submission by Noel Andrews – I like the idea of Sonos but for me the cost is prohibitive. Being nearly entirely a Mac household I’ve utilized an airport express for a few months now and with the release of the iPod Touch and the discovery of Remote friend seeds of a service were planted. checked out on to find out how I put these products together to create my own budget priced whole house audio solution.
I now have a Mac server (currently an iBook, but I will graduate to a Mac small soon to be the primary server including home Automation and file serving for XBMC) running Remote Buddy, an iPod Touch for manage and a number of airport Expresses around the house. utilizing the touch I can choose the tracks, search the library, playlists make playlists on the fly (once I discover how), view album art and make any number of modifications and controls from anywhere in the house (Many much more capabilities with other apps but that’s all I’m using).
Remote friend interfaces with nearly any application on the Mac and lets you fully customise the controls and menus you see, it can utilize a range of remotes including the Wii controller!
Airport expresses in each essential space linked to powered speakers (and in the case of the kitchen area a set of ipod travel speakers, just to give me another zone) the system works great.
For the lounge I have a full Mordaunt short 5.1 configuration from a Marantz amp, for the bedroom a set of AE Acoustics powered 2.1 speakers which for the money are excellent. much more zones to find soon – difficult in a little 2 bed terraced house!
Shortcomings of the service so far are the inability to choose several speakers from within Remote Buddy, this is down to the several speakers choice within iTunes not being applescriptable at present.
One workaround for this is to utilize Airfoil with Remote friend however this implies you can’t choose speakers by name so not perfect. My choice at present is to have regional manage in each space of the speakers whether volume manage or on/off switch and leave iTunes permanently linked to all speakers. and indeed you’ve guessed it the next shortcoming is the inability (at present) to have different streams to different rooms. As it’s just me in the house utilizing this it won’t be a big issue however would restrict things for others, sure there’s a method somehow, I imagine running several copies of remotebuddy/itunes on online servers or similar would achieve but not pretty!
So…for a first phase it’s great for me, won’t fit all but shows that if the goal is to listen to music in several zones without several sources then it is possible for extremely sensible money.
Costs for me:
Server: zero so far, utilizing a soon to be offered on eBay ibook but will eventually be a Mac small however this will be far much more than just for audio ~£200
Controller: iPod Touch – £150 (New York although Dixons tax complimentary was extremely close!)
Software: Remote friend – 20 Euro
Zones: airport express – £65
Speakers: Acoustic energy speakers – £90
Any concerns feel complimentary to drop me a line and extremely available to suggestions on anything much more I can do from those much more in the know!!! I also have Audio hijack pro recording my preferred Radio shows and adding them to ITunes immediately so they’re there when I want them with the touch.
Share this:
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Email
More
WhatsApp
Print
Skype
Tumblr
Telegram
Pocket