recommendation for whole home audio

[marsh acorn]

I currently use home assistant and and moving into a new to me house that we are currently remodelling. I have speaker wires ran to 4 different locations (long story because of remodel+addition). All together I will have something like 20ish "zones" ran to the 4 closets. I do have ethernet backbones between all 4 media closets. Originally they were pushing for a full control4 solution, but I really do want the openness of the HA environment. I am struggling to find information on a good distributed A/V solution that integrates with HA. The installer is recommending SnapOne Binary MoIP solution. It looks like exactly what I would want, but it looks to be made mostly for C4 systems and not sure how it integrates with HA.

What are people using for clean integrated whole home audio spread across multiple media closets?

[cedar bronze]

If you can run speaker wires between the closets you can stack 3 monoprice 6-zone amps, which will give you 18 zones, 6 sources, and a great integration with HA (in my very biased opinion).

[grand thicket]

Cameron Gray on youtube is perhaps worth watching.
hes been doing a series on wiring/setting up the house he has recently moved into and hes just getting to the Audio section.
his solutions are MASSIVLY OVER ENGINEERED however watching it might give you some inspiration
most recent video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isqlWMeibuA
check out his channel. long form videos with alot of information

[swift rivet]

I've enjoyed using the sonos ecosystem and it ties into HA in every way I would want/need.

[granite breach]

Sonos is so overpriced. Its hard to believe that nobody has solved this in HA yet.

[mossy cloud]

look at Music Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/05/09/music-assistant-2/).

I use Raspberry PI's with DAC's running a Squeeezelite client on them

[grand thicket]

audio is such a variable thing. totally depends what people want. there is no 1 size fits all solution really. and if you get too high end you have to deal with the stupid stuff that audiophiles dream up and pretend is real

[marsh acorn]

yeah, I am really on the large scale causual listener. I have large spaces that I want to fill with ambient background music when we are entertaining and then sync up a couple zones and a few TVs when we are having a sports ball watching party. What I want really lends itself to the super involved control4 systems, but I am also a tinkerer at heart and I don't like the proprietariness of it as well that its locked behind dealer configuration tools.

The snap AV binary MOIP stuff looks cool but not sure about integration into home assistant

[granite breach]

Hrm. I bet you could build a little multiroom audio device for ~$30.

Use a Milk-V Duo S ($13), an apple USB-C to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter ($9), Some decent amp and a bookshelf speaker or two with a Squeeezelite client

[marsh acorn]

Watching Cameron Gray. Wow, he went after it! But after watching what he is doing, I don't think its any easier or cheaper than the Snap One Binary MOIP system that is being recommended. Pricewise, it is probably similar. Complexity, the moip system seems way more versatile and expandable.

His integration into Home Assistant is probably going to be the same level as using the binary moip system as well.

I did find this API documentation. https://help.snapone.com/moip-ig/Content/Binary MoIP Topics/API v1.3.0.html#section/API

At first glance, it looks pretty comprehensive.

[sterile urchin]

What DACs do you use with your Pis?

[lament turtle]

Just a data point for you. I went with OSD audio streamers and multi-zone amps. Works well with music assistant. But I use pretty much only with streaming services that work with MA.
https://www.osdaudio.com/srt4-gen2-four-zone-media-streamer-wifi-app-controlled.html
https://www.osdaudio.com/16-channel-8-zone-digital-home-theater-amplifier-mx1680-gen2.html

[marsh acorn]

I'll look into those. Thanks!

I think one challenge that I have is how to synchronize across the 4 different media closets. Technically, the way the speakers are wired, there is a scenario where I will want to play the same source across speakers that are wired to the different closets.

[cedar bronze]

There are several ways to solve this. You can do it in software with something like Music Assistant, or you can solve it in hardware by running speaker wires between the closests and keeping everything in one of them.

[mossy cloud]

I use HAT's from HiFiBerry. When I originally started I used Max2Play (https://www.max2play.com/), but I think a better option now is piCorePlayer (https://www.picoreplayer.org/).

[sterile urchin]

Cheers! I have some Pis set up with headless Plexamp, and a DAC would rather improve them, I think!

[mossy cloud]

I believe there is a PlexAmp addon for HiFiBerry OS which would certainly improve them

[lament turtle]

The osd streamers support airplay 2 that permits synchronization across multiple streamers. As long as your sources support airplay 2 streaming (music assistant does) you can link the streamers together to play in sync

[marsh acorn]

for the piCorePlayer route, check my understanding:

get some hardware (rpi) and run squeezelite for each zone.
plug the ethernet into my network and plug the audio out into a dumb amplifier connected to my speakers
Do this for each zone

Then these endpoints would show up in some other streaming server (LMS or others) and would use that interface to determine what I wanted playing and where.

responding to the running speaker wires: I can't really do that because of the house layout. Its an older two story that we're adding an addition and a separate structure to. Speakers on one side of the house were run to one closet, speakers on the other were run to another closet on that side of the house. The addition speakers are run to the closet there and then the separate structure has its own media closet as well. There are 2 Cat6 runs between each closet (daisy chained) and I will have at least 10gb connections between the 4 switches but will probably dual link to 20gb.

I will need speaker amplification in each closet and what I am trying to figure out is to have each zone be able to play a source from anywhere else.

A lot of the matrix type stuff is nice but definitely seems intended to have everything centralized in one place.

[swift rivet]

I’ve been finding speakers for cheap on local buy sell trade. Been picking up One SL speakers anywhere from $60-$80. For the use and ability to move them and not modify a ceiling etc it’s pretty rad. They integrate easily with HA. I also like that for smaller areas I can grab an Apple home pod and put it there and still tie it all together.

[cedar bronze]

Yes, music assistant can manage this for you

[granite breach]

I've been wanting to try one of the 3d printed bookshelf speakers. I already have a laser cutter for the side panels. I saw a great example a month of so ago but I can't find it again

[marsh acorn]

In the piCorePlayer scenario, is there an equivalent device to be an audio source or is the only option to come from the music assistant server? For instance, I want to pull the audio out of a TV and cast to multiple zones

[silver radish]

I’m looking into this now. I know this is a few months old but I think there’s a plugin that will allow you to use it as a speaker eligible for casting. I’m probably going to get one to test

[silver radish]

I found this old reddit post comment thread that talks about using ShairTunes2 (allowing each client to receive AirPlay audio) https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/11nvkwv/comment/jbphkx7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button