EDIT: Sorry to hijack your thread, but it seemed to be a waste to create a new thread to talk about the same thing. If this causes trouble, I could create a new thread!

No worries, mate!  We're talking about the same thing, so it's hardly a hijacking.

m3freak,

each Orbiter (the control interface you see on the MD) can control each and every room in your installation.

Cool!  I wasn't sure if I could direct music to be played on a particular MD and sound card on that MD from all the other orbiters in the system.

m3freak, if you are getting a multi-zone/multi-source amp and putting it in the basement where all your speaker runs terminate and having MDs in each room remember you will need to run line-level cables back to your basement for the MD sound card outputs.
Doing all your MDs like that also limits your sound to stereo - assuming you don't have an in-wall/in-ceiling 5.1 setup.

I was planning on using the ceiling speakers only for music/radio (i.e. whole home).  This way I could use multiple sound cards in the core or MD, which would also be in the basement.  Basically, one MD could be dedicated to running the audio system.  In this scenario, stereo would be fine.

I know this partially goes back to the old way of doing things, but for listening to music/radio in various parts of the house, it should work out well.

As for individual bedrooms, the MDs there will be connected to PC speakers or televisions.  I'll most likely have ceiling speakers in the master bedroom (I already have speaker cable run to the master bath).  I may use an amp in the bedroom for the bedroom ceiling speakers, but the bathroom speakers are going to be connected to an amp and core or MD in the basement.

Either approach is possible. If you centralise all of your amplification you can then feed your amps with audio from device like Squeezeboxes or Squeezeslaves (soft versions of a Squeezebox...see the wiki). If you decentralise all of your Amplification into each room or zone and have local MD's or Squeezeboxes in those zones then you gain some flexibility (each room has its own sound source for example) but you have to find space for the equipment in each room or zone (and potentially the noise of the devices themselves if they are not passivley cooled).

Flexibility is nice, but not at the expense of having to find an amp for every pair of ceiling speakers and then somewhere to install the things!  So, I'm going to stick with my "running all speaker wire to the basement" idea.  I lose some flexibility, but if I can get an amp with enough zones, at least I'd get some of that flexibility back.

Would I be able to control the MD connected to the amp/receiver from a different MD?  For example, if I'm in the family room and I want to play music in the living room, could I use the family room MD to tell the MD in the basement to play music in only the living room zone? From what I understand, I could with multiple sound cards (e.g. USB sound cards) connected to the MD in the basement.

Either approach is doable...and its possible to intermix the the approaches in a single installation too (just to confuse you!!)...some zones having centralised hardware and some in-room hardware.

This is good to know.  I can see this happening in my home.

All the best


Andrew
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I'm planning LinuxMCE awesomeness for my new home.  I'd like to setup whole home audio, but I'm not sure how to go about it.

At first I was going to run all the audio cables to the basement, hook them up to a multi-zone amp, and then hook the amp up to a MD (and a receiver to the MD, as well).  But, now I'm thinking that perhaps I should run every set of ceiling speakers to an individual MD in that room/location.

In my mind, option 1 is the easiest and simplest.  I have seen option 2 being recommended here.  If two really is the best way to go, which amps are you guys using?  And, WHY is option 2 better than 1?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.