As I am getting closer to a point where I’ll be working on the house and doing a bit of construction, I’m now at a point where I need to start deciding on some pointed topics, and audio/sound is one of those. Over the past couple of years worth of perusing, I’d pretty much just gotten it in my head that I’d be buying Sonos and chalked that one up to ‘decision made.’ – However, this AM I woke up to find my phone suggesting I go read some new hate over in r/Sonos - and boy, there sure seems to be a lot going around right now (mostly, but not entirely, at their app).
So, my TL;DR question #1’s is this - for those of you that have Sonos & HA for a whole-home, or at least multi-room setup - are you happy? For those of you that are still happy, and don’t have Sonos, what does your deployment look like? For both, what don’t you like / what do you wish you had done differently, or just had that you don’t have now?
I’ve lived and moved on from previous life where I had to have the biggest and baddest of amps, tuners, etc. Wired everything - WIRED EVERYTHING. I’m past that. I want functional and enjoyable. I was originally considering wireless room speakers for places like the Kitchen, non-primary bedrooms, other spaces, outside, etc. This house was wired (poorly) with a “whole home” speaker wiring, if you could call it that - so I do have some spots where I could wire back audio if it makes sense. I’m also building a second story (concrete/brick house), so I could theoretically wire ceiling speakers fairly easily for the downstairs. I’m just fairly sure I don’t want to, or need to. That said - if I had to or got convinced that I should, this topic would be a nonstranger to me. Separately, I did have a Nuovo/le-grand in a previous property I was renting recently, and it wasn’t bad - just seemed like it was over-engineered and likely over-priced for the end result.
Question 2 - Knowing that I’m building a second story, what pro-tips should I take onboard now and save myself pain later? The new floor will both be detached and attached to the main property - what I mean is that I will be segregating utilities and providing a full second entrance should I ever want to properly rent the space as a property in its own right - with the intention to still have a secured passage between the two via spiral staircase with a security hatch. The actual intention is that it will be used as a higher-end (amenities & location) holiday rental for peak season and simply used as part of my main property for the remainder of the year.
a) I am a very unhappy person who bought Sonos speakers (as well as Ikea Branded ones) only 3 weeks ago. Primarily to use with HA
b) In the period since then there has been a catastrophic app “update” which has rendered the system almost unusable (NAS not accessible, crashes all the time), huge swathes of relevant functionality disappeared.
c) The issue is also more important because of the “no care” and somewhat duplicitous attitude displayed by Sonos - for example they could easily have made available previous versions of the apps on Android and Apple to allow backgrading of disabled systems - but they refused to do that.
d) Also they have a history of similar stunts which make older but perfectly usable expensive hardware into bricks.
e) One issue is that some of the HA aspects of the Sonos integration require a functioning app - for example it is easy to access stuff on favorites selected in Sonos and stuff on NAS selected as favorite - but that aspect of the app is impossible to use. I’m not really clear how much the integration will suffer if the app is never fixed properly (which seems possible). It is also useful for folk in the house to be able to use the app independently. What we have now is severely crippled.
f) I’m considering returning all of my recently purchased hardware as essentially defective given the software and hardware are an integrated whole.
Strangely, IKEA seem in the strongest position to bring this arrogance to a halt.
I use RPi Zeros with a cheap HiFiBerry DAC and a SnapCast client installed and then i have a SnapCast server with 3 MPD channels running.
The RPi Zeros are connected to whatever device I already had in the room, like internet radios in the bed room, mplifier in the living room and a tive speakers in the kitchen.
I can do everything a Sonos setup can and I have extra possibilities like a full decked amplifier for home theater or traditional internet radio in the bed room.
The setup was way cheaper than Sonos because I could reuse some of the gear I had.
I had poor WiFi in one of the corners of my home, so I just added ab USB NIC and got it cabled.
Cheers @aubreyz - I didn’t realize how tied in the App still is, even with HA integration. This is good insight and pretty much inline with what i’d woken up to & have been reading. I can empathize with your current situation - this one might have saved me making a huge mistake in the near future - I’ll have to keep an eye out on the landscape as things progress.
Thanks @WallyR ! I’d all but forgotten about SnapCast - I won’t get the benefit of being able to reuse much kit, but at least WiFi won’t be much of an issue as it’ll be a greenfield install for that. I like the idea of being able to keep music to WiFi and if I go another route, having more important audio (TV/Movie/etc) being able to use a different medium - at least in places like a living room.
How do you find the Pi upkeep? Is it about as close to ‘set it & forget it’ as possible? While tinkering & system maintenance isn’t foreign to me, I’m done with the lab life and full-time SysAd (at home) jobby (outside of hobbies & new interests).
I fought some with the build root setup in the beginning, but after the first one was successful setup, then the rest took like 1 minute each.
I have since updated the build root setup, because USB ethernet was not included in it and that took like 5 minutes.
I have not thought about the RPis in other situations, because they just run.
No restarts have been necessary and I had a blackout once after which they just started up and ran as before.
I have installed a SSH service on them, but I have never had to use it.
Opposite you I go for wired connections wherever possible.
It is more stable and I prefer to use it only when I need it and then it is nice to not have too much to cause connection issues.
There’s also this which was just launched this month. Hopefully that’ll help you narrow down which solution is more compatible with HA going forward.
I tend to second @WallyR’s comment above though. If you’re building an entire floor from scratch, it’ll cost you pennies (relatively) to pull a few speaker cables as backup.
That way even if you change your mind in the future, at least you have an old-school fallback to go on.
Yeah - if the entire house was being built from the ground up, i’d definitely go wired, and for the bits that are yet to be built, I’ll ensure that the options are made available for whatever I might need.
I know I’m going to get a lot of flak from my geo neighbors on this one, but while “yes” it’s technically easy to cut my concrete walls and run new wires everywhere - it’s a royal pain in the hole, and I’ve never gotten used to gluing cable guides all over the place. I will most likely wire the living room for a proper setup, possibly outside - but the rest of the rooms will settle for something self-powered.
Also, cheers @Rudd-O for the second vote on Snap, or Squeeze. I’ll be looking at some sort of a proof of concept on this front in the coming weeks.
Aye, the parts I am building from scratch will definitely have proper conduit and will be built for any future needs that I might foresee. My main problem at the moment is the already built main structure. A previous remodeling of the single-story house has already moved & finished walls, floors, and fixed furniture. Aside from the living room, the rest will have to survive with something self-powered & wireless for each of the smaller areas.
Edit: Nifty timing on that MusicAssistant - definitely going to give it a look.
Wired is not always convenient or even possible - but where it is, always use wired connections !
Wi-fi has limited number of channels, limited bandwidth (even latest wi-fi 6) which is shared, interference (from neighbours and other devices), and because radio is a broadcast medium any receiver within range can listen in. With more streaming and high-bandwith applications (like streamed movies and security cameras) the radio frequency gets congested, which slows down communications.
Each wired connection operates at full speed without interference and without eavesdropping.
About a year ago I was looking at different multiroom solutions to replace my 6 chromecast speakers with a more robust solution. I tried quite a few different setups (sonos, heos, ma, lms, alexa echos, bluesound) and finally ended up with a mix of wiim streamers and linkplay speakers. I’m really happy with it, but it was a long journey. I guess I have very specific needs for my audio setup.
If you don’t mind tinkering and want a lot of flexibility, I can fully recommend wiim streamers.
I’ll check it out, thanks!