.
We are all in on Sonos and I love them. They have their own mesh network so it is easy to get them up running. They sound great also.
As near hassle-free as something can be.
We went all in on Sonos too and I’ve found them to be… average. The sound quality is decent but their software is sub-par. They are a closed system, have shitty business practices and are very overpriced for what they are. If I were to make the choice again I’d go for something cheaper.
EDIT: Maybe something like this:
http://phorus.com/pr5-receiver
HEOS from Denon can do that. In fact I think most the modern receivers have apps and functions in their receivers and devices that can do it.
https://www.denon.com/en/multi-room-audio-system
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/musiccast/index.html
My needs are pretty simple at the moment but I am trying to stick to Denon for future purchases.
I’m not an expert but do have an Atmos home theater setup I installed myself, have whole house streaming audio via Sonos, and continue to experiment with alternatives because of some Sonos issues, including with Google, Alexa, Apple’s HomePod, and Yamaha’s Musicast setup. I guess the question is what are your criteria beyond price? If you’re handy and want to wire things yourself, you can get a receiver and some inexpensive amps and run the wires yourself through your attic. If you don’t want to run wires and are technically savvy, there are raspberry pi-based streaming systems you can manage with software like Plex, and run it off a NAS. If you want something off the shelf, currently I’d recommend Sonos. Respectfully disagree with Draxen - I have some issues with Sonos, but they pass the wife test and are actually reasonably priced when you consider the price of a decent speaker the DIY approach would require, and they have better quality than most of the off the shelf systems I’ve tried.
Some quick Googling turned up this…
That’s what I’d choose if I were making the decision again. An open platform that doesn’t lock me into an overpriced vendor.
We have HomePods all over. They sound amazing, work natively (and very well) with all Apple devices, and they only stream once (afaik – they are all perfectly in sync).
Dots or what? Dots don’t have the greatest fidelity.
The tube-tower echos, gen 2 and 3, not the fancy ball shaped gen 4’s.
Oh I do have 2 dots, that are hooked up one to a Sony stereo radio , the other to a 5.1 Bose system.
I’m really looking for a complete wireless solution - something that broadcasts from a single device to 1/many speakers at once.
I’ll look at all of these and see if they’ll work for me. Thanks, everyone.
We also went all-in on Sonos and it’s great. I never use the Sonos app… just control it through Spotify and with a Google Home linked to both. “Hey Google, play Some Spotify Playlist on Kitchen Sonos…”
The SONOS app works with Spotify, etc. It is as close to painless as possible as it can be. I looked at different ways of throwing sound to various speakers, but a friend bought us a SONOS and it took off from there.
Even as one of the complete Apple nuts on the forums, I never one thought about getting any of the Apple ones. That is how much I love my Sonos.
Don’t use them, but Google has been advertising the crap out of this sort of thing in recent weeks with their Nest (I think) devices.
Hi @tempus67,
Quick question just in case you know: is there any way to group three Sonos speakers into a single (logical) Sonos room?
The internet seems to say no, so I currently have three single-speaker “rooms” grouped into a “kitchen” group- but that looks pretty crappy in the Sonos app.
(Instead of the app’s location screen showing the descriptor “kitchen”, it shows “speaker 1 name+ speaker 2 name+ speaker 3 name” which offends my senses)
I went all-in on Chromecast Audio - but they discontinued those. Apparently you can get the same(ish) functionality from a regular low-end Chromecast + HDMI-Aux converter.
We have the main stereo system, an old Logitech Boom (which has amazingly impressive sound for its size - Logitech stopped their own streaming service ages ago, but the thing is worth its weight in gold using the aux input + Chromecast) plus two sets of Mackie CR3 powered speakers. So we get both whole-house plus actual stereo (though the Logitech is barely stereo, the two speakers are about 8" apart). Very flexible, groups can be any combination. Works seamlessly with Spotify.
We have Google Nest Mesh WiFi around the house but don’t use it to play music.
You can build groups in the settings of the Sonos app, and so sort of build rooms but I think it will always show all the names speakers in that group when you go to select it - there’s no way to suppress it I believe.
Yes, that is what I currently have set up…Thanks for letting me know.