RE: Whole House Audio Questions

[Shane Harrison <shane.harrison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Just to balance the posts a bit the other way - I am in favour of a
centralised approach myself (it is what I have).  I didn't want the clutter
of remote amplification, power supply issues, running speaker cables from
the ampin the room to the speakers etc for each room. It wasn't always
possible to mount the stuff in a ceiling cavity or in the wall where it is
accessible to avoid the clutter.  I also wasn't convinced the syncing of
MP3
players was rock solid - interested to hear from people who have
successfully achieved this.

It is also cheaper since I don't need a MP3 player per room since I can
switch the analog output to any amp.  Typically I only have max 2 or 3
players playing at one time.

I also didn't want to have to digitise every source I wanted to play there
or format conversion if the source is in a digital format the remote MP3
player didn't support.

For me it is background music and longish speaker cables are fine.  I have
also run speaker level output over CAT5 in a few cases :-)

I think my ideal would actually be an active speaker (amp built in) run
line
level (balanced) over normal CAT5 to it.  Of course still need to get power
to the amplifier.  Trouble is this solution is quite expensive.

Cheers
Shane

>
> 	I would also echo Stuarts post - having the digital, indeed true IP
> network distribution of audio using the Exstreamer preserves quality
and I
> would look to site each player at the needed end point rather than
> centrally. The volume management on the Exstreamer allows for this
running
> into an amplification 'brick'. There are many multizone amps available
and
> also pre-amps but they tend to be made for these high end markets
> and carry
> a price tag accordingly. Rotel used to make a 4 stereo zone amp
> (8 chanels)
> that was at a good price but not IR vol level adjustable.
> 	The thing you would have to think about more carefully is 'synching'
> audio across zones. The Slim players do this really well and AIUI
> so do the
> Exstreamers but I was a bit surprised to find this was an optional
extra
> feature and I only have one player so I havent tried it.
>