#27

I’ve had the Dynaudio Xeo, which were amazing. Now have the Raumfeld Stereo L, but not really happy with them, sound and software wise. I use logitech media server as I don’t like music steaming services. Also have an old Squeezebox Radio in my bathroom, which is awesome for the size and price. Still want to try the OD-11 one day…

At the office we have a Sonos Play:3, which is great, but limited (no inputs at all).

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#28

I have the Mass Fidelity Core:
https://www.massfidelity.com/media/images/Core/Core_Coffee_N_4_c_10262015.jpg

For home use this works well for us: Sounds great, fills one room loud, or two at dinner party level. Very flexible configurations. Long battery life (>10 hours real world use for me).

I’ve also been hauling it to gigs as a small personal monitor - the battery is very handy there, and it has a wired input. Not perfect, but not bad.

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Portable speaker recommendations
#29

have you ever tried the minirig speakers? if so how would you say this compares?

#30

I haven’t ever seen the minirig… but a key of the Core is that you get a stereo image from a single unit. It seems quite inconceivable, but works very very well. You need two minirig’s to get stereo.

#31

I got a second minirig a couple months back (this is the V2 better battery is the biggest difference) and it really sounds great and gets louder than my other one if I push it

I just took delivery today of a new (they have just released a V2 of their subwoofer, I didn’t know this until after I ordered it) minirig subwoofer and have yet to try it out as it is charging but I’m so very excited

I’ll let you all know how the 2.1 sounds

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#32

Bit of a bump here, but I’m thinking of going with some wireless speakers in my place just to have around the house to be able to listen to music whenever/wherever. I definitely don’t want to get locked into an Apple thing (though having airplay would be a nice perk), since I’m very much on the ropes about my future with them.

I also don’t stream music, since I have a lot of unpopular music in my library, hiwhc kind of rules out the dominant way people use these things.

Ideally I’d have something that taps into my central music library (iTunes at the moment), but that I can listen to throughout the house without having to do so from my phone.

The Sonos stuff looks pretty good, and I guess you can play to multiple speakers at the same time now (whole house house party?!).

But yeah, what kind of solutions do you guys have for having a central “media” source and lots of speakers throughout the house?

#33

Definitely overpriced but the teenage engineering od-11s are lovely

#34

A bit pricey indeed!

They do look nice though.

At the moment I’m looking at the Sonos One, since it can airplay and wifi, and can pair up to multiple speakers.

I guess my problem is broken into two parts. One is having my library available everywhere (which I guess I can do via the Home Sharing stuff), and then being able to play that music everywhere (so via my phone, or laptop, or tv).

Some stuff I’m not sure about yet, like if you can send audio from an appleTV to sonos speakers concurrently with audio coming out of the TV (basically managing music throughout the house but from the tv).

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#35

We have a (almost as overpriced as that Teenage Engineering speaker) Naim Qb which sounds very nice, and a cheap-as-chips Jam Audio Rhythm, which sounds, errr, less nice (being generous…), but just about does for the kitchen.

Software wise we use Roon which is insanely expensive, but is generally very good, and talks to nearly anything with wifi or a network connection. I just about justify the cost to myself based on the fact that I work from home, so it’s probably in use 10+ hours a day (via both the aforementioned speakers, another wired hifi, or my work PC & speakers).

#36

I have a bunch of Sonos speakers.

You can run Apple TV audio into a room that has a PlayBar (for the tv) as there is an optical connect, and then any other Sonos speakers you have can play that Apple TV audio.

The Sonos app can log in directly to your iTunes and play any music you have in there on any of the speakers.

The speakers all sound a little bright and harsh at first but there’s a feature in the app which uses your phone to listen to them in the room and alter their sound accordingly, and they sound pretty clear and easy on the ears once you do that.

I have Sonos:1’s in some rooms and they totally hold their own.

Other nice feature is that ive been able to acquire them over the years so I never felt prohibitively expensive, and as you get more they work nicely together.

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#37

That sounds pretty good, and I think I’ll go this route.
I’ll buy one to stick in the bedroom and see how it goes. If I like them I can always get more.

With the Sonos:1s, can you play from them at the same time as other speakers? Would be good to have a cheaper option for rooms that aren’t so critical (i.e. kitchen), but still be able to integrate them with the rest of the house when wanted.

That does look cool, but damn… such a stupid(ly expensive) price!
A subscription service for a music playing app seems preposterous.

Plus, I have so much DIY(/nonfamous) artists in my library that all the photos+history+lyrics would be wasted on that stuff.

#38

Yes — I have a Sonos One in my kitchen, and 2 Sonos ones and a PlayBar in my living room. I can play everything in my living room together as a 5.1 system, or I can pipe the same music to both rooms at the same time (there’s a multi room option in the app where you can choose which rooms are playing your iTunes library).

The only thing I can’t do is play multi-room audio with both the Sonos system and another non-sonos Amazon Alexa enable system.

