Messages

awesome!  thank you.  I am on the hunt now.

Hi.  I am new here and new to linuxmce.  I am in the process of building htpc and I have been reading a lot about this software and it seems to be able to do so much.  I have been scouring the web in search for a definitive answer for whole house audio.  i recently dormer-ed my house and wired it up for whole house.  i was planning on getting a system like nuvo or russound and building a media server.  i think building an htpc with linuxmce would be more functionality and cheaper.

my house is wired up with 5 zones.  each zone has a cat5 and speaker wire home run to where the htpc will be along with my other audio devices.  i plan to use an ir blaster to control the external devices through the htpc using my phone as an orbiter.  little by little i plan to purchase in wall programmable keypads that are PoE capable and use these as orbiters in each room. 

I want to be sure I can accomplish this before I purchase the parts and actually build the system.  i need some way of distributing 5 audio streams simultaneously to an external amp that will send to each room.  can i stream mp3, radio, Sirius and a cd all playing on separate devices into the htpc and route them to their desired zone?

I am not a computer programmer but am very knowledgeable in computers, networking and home audio.  i also pick up on things pretty quick so if someone can point me in the right direction I am sure I can figure the rest out.  I just need a staring point. 

i have read some people using 7.1 surround sound cards, installing 2 of them and splitting the outputs into zones.  i have also seen the delta sound cards that have multi inputs and outputs but i dont know the logistics or if this is the way i need to go.  i also plan to add ip cameras, and lighting control but i think i have all that figured out. 

Any Help is Greatly Apreciated

Thanks
Michael