Entire home audio setup

[Mister_magister]

I certainly will, ye i think i will grab some cheaper bt speaker to try and see if i succed with the psu mod and then try smth bit more expensive. I already have the doc with bt speakers xd

 

[antcollinet]

However, with the RPi's and dac, you are now over $200 each location

PI zero 2 and apple dongle is probably doable for around £$50 all in. (Plus speaker)

 

[a2Thompson]

PI zero 2 and apple dongle is probably doable for around £$50 all in.

right, but then add $150 for an active speaker

 

[Mister_magister]

PI zero 2 and apple dongle is probably doable for around £$50 all in.

Yep pi zero 2 or like pi2 with apple dongle or heck the onboard audio out should be ~50€$£ whatev thats the plan

and just something to take aux in for another 50€$£ like a bt speaker

 

[Mister_magister]

Hmm while talking with some people… my current Home Theatre amp is based on TDA7498, and TDA7498 based stero amps are like 10$, and they're certified good, we can ignore one channel (or put two mono speakers) and like 40$ passive speaker

now just need to figure out whats more cost effective, second hand passive speaker for 40$ or second hand bt speaker for $50 granted dac separately gains more freedom and is less jank

 

[Mister_magister]

I just found this https://github.com/kidwellj/multi-room-hifi which describes perfectly what i need and heck they even reference this forum As to speaker i think i'll look for some cheap, small, passive center channels

 

[Mister_magister]

Update, sorry for tiny bit necrobumping but here's what i've learned

As per link above, I've tried what the guy tried. esp32-squeezelite with esp32-audio-kit and TDA7498 amp, with some speaker. First i just tried the headphone out on my headphones and oh boi. The audio quality is atrocious. "what did you expect" no, its REALLY bad, like i would have to EQ the DAC just to get something reasonable, not to mention about room correction. So i gave up on the esp32 idea and went for bit more expensive but WAY more capable alternative, raspberry pi zero w and apple usb-c dong(le) and oh boi, now we got quality. So going forward the setup looks like this:

• raspberry pi zero w
• microusb to usb-c adapter
• apple usb-c 3.5mm dong(le)
• 3.5mm to RCA
• TDA7498 amplifier
• 100/200W laptop psu (it sits nicely within amps volt range around 20's providing enough power)
• simple buck converter to step down voltage from psu to 5V for rpi (3A will do fine)
• and speaker (TBD)

That roughly comes up to $€50 and leaves $€50 for speaker, but because they're sold in pairs usually i'm just looking for $€100 pair. I don't think it can physically be done cheaper than that. LMS/squeezelite will provide synchronization and i'll also put the output of squeezelite (client) through camilladsp for the room correction.

I still haven't figured out what speaker would be the best but since room modes will screw your audio anyway i wouldn't bother too much so main focus is just on them being full range and thats all

 

[Petrushka]

I've had this idea in the back of my head for some time that i would like to have mono speaker in every room of my house so that when i'm cleaning or doing something i can have music everywhere.

So far i'm thinking, mono (obviously), active speakers so with inbuilt amp, and wirelessly transmitted audio like bluetooth or wifi, bt probably too weak. I'm not sure what are consequences of that so I would love any suggestions about what kind of speakers would be good for that. Also I want to do it the lowest cost possible but not "put bt speaker in every room" level of cheap. Also there is issue with sound delay. Generally i would love to hear input on how to achieve it

lol i just learned it's called multiroom setup

Everyone says Sonos because until last month, they were the best. Then they screwed up their app.

Software problems are temporary. WiiM is having problems getting all their promised features out.

You really have a choice between hardware that requires you to have a separate app for each service, or a paid subscription to something like Roon, and that requires a dedicated server. Some of the alternatives require your phone or server to broadcast to the speakers.

Sorry if I sound like a Sonos groupie, but I have five music sources, including my own library, and when the Sonos app works, they’re all consolidated under one app. And that means a consolidated search across all sources, and editable playlists that mix sources.

If I were starting out, I’d wait a month to see what happens to the Sonos app.

