Home Speaker Network

Martin · Sun 19 Sep, 2004 11.27

I’m looking to set up a few speakers around the house to use in conjunction with the pc for playing mp3’s, online radio etc.

I was briefly talking to someone the other day who had a similar setup in his house, unfortunately I didn’t have the time to find out the ins and outs of it.

I took a look on eBay and came across a few of these ceiling speakers. Penton Multi Tapping Ceiling Speaker ( White )

Ideally I’d like to have a speaker in the bathroom, kitchen, TV room and 2 of the bedrooms.

Once you’ve got the speakers in, what do they connect to?

Would there be any way of altering the sound levels from room to room?

Any advice or know-how would be very welcome.

Thanks)) Martin

Bail · Sun 19 Sep, 2004 17.38

I've fairly recently done just that actually. Besically I use my PC for it all. It's best to use two soundcards as you can then control what goes where etc.

As for in room volume, you can either change the volume remotely (eg have a HTPC using remote desktop (bit exprensive) to build a dimmer switch in between the amp and speakers.

I send the soundcards output to an amp, which goes off to the room of choise... I dont think any of that helped at all did it...

Celing speakers are ok, but produce rather poor sound. Best get a normal bookshelf style speaker and mount them with wall brackets, (makes the most even with poor speakers) you can then route the cable up into the roof rather than down the walls etc.

Bail · Sun 19 Sep, 2004 17.41

Also, thinking about it, a cheap mixer is also rather useful, I use a "Spirit Folio Lite" out of production but still supported and on eBay fairly cheaply.

Martin · Mon 20 Sep, 2004 19.31

Thanks for that.

The only thing about ceiling speakers is they blend in with the surroundings a bit better, I don't want anything too obtrusive in the bedrooms.

I'll keep an eye out on ebay for the sound mixer.

Bail · Mon 20 Sep, 2004 19.36

There's nothing to stop you getting a ceiling speaker, but unless you’ve got the shop type panels it'll mean cutting holes in your ceiling and then digging up the floorboards above, as well as if /when you move you'll have a hole when you take the speaker off. Whereas wall mounted ones, sound better (you can direct the sound to where you generally are) they are still out of the way.

Buy the sounds of it you’d want sound, in 5 rooms. Would you just want sound, or a proper stereo setup?

I was thinking, if for example you have a surround set up in you r TV room, you can just connect up to that to save on having extra amps speakers etc?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... eName=WDVW

Had a quick look on google, this could also be of use. http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO- ... power.html