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BudgetAudiophile @lemmy.world
MajorSauce @sh.itjust.works

Affordable or Custom-made multi-room audio setup (Bluetooth input and at least "Soundcore Rave 3" quality)

Hi everyone!

I already have a nice audio setup for my home office and my home theater, but I find myself carrying my big Soundcore Rave 3 speaker around for when I want loud music in a particular room (kitchen, garage, bedroom, etc.).

I don't know it this particular speaker is considered "good", but I personally like that it can easily fill up the room and has pretty good bass (listening to pretty much all kinds of music, but mainly electronic).

I would like to have this sound in 3-4+ additional rooms and am looking at options.

I thought about Sonos, but I find their speaker a bit on the expensive side for what they do.

Also, having a simple Bluetooth input available would be great for when I have guests over and they can just pair and be done with it.

I am comfortable with making the multi-room bit (probably with SBCs, amps and some Linux services) but would love to hear if anyone has found a good solution/setup for this use-case.

Budget-wise, I would like to stay well below 2k CAD ( 1250 EUR ?) but I'm open to any suggestion as I can see this as home improvement. I know at this price I could buy a bunch more of Rave3, but there would not be any multi-room features and I think it would look weird to have those speakers around...

Thanks!

3 comments

  • I have not personally listened to that speaker, so I can't speak to its quality, but in general, if you're in Canada, the cheapest / best audiophile setup you can usually get is one of dedicated speakers / amps hard wired together.

    You would basically have a Bluetooth / Castable DAC, hooked up to an RCA splitter, then RCA wires running to each room, where a dedicated amp would be hooked up to speakers / subwoofers.

    If you need wireless multiroom, then you might want to look at WiiMs as your streaming devices as they can sync together, either as part of a Chromecast audio group, or using their own sync system. They have models that have integrated amps, but the cheaper option is to buy a used yamaha amp off kijiji or a new fosi mini amp, and pair it with their streaming / Bluetooth only models.

    From a speaker quality standpoint, Canada's National Research Council created one of the world's best audio labs / testing facilities in the 70s, which lead to the rise of numerous world class audiophile speaker companies: Paradigm, PSB, Energy, Mirage, Sound Dynamics, etc.

    Energy, Mirage, and Sound Dynamics all eventually got bought by Klipsch and disappeared, but it means that our used speaker market is amazing. I got a pair of studio quality Energy speakers off Marketplace that blow everything else that I've ever listened to completely out of the water, for $400. They literally go down deeper then most subwoofers and were designed for CBC recording studios, and they cost less then my old soundbar. I would highly encourage you look on Kijiji / Marketplace for used Canadian-made Energy / PSB / Paradigm / Mirage speakers. A lot of audiophile grade speakers from the 90s and 00s can be found for next to nothing and still punch above $1k modern speakers.

  • I have a Raspberry Pi running MPD with a HiFiBerry Digi+ Standard; the optical out goes to an amp in one room, and the coax goes to an amp in another room. (So those two always play the same thing.)

    For each additional room, I add another Raspberry Pi with access to the music on the primary Raspberry Pi via sshfs, running MPD, with either another HiFiBerry Digi+ or a USB DAC, and connect to the amplifier in that room. Each room added this way plays different music.

    If you wanted all the rooms to have the same thing playing, you could add multiple USB DACs to a single Raspberry Pi, each going somewhere else, MPD can output to all of them. It is probably better to have longer USB runs than longer analog audio runs. Or you can run the analog audio over shielded cat6.

    I have not tried adding a Bluetooth input to the Raspberry PI, but it seems like that would be possible with pipewire or jack.