Whole house audio on the cheap!

[Almonds]

I just thought I would share with the community a solution I've been using for whole home audio using vintage gear.

Right now I am using 4 airport express stations (A1392) that cost me $40 or less each.
I have each of them plugged into the AUX input on vintage amplifiers.

Playing from my Mac, I can play music to each room simultaneously, or any combination of rooms at varying volume levels.

From my iPhone, I can only play one zone at a time, but my workaround for this is to use the iphone as a remote control to control the iMac.

If you are not an apple product fan, the same setup can be run with Chromecasts which are $35 each.

The music quality from both is said to be CD quality. I find the quality very high indeed. I can easily tell the difference between a 128mp3 or a FLAC streamed over it.

I gotta say, nothing beats walking around the house and each room is playing a fantastic vintage stereo system all with the songs in perfect sync. It's also a great way to compare speakers! I can have the exact same source playing the same song simultaneously through two or more sets of speakers to compare them in real time.

As an added bonus, each of the base stations acts as a wifi extender, so I get perfect wifi coverage in my house and even throughout the downstairs and the back yard. I can walk my entire property up and down, in and out with my phone in my pocket and control the music I'm listening to without it ever cutting out like bluetooth does.

If anyone has any questions or would like to see pics of the interface (which is dead simple) I'm happy to help!

 

[BilboBaggins]

You should be able to select any combination of airport express from your iPhone. I can. I have three airport expresses. I also have two apple TVs hooked into the network. And if you have two Apple computers playing in the house, someone else could be listening to something completely differently, with different volume levels. Wonderful integration! I’ve been doing this for about 7 years.

 

[imral3]

Awesome! Enjoy away!!

 

[BillWojo]

I just turn it up to 11!

BillWojo

 

[N8Nagel]

You could always just do what my grandma did and turn the stereo up really loud when she was in the kitchen

 

[imral3]

You could always just do what my grandma did and turn the stereo up really loud when she was in the kitchen

That was your grandma?!?

 

[N8Nagel]

That was your grandma?!?

If it was Beethoven or other Angry German Guys quite likely! How do you think I ended up here?

 

[Almonds]

You should be able to select any combination of airport express from your iPhone. I can. I have three airport expresses. I also have two apple TVs hooked into the network. And if you have two Apple computers playing in the house, someone else could be listening to something completely differently, with different volume levels. Wonderful integration! I’ve been doing this for about 7 years.

Tell me how to select any combination of airport express from music playing from the phone. You can't do this as far as I know. It can be done with music streaming from iTunes coming from a computer, but not from the iphone itself. So, for example if I'm playing pandora on my phone, I can not select more than one zone at a time. If I'm wrong, tell me how, I would love to know how to do it.

I've found work-arounds using an imac or airfoil software, but I don't think there is a way to do it natively with just an iphone.

 

[BilboBaggins]

iTunes streaming is what I meant. I almost never play from my phone. I put the MP3s on there to save space. But I have a 12 TB NAS on my network with about 40,000 Apple lossless songs on it. Why would I use the phone music centre when the iPhone app and iTunes give me much better control and much more variety. My only complaint is that their randomizer doesn’t really do random.

 

[BilboBaggins]

The iPhone music player doesn’t seem to have the same functionality as iTunes has. If it is iTunes, it is a stripped down version of it.

 

[Almonds]

iTunes streaming is what I meant. I almost never play from my phone. I put the MP3s on there to save space. But I have a 12 TB NAS on my network with about 40,000 Apple lossless songs on it. Why would I use the phone music centre when the iPhone app and iTunes give me much better control and much more variety. My only complaint is that their randomizer doesn’t really do random.

That's cool that that works for you, but some people use Spotify, Pandora, or Tidal just to name a few. And with these, like I stated above, you can not do multiple zones.

Another reason why you might want to do it from your phone is so when guests are visiting, they can also tap into your system and play music without plugging things in.

Just because you haven't found a use for something, doesn't mean others haven't.

 

[Almonds]

If anyone does want to do multiple zones from the phone's music sources, Chromecast can do this. Also, Apple states that the new airplay 2 will have this capability in the very near future. But, the old hardware like the airport expresses I mentioned will not work with airplay 2. Either a 4th generation AppleTv or the new homepods or other new 3rd party hardware will have this capability.

But I was mainly trying to tell people about what you can do now for less than $50 per room for whole home audio.

 

[illinoisteve]

Henry Morgan had a comedy album with spoof advertisements for audio systems that went well beyond stereo, the fashion (some thought a mere fad) of the time. The third option was a kind of whole-house audio you might not have thought of. It consisted of a gigantic down-turned speaker. Once it was set up, you had your house built inside it.

 

[E-Stat]

That's cool that that works for you, but some people use Spotify, Pandora, or Tidal just to name a few. And with these, like I stated above, you can not do multiple zones.

There are many approaches to this question. My library is FLAC based (have little use for iTunes) and use LMS feeding different kinds of streamers around the house and in the garage.

 

[Almonds]

What is LMS?

 

[Almonds]

I use FLACs as well, but to be able to stream to multiple zones simultaneously using the setup I have, I convert them to Apple Lossless first.

 

[E-Stat]

What is LMS?

Logitech Media Server. A free software application originally developed for their products that resides on your PC server, laptop or even NAS. It supplies either music or video content to a wide choice of renderers. It supports virtually every digital format today so that you can play mixed content in your environment. I can listen to internet radio or comingle content from my library and that of Tidal HIFI.

In my case, I use a microRendu in the main music system, a Raspberry PI based unit in the garage, iPeng app on iPad for bedroom and Roku video players in the HT and bedroom systems.

 

[Almonds]

Logitech Media Server. A free software application originally developed for their products that resides on your PC server, laptop or even NAS. It supplies either music or video content to a wide choice of renderers. It supports virtually every digital format today so that you can play mixed content in your environment.

In my case, I use a microRendu in the main music system, a Raspberry PI based unit in the garage, iPeng app on iPad for bedroom and two Roku video players.

Cool! you just introduced me to at least 3 new things in that post!

 

[BilboBaggins]

That's cool that that works for you, but some people use Spotify, Pandora, or Tidal just to name a few. And with these, like I stated above, you can not do multiple zones.

Another reason why you might want to do it from your phone is so when guests are visiting, they can also tap into your system and play music without plugging things in.

Just because you haven't found a use for something, doesn't mean others haven't.

Oh, I use the iPhone music player, just not at home. And it is no problem for guests who are on my network to play wirelessly. Mind you, I try to discourage my kids from playing death metal or trance on my systems when I’m here. And since they’ve all moved out, no problem!

I did once have iTunes running on my NAS, but stopped a few years ago, and haven’t gone back there. I’m playing cds, Records, and tapes more than anything else these days, when once, I used iTunes over airport express exclusively. I must be regressing...

 

[E-Stat]

Cool! you just introduced me to at least 3 new things in that post!

I cannot be more enthusiastic about the Raspberry PI platform. It is a small, powerful computer you can buy for $40. It supports a wide range of audio options, some of which are quite cheap while others which are superior and still don't break the bank. Mine uses an Allo DigiOne digital board and linear power supply (or cell phone charger battery based) driving an external Music Hall DAC 25.3.

Total cost of PI, case, power supply and digital board around $200.