Building an Awesome Sound System

One of the reasons I’ve not been writing here much lately has been us buying and moving to a new house (that and the crunch time to get BFBC2 shipped, in which I’ve ended up in a crucial role).

As we are finally getting a bit settled in (at least the living room is free of boxes now), I’ve started thinking about a new audio and video setup for the entire house.

One thing I’m missing about the apartment we moved out of is my sound system that covered the entire place — living room, bed room, kitchen, even bathroom. The whole thing was a DIY thing involving two amps, a partially broken speaker selector, lots of wiring and speakers everywhere. I could select what rooms I wanted music in, which was awesome, but it had its issues. One thing was that there was only one input, so if one of us watched a movie there was no way to listen to music in another room, another that… well, there was lots of wiring.

The house is a much larger space, and with it far longer wires to put up all over the place. I’m going to install a wired network that covers the place, but I’d rather not install any more wiring. Still, I’m going to want to send video signals from the digital TV box to the new TV in the bed room, which I might solve with a Slingbox PRO-HD and SlingCatcher, which seems like a cool combo with a bonus of access to my TV anywhere — if I can only figure out if it’ll work to remote control my box or not (my cable TV provider is probably Sweden’s most hated company not involved in public transport – com hem).

The audio setup is a different problem — I want a system which can play music from my media server in any room I’m in, can sync music in several rooms at once and which can also play audio from a separate input (like have the audio from a live music DVD on the PS3 on in several rooms at once). That last one seems to be tricky to pull off…

I’ve looked at several network media players, but most seem content at simply streaming media from a computer to a home entertainment system. Sonos S5 ZonePlayer seems like a popular geek choice, but sadly doesn’t do an external input (like my PS3).

The Logitech Squeezebox series seems to do (almost) what I want, but the component I’d need for the living room, a Squeezebox Transporter has some drawbacks. First of all, I can’t seem to figure out if it can stream its digital input out to other squeezeboxes — a make or break feature for me, but hardly mentioned out there on the ‘net. Second, the price tag! Holy crap, $1999? I’ll be upgrading my audio equipment, but I’m not really an audiophile of a class that needs that kind of equipment. It’d easily be the most expensive piece of equipment in the set.

I could even consider building my own system from scratch. It’d be kind of cool with a compact computer hidden away in each room, and a touch screen display system to interface with the thing. It’d probably end up cheaper than the Squeezebox option, but with a lot more work involved. Fun work, but frustrating at the moment as I don’t really have the time needed. If there’s a cheaper product out there which satisfies my three demands above, I’m a sale waiting to happen.

Do you know of any good network media player systems that fit the bill? Or do you have any experience with systems like that, good or bad? Please share any knowledge you have in the comments. I would also be happy to hear from anyone with experience of the Slingbox products.

1 Comment

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  By Matt, Saturday, December 26, 2009 @ 2:45

  You might want to take a look at Popcorn Hour

  http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=productinfo&item_id=12

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