 

[Tom C]

Update, sorry for tiny bit necrobumping but here's what i've learned

As per link above, I've tried what the guy tried. esp32-squeezelite with esp32-audio-kit and TDA7498 amp, with some speaker. First i just tried the headphone out on my headphones and oh boi. The audio quality is atrocious. "what did you expect" no, its REALLY bad, like i would have to EQ the DAC just to get something reasonable, not to mention about room correction. So i gave up on the esp32 idea and went for bit more expensive but WAY more capable alternative, raspberry pi zero w and apple usb-c dong(le) and oh boi, now we got quality. So going forward the setup looks like this:

• raspberry pi zero w
• microusb to usb-c adapter
• apple usb-c 3.5mm dong(le)
• 3.5mm to RCA
• TDA7498 amplifier
• 100/200W laptop psu (it sits nicely within amps volt range around 20's providing enough power)
• simple buck converter to step down voltage from psu to 5V for rpi (3A will do fine)
• and speaker (TBD)

That roughly comes up to $€50 and leaves $€50 for speaker, but because they're sold in pairs usually i'm just looking for $€100 pair. I don't think it can physically be done cheaper than that. LMS/squeezelite will provide synchronization and i'll also put the output of squeezelite (client) through camilladsp for the room correction.

I still haven't figured out what speaker would be the best but since room modes will screw your audio anyway i wouldn't bother too much so main focus is just on them being full range and thats all

I definitely think you’re on the right track, but full range speakers for $100/pair is a tall order. Have you considered in-walls? Sometimes they’re cheaper because there’s no cabinet, which saves a lot. Or maybe just a raw speaker(s) DIY mounted to an open baffle. That has to be as cheap as it can get.

 

[Mister_magister]

I definitely think you’re on the right track, but full range speakers for $100/pair is a tall order. Have you considered in-walls? Sometimes they’re cheaper because there’s no cabinet, which saves a lot.

Entire point of this setup is not to modify flat that i don't own so have to be standalone speakers. Otherwise i would just wire some PA setup and be done with single player lol

 

[Mister_magister]

I just tested with single receiver in different room and one receiver on my pc and holy heck guys this is going to work, its perfectly in sync. Now I can add my HT as a receiver and then i need two or three more that i'll have to figure out speakers for, but setup works!

 

[Mister_magister]

So update, adding camilladsp to the picoreplayer is bit of a pain but doable. LMS has DSP plugin based on camilladsp but it wasn't working at all. After talking with some people about speaker for bathroom, I got recommended cornered audio ci2, which is like $75 per speaker instead of $50 budget but i think its fine, it will be nicely tucked in the corner where it will bother nobody, and second speaker will most likely go into hallway as buying just one speaker is not possible xd They don't have amazing range but they have very nice directivity so you get some you lose some. I might also buy some other two speakers for kitchen and other room (kitchen already has speaker but it can have two lol we got 2x100W of power) but thats like low priority

I'll be making 3d printed case for the pi zero w, 20->5V converter and the amp, so i'll post files later if anyone wants to replicate this. And with those files i think this will mark the end of this thread

 

[Mister_magister]

So the rpi zero w. It's working fine, i had to use different psu for it because when i was using step down from the 20V psu, it was introducing large amount of noise. And about camilladsp, I spent over 10h trying to get it to work. While doing it manually camilladsp constantly had underrun for no reason because it works fine with squeezelite on my htpc. I tried some automated script that installs camilladsp but that doesn't work on armv6 which is rpi zero w because cargo from rust dependency is in wrong arch. You could probably fix that if you spent even more time but why bother. I'm considering going with rpi2/3 or rpi zero w2 as anything beside rpi1/zero w is armv7 or aarch64

Here are resources i've found:

GitHub - JWahle/piCoreCDSP

Contribute to JWahle/piCoreCDSP development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Switching Alsa Loopback Timer Source to Playback HW Device

The alsa loopback software device is by default clocked by a system timer. Chaining with any hardware soundcard thus introduces two clock domains which must be aligned somehow. Fortunately the loopback offers alsa controls for fine-tuning the internal software clock which is conveniently used in...

www.diyaudio.com

if you don't care about dsp its working fine but otherwise, probably should invest into something thats armv7 i'll try to find something that's not much more expensive

 

[Mister_magister]

So yeah this will be my last entry. I've bought raspberry pi zero 2 w and camilladsp installation via the linked script went flawlessly and now i got it room corrected. Thats all I wanted synchronised and room corrected and now i can just copy paste same setup into other rooms. pi zero 2 w is bit more expensive than pi zero w but i wouldn't recommend getting first one i had troubles with wifi and like nobody wants to support that.

I think I've achieved cheapest whole-house audio setup thats possible. you could cut cost on amp and on dac and on rpi/room correction but you aren't saving much as the elctronics cost is around $€50 you might save 10 tops with drastic drop in quality