I'm planning a way to get audio in 2 rooms other than the main system.
Room 1 Dining/kitchen, about 300sqft, 2400cuft space, which is connected to to the living room (where main system lives) by a 6x5 foot opening.
'Room' 2 will be a large (300~400sqft) back deck/patio area, it is connected to the dining room/kitchen by 6x6ft french door to the kitchen/dining room.
Another way to imagine it is, go through the front door and you are in the living room, through a 6x5 foot always open casement opening into the dining/kitchen. Then if you go through another door you will be on the back deck. If it's nice out and we are having parties those french doors will be left open. So, all of these spaces will be connected so I want to be able to play the same thing synced in all of the spaces. Or, I would like to also be able to control them separate if we are just sitting on the back deck or have a small group of people over and we are all in the kitchen/dining room.
I would like to be able to control it from phone or tablet. Maybe even put a tablet on the wall so anyone in that space can control it. It will be primarily for background music, but sometimes if I'm by myself in the dining/kitchen crank it just a bit. It doesn't need to be reference level or super high quality since that is the purpose of the main system. We are in the city so outside system definitely does not need to go loud.
With those 2 zones right next to each other, I can do 2 total separate systems, or they can be in the same space. I'm wondering if this will offer some cost efficiency to leverage 1 amp for both zones.
My initial thoughts about was to use 1 stereo amp for 2 zones by just doing Zone 1 on right channel and Zone 2 on left channel. That made me wonder if it is actually better to do Mono with say 2 or more speakers for background music with in ceilings. I can't imagine you are going to get any good stereo image with in ceilings and people can literally be anywhere in the room.
Or something like
this 4 channel car amp and a 12~14V DC power supply like
this one seems like a cost effective solution.
We have some smart home stuff, Smart Things back-end with Smart Things/Google Assistant/IFTTT on the front end, so ideally something that plays well with Google Assistant would be great. I do all of my streaming through Spotify. It's really a shame they did not come out with a Gen 2 Chromecast Audio. How viable is using a Chromecast with some kind of audio extractor? Will 3 Chromecast for audio sync well enough across 3 zones that are physically open to each other?
I'm thinking all in amps, streamers and speakers, without any tablets, for $500~1k, but I'm struggling with finding what seems like decent stuff in that price range. I can spend more, but I feel that I should be able to accomplish my goals within this budget.
Any good suggestions for in ceilings for $100~$150/each?
The outside space will be covered and the speakers will go in ceiling. This is in central Ohio so there are not any sever (salt, etc.) environmental conditions. I think it's OK to use non-outdoor, same inside and out, with some assumption I may have to replace in the future, but I don't really see that as being a huge issue or probability.