New UK HA project - advice required for equipment please

["teddykitchebs" <andrew.tedford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi to all from me, Teddy - new member.

I joined the group because I'm real keen to get my home set-up
sorted but I'm not sure where to start.

I've got HAL2000 which I wish to use as the centre of my home
automation and most importantly for music distribution through the
house.

Background - I have the PC in my upstairs spare room.  In my living
room I have a good quality audio amp (yamaha dspA1) and 5.1 speaker
setup.  In the bedroom I have a standard amp with 2 speakers.

So really what I want is to get top quality sound from my PC to the
two amps - I'd really like to be able to have them both on at the
same time but if there's any kind of sound delay or problems then I
can live with being able to turn one or the other on or off (using
hal2000 appliance module to the power).

So, back to the point, what kind of sound card should I get for the
PC that will send good sound.  And what else do I need ? signal
booster? pre-amp? amp? cable?

I've asked before on other message boards but I get very general
answers like - 'use cat5', or 'use wireless'. See, the nice thing is
that I've got the budget for it, itching to get it sorted, but no
idea where to start.

I was thinking maybe the sound card would be 200 or 300+ pounds, no
idea what else.  If all I need is a bit of wire, great!! but if the
total thing costs me a thousand or bit more then then that's ok.

I've seen some whole house audio solutions but they have control
boxes on walls, remote controls, Ir distribution, etc, I dont think
I need any of that (?!) as I'll do much of it through hal.

Oh, the yamaha amp has "six Toslink optical digital inputs, three
RCA digital inputs, and one RCA AC-3 RF digital input" and of course
regular phono input.  The other amp is a bog standard Arcam amp.

If anyone can give me some pointers I'll be eternally grateful.

Kind regards,

Teddy

(sorry the post is a bit long!)