Friend bought a house, wants whole house sound.

What does that mean? Good question.
- STEREO only no multichannel, and precision of the stereo image is not a big deal as she does not sit and intently listen to music by herself.
- Not every single room in the house, but in various rooms, out in a garage, outside (sheltered under a deck). At least in maybe the downstairs area some serious bass to crank up the Bee Gees or whatever. Other areas smaller speakers could be OK.
- Maybe some areas fixed, some areas covered maybe with portable speakers if there is such a thing. (Am I the only one who thinks it is ridiculous and a huge miss that there is no battery-powered Homepod?)
- Source pretty much Apple Music, and streams of KKJZ, KUSC, Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
- Has iPhone, iMac, iPad. So control over Airplay 2 seems very logical. But I have no idea what in the way of decent wireless speakers are available for that-or better yet are there any small Airplay 2 amps that can power passive speakers?
- As an alternative could you run Airplay into a Denon/Marantz and then run speakers on the HEOS ecosystem?
Other ideas/comments?

 

Watch this for 12 seconds.

 

Just like speakers, always buy the audio system first, house second!

That way you can see how much budget is left for the house!

 

Turn up the volume is what we do.

 

I have a Marantz HEOS-enabled avr and several Denon HEOS wireless speakers. The avr has a pre-out to an emotiva 8-channel amp that runs speakers in another room and outside, so I have a mix of wired and wireless. Previously, I had numerous Logitech Squeezebox devices that did the same thing. HEOS is probably a bit more stable, but I still have issues getting everything to work consistently in a whole-house environment. It’s more an issue with my network than an issue with the ecosystem.

My recommendation is if at all possible hardwire everything and not risk issues that can arise with relying on a wireless network.

I don’t use AirPlay, but I believe HEOS is airplay compatible. My HEOS wireless speakers have very good sound, which one would expect from the brand.

One other thing about HEOS: the app is awful. It’s the biggest complaint many users have about it. Given how much has been invested in the ecosystem, it’s surprising the interface is so poor.

 

If you don't plan on sitting down in front of the speakers, I think your friend should consider a quality pair of headphones.

 

Denon's Heos is a pretty nice platform for both streaming and for running whole-house music system.

I have Heos links connected to small stereos in rooms all over our house, and it allows me to play audio from any source in any room that I want to in any other room, in addition to streaming from numerous services as well as internet radio, or just a NAS. The Heos devices all connect to each other via either wifi or ethernet.

Apple music doesn't have built-in support. But Amazon, Tidal, Spotify, Pandora, deezer, napster, sound cloud, Rhapsody, local servers, I heart radio, and tune-in radio are all built in. The Series II devices also support airplay and blue-tooth connections, and this would allow for apple-music via i-phone as well, even if this isn't exactly the optimal way to run Heos.

 

Bang & Olufsen pretty much invented the multiroom/house sound back in the 80's. They will kit out your whole house....but at a cost....it wil not be cheap.

 

If I play music in the cellar, I can hear it in the attic.

 

That sounds almost like a RFP for a full SONOS deployment.

 

Just what I was thinking.

 

Denon HEOS or Sonos would likely be the best options here.

 

Wired speakers and distribution amps work great. You can also get wall mounted volume controls. Wiring can get complicated and expensive, though, especially if adding to an existing home. I'm guessing not many people do this anymore, except maybe in dedicated home theater rooms for surround sound.

For two-channel audio, wireless, wifi based solutions are taking over. Sonos kinda rules in this market. There are other proprietary solutions such as Denon/Marantz Heos mentioned above, Yamaha Musicast, Klipsch, etc. Another popular solution is Bluesound. You are stuck with the apps they come with. You will see many complaints about the apps, especially Heos. Sonos and Bluesound appear to have better apps, and Bluesound is more flexible in terms of configuration while Sonos is simpler.

There are a bunch of DIY solutions for tinkerers. Raspberry Pi computers with dac/amp "hats" are popular, inexpensive and work with a lot of free open source playback and phone/tablet remote apps. A PC based library/server with DLNA can also be used and is good for local files.

Anyway, the easy answer is Sonos. The more flexible route is Bluesound. Here's a pretty good guide to what's available off the shelf...

Multi-room Audio: Home Sound Systems, Whole House Audio

 

Good suggestion, but off-base since I should have said the listening cases are wandering through the house or cooking or cleaning. Maybe sitting one of various places reading. But she'll never be sitting intently listening to a stereo image (the one semi-exception being a fireplace where we'll put a TV over the top and it will need some kind of slim speakers next to it. And yes I am well aware of negatives to a TV over a fireplace so please don't threadcrap with that since she will not care and that's where the TV will go since, well, there is no other spot due to windows).

 

I'm only familiar with Sonos as a longtime industry player, who I think of as a maker of rather expensive speakers with rather small woofers for whole-house sound. Those have their own app? (apologies if someone posted about that). My friend is not technical, so the less stuff to figure out the better. How would one get from Apple Music (or maybe Spotify, since her kid uses that) or other iPhone streams to Sonos control? Receiver needed or not even? How does sound from the TV get there? (Note: all video will be through Roku TV apps,* no disc player or external sources).

*hmmm...are there Roku TV apps for Apple Music or Roku etc?

 

My concept about this was the D/M receiver would be Airplay 2, controlled from iPhone, and sending out to Heos speakers or amps with no need to bother with a Heos app at all except for setup. Am I correct, or WAY too blissful in my ignorance?

 

You might find this helpful:

HEOS device supporting AirPlay 2

I just checked to see which of my devices I could connect from my iphone using AirPlay. Consistent with the link above, only my Marantz streamer/CD player and network AVR show up on my phone when I try to connect. None of my 3 HEOS speakers appear. I am able to sync all those devices through HEOS.

 

Sonos is as easy to use as it comes.

 

Definitely a Sonos system as a first choice unless higher costs are a factor.

 

I think Bluesound is your best bet. Better app than HEOS and better sound than Sonos and wireless speakers are available as well. Range limitations may apply to the most distant areas if the place is very large, but otherwise you’ll be good to go.
Wearing headphones everywhere doesn’t do it for me!

 

The Sonos Play:1 are surprisingly effective performing the task they were designed for, which is streaming audio everywhere in the house for non audiophile users who are not gadgeteers or particularly found with tinkering. Of course, they can also be paired to together or with other Sonos models to for 2CH or MCH but they are definitively not targeted at discerning audiophiles.

They excel at what they do and are very easy to set up or control with the smartphone application. The Sonos app also support a wide range of streaming services and they are very well behaved DLNA clients. The iPhone app even has room correction which is not bad at all, or so I heard. Also lets face it: unless you want to open the incredibly never ending service call with your friend you are better off with something which is as simple as possible, widely known and well supported.

 

Doesn’t Sonos work on its own mesh network? That probably contributes to a more stable system if that’s the case. I’m constantly fighting my Internet/WiFi network (our internet provider choices in my neighborhood aren’t great at the moment). If I didn’t have some “must haves” that require going out of the Sonos ecosystem I probably would have switched by now, although I don’t know for sure if simply switching to Sonos would fix my particular problem.

To the OP: my wife has an aversion to anything technically challenging. I’ve tried to get her to use HEOS, but the first time she encountered a network-induced failure, she was out.

 

I've already been asked about changing the door locks . The reply I've formulated so far is "You know others that can do that; you don't know anyone else to do the audio.

 

And so it begins...

 

He should forget about it