What's the best "whole house music solution" for a non-audiophile?

rblnr said:

Both of the zone player head units, ZP90/120 can work via Ethernet

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Thank you...!

What's the best "whole house music solution" for a non-audiophile?



Quite simple: a completely separate stereo in every room you might listen in.

Who in their right mind is going to expect everyone in the "WHOLE HOUSE" to want to listen to the same thing????????

GaryProtein said:

What's the best "whole house music solution" for a non-audiophile?



Quite simple: a completely separate stereo in every room you might listen in.

Who in their right mind is going to expect everyone in the "WHOLE HOUSE" to want to listen to the same thing????????

Click to expand...

Gary

maybe I didn't catch the joke but this is exactly what's possible with SONOS . From the same HDD, SONOS is capable of playing different pieces in each zone. Or from the Internet or from any PC or MAC connected to the House Wi-Fi or even from a Line level source if connected to SONOS. The Zones are independent but can be grouped , say for a party.
Let's assume you have an house with 5 Different PC and a NAS with Music. Say three kids and Parents and many rooms.
Well Room 1 listen to Music from the NAS
Room 2 music from the NAS but different music/cut/song
Room 3 listen from the music on its own PC,
Room 4 can listen to Music from PC in Room 3 but not the same piece as person in Room 3 is listening to
Room 5 Listens to Music from the Internet
Room 6 listen to PC in Room 1 and make a playlist that has music from the Internet, Room 2 and the NAS
Room 7 can listen to music on a dad's IPhone
Room 8 is listening to the Internet as well but different song from different station
Room 9 is listening from a Linel Level source, say an SACD player
Al zones can be controlled from a PC , a MAC, an iPhone or iPad or iTouch or Android smartphones or tablet or SONOS own Wireless controller (I don't think they're selling many of these)

.. You get the gist .. All of the above simultaneously ... I don't know the exact maximum number of zones at least 12.. IOW a lot. Man I sound like a SONOS salesperson , a satisfied user though

I'm happy with a DNLA-compliant AVR with network connection multi-zone capability.

Cheers!

GaryProtein said:

What's the best "whole house music solution" for a non-audiophile?



Quite simple: a completely separate stereo in every room you might listen in.

Who in their right mind is going to expect everyone in the "WHOLE HOUSE" to want to listen to the same thing????????

Click to expand...

I can't imagine folks running up, down and around shuttling software. LOL.

I chose Sonos precisely because every independent system/zone can play different music from a central server.

rblnr said:

Second issue is as pointed out above: do you want to play different music streams from the same source. If so, you must go Sonos.

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I do this every day with my Apple TV2. What you say is true for the airport express, but it is not true for the Apple TV. I think this is a very common understanding, primarily because Apple sells the ATV2 for TV viewing primarily. The ability to use it as a music zone player is sort of a subsidiary function as far as they are concerned.

The main drawback of the Apple TV2 and 3 is that your music is sampled and streamed as 44.1 kHz and then resampled to 48 kHz, whereas the airport express is capable of bit-perfect playback of redbook.

wgscott said:

I do this every day with my Apple TV2. What you say is true for the airport express, but it is not true for the Apple TV. I think this is a very common understanding, primarily because Apple sells the ATV2 for TV viewing primarily. The ability to use it as a music zone player is sort of a subsidiary function as far as they are concerned.

The main drawback of the Apple TV2 and 3 is that your music is sampled and streamed as 44.1 kHz and then resampled to 48 kHz, whereas the airport express is capable of bit-perfect playback of redbook.

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are you running a different Apple TV in every room and stream it from a server?

I have two Apple TV2 units. I can play two different things (music, movies, etc) on them simultaneously, while playing a third thing on my mac mini server (or more commonly, nothing). In my bedroom, I control it headlessly with an iPad running Apple's remote.

It seems to buffer much better when used this way than it does when played in the way you would stream to and airport express.