A whole-house sound system is an increasingly popular solution. It is no longer associated with luxury as more and more people decide to have a multi-room audio system. See how to design it.
These are audio-video systems, which can broadcast to many rooms simultaneously. They have been used in places such as stores for a very long time. However, they can be integrated with elements of a smart home, which is why they are more and more willingly installed by private individuals. There are wireless and wired systems available on the market.
When installing a wired system, most often the process of making it is entrusted to professional companies. They talk to the client about their expectations and, based on those expectations, prepare a preliminary design and cost estimate
If the customer likes the proposal presented by the company, installers make a special cable infrastructure. This includes speaker cables for all zones, or rooms, in the house. Next, the installation of the Internet network is checked or done. After that, speakers are installed and in the next stage, the system is armed with amplifiers, zone players and audio servers.
The advantage of a wireless multi-room audio system is that you can design it yourself. It also does not require you to install special cables, as in most such cases, the operation of multi-room audio systems is based on connecting devices using a Wi-Fi network that already exists in the home.
The simplest multi-room connections can be achieved via Bluetooth, but they are very limited. Google Chromecast is worth recommending. If all devices are marked “Chromecast built-in” and are connected to the same network, they can communicate wirelessly, in effect creating a wireless multiroom network. This allows you to connect devices from different brands together
This is a very big advantage of this method, because many manufacturers have their own proprietary multiroom solutions, which limit the possibility of connecting devices only to those of a given brand.
A multiroom audio system is very simple to use. Basic settings and playback options, such as changing the volume, rewinding songs or pausing, can be adjusted thanks to apps, which are mostly available on Android and iOS
The biggest advantage of a multi-room system is that a completely different song can play in every room of the house – or on the contrary, the same song everywhere. It all depends on the user’s preferences.
Multi-room audio systems are devices and solutions that have been available on the market for many years. They are still being developed and that is why more and more people decide to use them. Not only are they easy to use, as we can control sound throughout the house with a single app, but they are also easy to connect devices to each other
Wireless connectivity applies not only to speakers, but also to music sources. With an application installed on a smartphone, for example, we can transfer music from YouTube or Spotify, files on a computer, and even vinyl records – if a turntable has such an option.
The most automated systems have the ability to set a specific song on the alarm clock at a given time or automatically turn on music when you enter the room.
Main photo: Steve Harvey/unsplash.com
