DIY Multi-room audio server

ewadescott

Estimable
Mar 4, 2014
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Hello all.

So I have a dream. That dream is to have a home media server that can be controlled remotely (tablets, smartphones) that is also capable of serving media to different zones of the house. The goal here is to be able to have four to five different zones that can have the same music simultaneously (for a party) or individually (for the family).

How would a person achieve this? I understand how to do this for one set of speakers, but I'm at a loss of what hardware (connection-wise) or software I would need to accomplish this. Does XMBC have multi-room solutions? How would the computer be able to connect to that many speaker systems at once? Thanks for any help you can give!
 
If you want to do an audio server then SONOS is the easiest way to accomplish this. Local music files can reside on any computers or NAS drives on the network. Sonos has free apps for all your devices. You would need a ConnectAmp for each zone. This will power up to four speakers. If you cannot wire one of the ConnectAmps to your router than you would also need a Bridge. They also make the Connect for use with existing amplifiers, stereo or home theater systems. They also make the Play series which includes a one box solution (speaker, amp, and connect in one box). Dead easy to setup and use. Excellent tech support too.
www.Sonos.com