Creative (and budget) wireless all-house system?

In addition to serious listening sessions with my dedicated headphone systems (HE-6/Aleph3/Ref-7 and HD800/Phoenix/DAC19_10yr), I am thinking of setup an ambient music system that is good for enjoy music while walking around the house or maybe in-planting classical music to my kids.

The new Sonos Play5 sounds a good idea, but the sound cannot pass my threshold at my local BestBuy demo (bass boom and muddy mid/high). It seems that some good active speaker (such as JBL lsr 305 but vertical dispersion may limit moving around), small size DAC (Geek Out DAC?), and a Raspberry PI may easily surpass the audio quality of Play5. I am interested to see if people may already have good setup for such purpose. The good quality miniaturized DAC is my most problem since I am not familiar with them at all. Actually, I am also ignorant in active omni-directional speakers.

The music source initially will be online stream such as Google Play Music or something similar. Later, I may add USB drive to my router for network-based music storage.

Thanks a lot for your sharing.

 

I know some will cry "philistine", but I use Sonos as a transport for my three home stereo rigs. It has the best user interface and easy set up and delivers bit perfect transport; however, to make it the equal of a good CD transport requires additional equipment (yup, more money...).

I use ZP-90 zone players (called something else now) with a jitter reduction reclocker (Empirical Synchromesh on one, Cullen reclocker mod on another and a Monarchy DIP on the third- all work quite well with the Cullen mod and Empirical slightly more resolving) feeding an outboard DAC. I find the results usually indistinguishable from a spinning CD.

I have little experience with the all in one box units save some Bluetooth speakers that make my "mid fi purgatory" seem heavenly and suspect most of what you are looking at is firmly ensconced in the consumer audio segment... I have read somewhere that a pair of Play 1 are superior the boom box Play 5.

The Raspberry Pi looks as if it could compete with the Sonos as a transport at a HUGE savings- but again, I have little experience with the device.

 

Certainly the user interface of SONOS and how they address the interference issue seem to be highly praised.

After spending some time to read, it seems GOV2 with balanced output would be a good source. Now I wonder if there is any active speaker has similar quality of Duevel Planet (relaxed and rich round) and yet low cost enough.

 

Have you looked into the new Chromecast Audio? They just added the ability to stream 24/96 files. No idea if they sound any good, though. But for background music, will it matter too much?

On a different path, the GOV2 is indeed stellar. When you mentioned relaxed and warm active speakers, Audioengine jumped to mind. Not necessarily audiophile approved, but I have enjoyed their relaxed sound. Not very diffuse dispersion though for environmental listening.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply. Chromecast is interesting but I would like to use a better dac and optical may be limiting.

I did drop by BestBuy at city and tried out SONOS Play 5 and HEOS 7. The clarity of SONOS 5 is very disappointing and HEOS 7 is too big. The P/C ratio is also poor for any of those. HEOS 1 sounds even worse than SONOS play 1 but this was out of my Android phone so DAC quality may be poor.

Then, I listened to several 2.1 systems at the Mangolia center. Any passive 2-channel passive bookshelfs just sound way way better than any of these wifi speaker. I don't have chance to hear any active speakers there. But after this exercise, I am leaning toward to just buying a SONOS Play1 kit for kids and another dedicated 2.1 system for myself. Sometimes user friendliness is much more important for some audience and other times sonic quality is just too critical for others. These two scenario really don't mix well at all.

 

I've had a similar experience as you looking at wireless speakers.

I was looking for something for my parents who are not at all bothered about higher sound quality but have just gotten into Spotify. I also wrestled with sound quality vs ease of use. SONOS is very difficult for me to get behind because, as you have said, they really don't sound good & you can generally achieve MUCH better sound for the same amount of money. Having said that, for ease of use, discrete installation & for inoffensive background listening I also think the Play 1s are just about fine if you can live with the cost to performance ratio. Sounds like a nice gift for your kids, especially if you're also going to give them the opportunity to experience something much better with your own 2 channel system too.

From my listening to the full line-up in a couple of demo-rooms there doesn't seem to be many good reasons to go beyond the Play 1s. The 3s really sounded no better. I often go into shops where they have a couple of the 1s high up in the corners and it does a decent job solely for background music. They also seem to go to higher volumes without turning to total shit. I think the 1s are the pick of the bunch before the whole thing becomes very silly. The official Sonos reps seem to be programmed to talk a considerable amount of junk about high-fidelity.

Denon's HEOS system also seemed particularly lame to me - not only did it not sound any better than SONOS but it also just seems like a shameless rip-off of their brand too.

 

Chromecast is definitely the way to go for this purpose. It's dirt cheap, it works extremely well with Google Play Music, and as of the latest firmware it supports multi-unit syncing and has bit-perfect digital output.

What's your objection to optical digital? It's not a particularly esoteric format, and most DACs will work with it just fine. And heck, even if you need to buy a new DAC, the obscene price of the Sonos stuff makes that a winning comparison -- Chromecast Audio + Modi Uber + Audioengine A2+ speakers is still $65 cheaper than the Sonos Play 5. (And for a simple, no-fuss kids' system you could skip the DAC entirely and end up way cheaper than the Sonos with sound quality that's still probably not worse.)

 

I just get SONOS Play 1 and they play small scale music (chamber, piano, violin) much nicer than they did at store. Although the sound quality is the penalty but the convenience and flexibility win. There is no wire between speakers and I can put them depending on the needs(homework time, party with friends, etc). After setup the queue and repeat, I can turn off my phone or PC without worry it stop playing. The GUI of Android may be still difficult to navigate for my wife, but it is much better than using Teamviewer or VNC into Raspberry pi.

One bad thing is that most online streaming services, such as Spotify and Google Play Music, do NOT provide free service to SONOS. You need subscription. This limitation suddenly makes Raspberry Pi approach shines.

Raspberry pi -> USB digital -> Audioengine A2+'s DAC. This my be a much elegant and fruitful approach. This system has potential to beat SONOS in terms of the sound quality (guessing based on good reviews) and free online services. And I can even control them over Internet (not limited to local network).

More interestingly, SONOS Play 1 seems to still consume 5W even in idle. This is pretty bad for Global Warming and my conscience. Raspberry pi + A2+ may consume less if the spec is trustworthy.

Other possibility?
Chromecast Audio -> digital -> Audioengine A2+'s DAC would be an worth considering approach, but CA only has optical digital output. No go. The DAC in CA may not be up to the quality (just a $35 estimation). And CA seems to require the player machine (phone or PC) to be ON to keep playing (I may be wrong here)

CA -> optical -> Modi -> Any active speakers: Too many boxes defeat the purpose

Raspberry Pi -> GOV2 -> (some quality small power amp) -> Ascend Sierra-1: This is for my own hideout. For this application, I can take 10 boxes as long as it sound good. Gungnir Multibit may replace the GOV2.

 

During the break I got Volumio running on my RPi. I was very impressed with the implementation. It competes with SONOS very well in terms of the usability (PC/Android phone control apps) and even very good SQ. I compared using either RPi or my PC to feed the Audio-GD's DI -> Ref-7 -> Phoenix -> HD800 and found out that PC input has better SQ. It is apparent in the high frequency response. PC's input is sweeter and grain-free but RPi's input is a little artificial. I might need to try out other implementation.