I would like a set up for 3 rooms – the kitchen and dining room would have a small pair of speakers and then the lounge a larger set for the odd occassion that I play music loudly (I’ve got Mission floorstanders in mind for a variety of reasons). The option to add extra rooms in future would be good.

I’d like to have DAB, maybe a hard-drive on the system to transfer CDs to, a potential link to the TV / Freesta box, plus a USB for phones. The main unit will be in the lounge and I don’t mind wired speakers in there.

I doubt that my requirements are particularly complex, but I’m not sure about the speakers in the kitchen and dinign room – can I get wireless speakers?

Any recommendations for a particular system would be appreciated, I like the look of the Marantz ones but also the Brennan as it can act as a music store.

Sonos?

We have airports in the bedroom, kitchen, living room, gym, conservatory and garden – each connected to a set of speakers. Simply a case of using the phone/ipad to select where to send the music (stored on a mac upstairs or from spotify/tune in)

Probably will get looked down on by the purists, but a nice easy solution for us.

Does Sonos give me the wireless speaker capability?

Am I right in thinking that something like this

http://www.richersounds.com/product/mini-hi-fi/marantz/mcr610-melody-media/mara-mcr610-wht

Will allow me to stream music wirelessly to it, but it will still need wired speakers?

Airport looks a bit expensive as each room requires a port and speakers?

You can use wireless sonos speakers or sonos connect to an amp of you choice or a sonos connect amp to speakers. Its not cheap though but works very well.

If you want everything to play the same thing at once then Sonos is the way forward, if you’re happy to let people control what they want to play in each zone then airplay could be a cheaper way to set it up.

You can get airplay to stream to a client running on a computer which will then send it to all airplay zones or use the apple remote to control a computer running itunes but it’s not the nicest solution.

If you like Sonos (multi-room sync’d music) then there is a cheaper alternative..

3x Raspberry Pi’s – £30 ea (+£20 ea for HQ DAC)
piCorePlayer – Free
HP Microserver – £120
iPeng 7 App – £5.99

They connect to your current audio equipment which means you can buy whatever you want. I’ve been running this for a couple of months and it works just as well as Sonos.

We have airports in the bedroom

Mind you don’t leave the landing light on.

You should ban yourself for that one.

I love the smell of astroturf in the morning

somouk – Member

If you want everything to play the same thing at once then Sonos is the way forward, if you’re happy to let people control what they want to play in each zone then airplay could be a cheaper way to set it up.

Sonos will do both of these. ^^