Multi room Audio

[hendo9127]

I have 14 zones of which 8 are audio only.  I would like to be able to listen to different things in different rooms a the same time.  I have been doing some reading and it sounds like the best option is a squeezebox but it cannot play different things in two different rooms at the same time.  All my rooms have speakers in ceiling wired back to my equipment room.

Can I get 8 squeezeboxs and plug them all into a 16 channel (8 zone) stereo amp and have the lmce core recognize all eight and be able to assign each to a room? I will have an orbiter near by each room to control it all and do not care about being able to see the read out on the squeezebox. All the squeezeboxs would be placed in the equipment room.

Can a core or media director capture audio from a receiver and send it to a squeezebox? ie take my satellite radio input on my receiver connected to a core or md and send it to one of the audio zones?

Thanks for you help.

Jeff
 

[tschak909]

um. I'm able to send the same stream to all of the squeezeboxes and media directors in my house, simply by selecting them on the floorplan. It's not lock step perfect in sync, but it does work.

As for multi-zone amplifiers, the setup of such equipment is insanely complex... on top of which, we need users to build templates for multi-zone amplifiers..

honestly? just use a squeezebox.

-Thom

[jspeckman]

Yes, 8 squeezeboxes should do what you want with either synced audio or different audio in each room.  You might want to look at the squeezebox reciever which recently became available.  It has no display and would be perfect for sticking in an equipment room.  Your setup sounds similar to what I'm slowly building, though I'll probably go with separate amps due to less up front cost and I can just get equipment as I need it.  I'm also using mechanical volume controls in each room to simplify my system.

Sorry I can't help with your audio capture question though.

Jason

[niz23]

rodercot.

My plan for this is to get a dumb rs-232 8x8 switcher and then run the zone 2 out of my rcvr into the 4,6,8 zone switcher and then issue source commands to the rcvr's zone two output and then switch the outputs on the multi-zone box from that command. I want to ofcourse add other sources to the switching box external of the recvr supplying source 1.  I know there are some inexpensive russound etc boxes out there that will do just this. but a 8 source 8 zone box can be had for relatively cheap and then an actual 16 channel digital amp are getting cheaper all the time infact I think I saw a build your own kit on the net a few weeks back where you could buy each module (channel) separately then they give you the specs for the control circuit and pwr(toroid requirements) and each module is linked together as you add and they are all rs232. If I recall they were 50W/CH into 8 stable to 2 ohms. which is pretty remarkable for digital. I cannot remember the THD specs off hand.

 Regards,

 Dave

Do you happen to have a link to this multi-channel amp?
I´m using simple USB->2-ch audio soundcard together with squeezeslave. Works pretty well. Don´t think it´s possible to sync audio between tha output channel. I might be wrong since I haven't actually tried yet.


/niz23

[tkmedia]

I am currently using the hauppauge MediaMvp as low cost squeezebox alternative. Lmce does not know the difference as far as i can tell.
It will not work out of the box currently, although I am trying to make them plug- n-play. At $85 a piece they are alot cheaper.



Tim

[bulek]

Hi,

maybe of some help :

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ESS_Expandable_Speaker_Selector_Switch

Regards,

Bulek...

[hendo9127]

Thank you all for you help.  I will go with multiple squeezeboxes.  The amp I am thinking of using is the Cinenova Grande 16-Channel:
http://www.earthquakesound.com/cng_16.htm
Anyone have any experience with this?

I also found that the Slimserver(Slimcenter) that runs on the Core can take a feed from Sirus Radio directly over the internet and feed it to any or all of the squeezeboxes.