Most music will be played off of PC, including CD though PC, and internet radio. My own music is kept on a networked storage so it is accessible to any computer in the house.
The house has several rooms so it would be nice if all played the same song and don’t compete. I would want movie on one PC (local speakers) and music on rest of house for when someone watches a movie.
Do I use Optical out on PC or analog (single plug stereo or 5.1).
PC sound seems low powered for a big room and multiple rooms so so do I go PC to amp or receiver then speakers or multiple PC with their own powered speakers?
Bars seem to have lots of speakers. Are these all mono?
Give me suggestions (including other forums to check)
one whole house audio method is a transmitter device (sourced with any stereo audio signal) that puts audio into your electrical power wiring. you then plug receiver units in the locations you want sound.
also you can get similar devices that use WiFi to send the signal.
costs depend on number of units you want, WiFi is more expensive and has more features.
Squeezebox would be an alternative, it would be about 1/2 the cost of a Sonos. If having all the rooms playing at the same time is important, the Sonos is better. Squeezebox should be able to synch, but I’ve never tried it ( I have 3 Squeezebox Booms). Maybe I’ll try it and see how it works.
From what I can tell about the Bose, it requires a USB dongle connected to the computer that is streaming the music. Seems a bit clunky to me, though I bet it sounds fine. No doubt the Sonos is a slicker package.
The Squeezebox can play music from either your computer if your music is on your hard drive (and I believe the software comes in PC, Mac, and Linux flavors) or directly from the internet - it connectes directly to your router and in this mode the computer does not have to be on.
I’m not sure but I believe the Sonos is similar to the Squeezebox, the main difference being that the Squeezebox uses the wireless capabilities of your wireless router (although it can connect via wired LAN also), while the Sonos uses it’s own wireless system. That’s probably the reason the Sonos is easier to synch multiple players so you don’t have time differences between multiple players in your house.
One neat feature about the squeezebox is that it can also function as a wireless bridge, I used mine for a while to connect by DVR to the internet. The DVR only had a wired LAN connection, but until I moved my DSL router, I was connected wirelessly.