Wireless Home Music Systems

aguk · 17th December 2006

Given my digital music collection has hit 300GB now I am looking for a better way of using this throughout the house in an easier way. At the moment all just done via PC.

The Sonos system looks, well to be honest, awesome http://www.sonos.com

Anyone use this or have any opinions on a different/better system?

monaghan · 17th December 2006

The UK Home Automation community seem to rate these http://www.slimdevices.com/ quite highly.

Provida · 17th December 2006

Depends on how many rooms you want to listen to music in and how much you want to spend really - the sky's the limit.

Me? Very minimalistic hi-fi in the lounge and a Roku Soundbridge M1000 (looks like it's been replaced by the 1001 now).

JonWitte · 17th December 2006

Not tried the others, but the cd3o is pretty good (Windows only, mind)

aguk · 18th December 2006

Thing with these systems is they seem to all require the PC to be on and working.

I am after something that can be used without a PC. For the example the Sonos can work from a NAS directly.

Provida · 18th December 2006

I'm probably going to get one of these , as a uPnP server it's compatible with the Roku.

4dhosting · 18th December 2006

I think B&O make something that streams from a hard drive on the hi-fi itself to various speakers around the house which can all listen to separate files/stations/etc

Although being B&O it'll have a hefty price tag!

I think I saw something by Phillips that was similar though, not sure

jamster · 18th December 2006

I've just had delivered a squeezebox. I've had it out the box to play with for a couple of days now and I've been very impressed.

http://www.slimdevices.com/

It works (which is more than can be said for my old Netgear MP101), it's 802.11g not b, it's also a wireless bridge for ethernet devices, you can control it via the excellent Slimserver web interface too (including album art etc), it syncs to itunes nicely but doesn't *need* to, you can have more than one of them and they will sync and let you do multiroom audio, and this includes the 'softsqueeze' client. Oh, and it's quite pretty.

Slimdevices have just been bought out by Logitech and it seems like they've committed to supporting them for a while (Roku seem to be focussing more on niche markets like display signs etc now).

The Sonos looks very nice too - but the geek in me prefers to slowly build my own equivalent with a mac mini as the 'music controller', some decent speakers, squeezeboxes as the client, and (at some point) a wifi pda to control it all (not that using either my macbook or the remote control is a bad way to control it

I had excellent service from Jon at http://www.ripcaster.co.uk/. His distributor screwed him, so I ended up getting it from Dabs, but it was more expensive than ripcaster and he seemed like a very good guy to deal with (he phoned me at 7:30pm on a friday evening to process my refund!). He mentioned he also does home demos of the sonos. As ever when I recommend somewhere YMMV

Jeff - Exceed · 24th December 2006

I heard that there's quite a lot of latency when it comes to wireless music transmitters, not sure on the quality but make sure your walls arn't too solid :P

Provida · 24th December 2006

Latency isn't an issue as the receiver generally buffers a few seconds ahead, so if there is a problem there's time for it to sort it out before you can notice.

The quality is only as good as the source material. Personally I think that encoding in lossless quality to play on an "average" or even a relatively upmarket setup is a waste of time and disk space, the benefits of doing so would only be apparent on high-spec audiophile kit.

markcastle · 24th December 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by aguk

The Sonos system looks, well to be honest, awesome

Wow... expensive.

JamieBeeston · 24th December 2006

I've just bought a new Apartment on top of Discovery Dock and had it spec'd with a B&O system, once you've added a few rooms, some video display screens and a few controllers it starts getting un-cheap, but awesome fun

Which system to go for depends really on what you're looking to get from it, and how much you're realistically looking to spend.. you don't tend to find bespoke home install systems on eBay :|

J

philb · 25th December 2006

Bought? The king of renting has bought something? :P

JamieBeeston · 25th December 2006

Cheeky, I've bought and own several houses.. the whole rent debate was purely philopsophical as opposed to what I actually did..

Merry Christmas anyway!

Jeff - Exceed · 25th December 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Provida

Latency isn't an issue as the receiver generally buffers a few seconds ahead, so if there is a problem there's time for it to sort it out before you can notice.

Ah, makes sense! Shame wireless network cards can't buffer ahead