I.E. I have an amazon echo in my office and my bedroom, which can play multi room audio with each other, and Sonos in the living room and the kitchen which are Alexa enabled and can play multi room audio together, but I can’t play multi room audio between the Echo in my office and the Sonos One in my kitchen even though they’re both Alexa enabled.

Eventually i’d like to replace the Echo’s with more Sonos One’s — they seem to have the same smart assistant functionality at this point, and they sound much better than the Echos.

#39

I have a collection of Sonos speakers, plus the Sonos Connect which provides a line in to the Sonos system. So if I wish I can route the audio from my studio all around the house. Though typically I don’t do this as it would not be appreciated by the other residents, i.e my wife and family.

The Sonos is a pretty robust solution, my first speaker is probably six or seven years old now and still compatible with everything. I have my music on a NAS drive wired to my router and that works fine.

It feels like Sonos’s focus is less on those with local libraries and more on streaming these days though. So whilst it all still works via NAS, it doesn’t seem like an area they’re investing in.

The speakers are pretty good though.

#40

Personally I don’t like Sonos, the system is closed/proprietary, the various speakers I’ve used were very boomy with vague mids and the software feels limited for big local libraries. My requirements are that I want to bring my own speakers and make them wireless.

I have a NAS which host all my music and which runs Logitech Media Server, which is free software and fully extendable in any way you like, hardware and software. For about 8 years I’m using a Squeezebox Receiver connected to some speakers and a Squeezebox Radio (with speaker) in the bathroom. I’m mainly using iPeng as a remote and wrote several remote apps for OS X (fuzzy search for my whole collection!). After all those years still happy with the setup and it’s very reliable, but there might be something newer and hipper out there. :sweat_smile: Thinking of swapping the Receiver for a RaspberryPi with piCorePlayer, getting a nice DAC and upgrading my speakers (Thinking of some Amphions as I really like my monitors from them).

I got this feeling as well!

#41

This is a pretty interesting solution! Personally I can’t live with Sonos’ software decisions and UI. We have a couple at work and had to sneak in a completely seperate adsl connection on a different network because the Sonoses refused to connect to anything on the corp network. They don’t tickle my earholes either.

#42

I like the appeal of using a different media library app, especially with how bloated/shitty/slow iTunes has gotten over the years (it still blows my mind the mess that that app is), but I have over a decade of playcounts and rankings organized there, so I’d be hesitant to chuck that all away.

Roon, as suggested by @therk, looks like it can just piggyback on your existing iTunes library, which is fantastic, but it’s a complete non-starter because of the price.

Plus I still have an iPhone, so syncing music to that is useful/important at the moment.

So for those of you that run a separate media server, how do you integrate that back into a closed platform (i.e. iTunes/iPhone)?

#43

Yup, all this is probably correct. From my perspective:

  • It just works out of the box with no great thought from me - I’m not inclined to try to get separate stuff to talk to each other and maintain them

  • Soundwise, I don’t need audiophile quality (whatever that is) in much of the house. In my kitchen, for example, there is constant other noise from appliances, the boiler, clock, etc…

But your solution is most likely cheaper and sounds better…!

#44

anyone have any experience with audiopro wireless speakers? They seem comparable to Sonos, but I have no idea if the multiroom capability and software is as reliable

#45

I’m also a happy Squeezebox user, a receiver in my kitchen with an old amp & speakers, a second in my livingroom hooked up to a good hifi, and a Boom in the bedroom. Sadly the hardware isn’t produced anymore but as you suggest it ought to be easy to replace with a Pi. The software can be a bit fiddly, but its OSS (though Perl, which wouldn’t be my favourite language to work with).

#46

So I finally got a Sonos One for the bedroom and I’m really happy with it. Sounds good, particularly after doing it’s little impulse response routine, and the fact that it’s available as a playback source from all the devices is fantastic.

Quite curious to see how expensive the Sonos/IKEA Symfonisk speaker is when it comes out next week, as that could be great for rooms in the house where awesome quality isn’t needed (kitchen etc…).

I’m presently looking up some NAS stuff as that would be good for moving my iTunes library onto (as just an iTunes server), as well as setting up some Plex server fun for shows and movies that I have on my computer, in that I can just keep everything on the NAS instead.

As the moment I’m looking at the WD My Cloud stuff, as it has good reviews overall (eek, Amazon reviews look like dogshit actually, complaining about the software), and has built-in iTunes and Plex servers. One thing that seems pretty awkward, from all the NASs I’ve seen is that they all seem to use some app and awful UI thing, rather than showing up as a network drive. I guess that’s handy for accessing the files when you are away from your network, but it sure looks clunky.

What NASs are people using?
I probably don’t need anything bigger than 4TB, and having a fixed drive is probably ok, since it will just be a media server, and I don’t really have a static (movies) media library that takes up much space.