Boombox Approach to Whole House Audio?

[upstatemike]

Well I think I will stick with my Technics 200 watt RMS receivers I bougt used off Ebay at an average price of $50 (there are always lots of these receivers there which cost about $100 new) . Nothing compares to 1000+ watts of power for 5 zones to drive your audiophile speakers around the house. The added benifit is that you can also use each receivers IR input selection to switch between music sources. You also get the benifit of having a tuner for each zone. So using JRMC you can listen to a seperate CD in each zone as well as a seperate station!

John

Looking at John's approach to Whole-House audio (similiar to TonyNo and others as well), I was wondering if this idea would work with a boombox device such as a Bose Wave Music System or a Cambridge SoundWorks Radio CD 740?

These devices have an AUX input that could accept a whole-house audio feed while still providing local tuner and CD functionality.

My reason for exploring these units is a need to avoid external speakers (in-wall speakers are not an option either). Does anybody use either of these products? Would they sound OK or are they just expensive clock radios with low fidelity?

Also note I am ignoring the high cost of these units for now and just exploring the useability of this approach.

 

[TonyNo]

I wanted to do this for the kids' rooms, but could not find anything with AUX inputs. I ended up just using amplified PC speakers, since they already had CD and MP3 players. If the Bose and Cambridge are not too expensive for you, go for it!

Keep in mind that they MAY forget to switch back to the house input when they are done. If those devices have IR remotes, you may want pencil in local IR for central control.

 

[pete]

If you do go this route, you could avoid running wires to the aux input and get a FM tansmitter (something like this) wired to the output of your computer/media server . . . just tune the boom-box to the right freq instead of switching to aux . . . you could also send mp3s out the FM transmitter to a boom-box on the patio/deck and to walkman type units while doing yardwork (this is how I use mine) . . .

Pete C

I love my country,but fear my government.

 

[upstatemike]

Pete-

That is a pretty cool idea but how well does it work? I know it says it has a range of 150 feet but is that really solid? Any issues with static and such?

I'm sure there is no option to add an external antenna (darned FCC!) so I'm curious how clean and reliable a signal you are getting?

 

[pete]

It's actually pretty good and so far I 've done nothing to try to increase the range, but I am powering it with a 6V power supply instead of the (3)1.5 AA cells so maybe that's helping a bit . . . I even have the unit in the attic of my metal roofed house and reception is decent throughout the yard when I'm out on the tractor . . .

the antenna is a simple dipole (single wire) so even if I was just to better locate it (outside the attic, clear of the metal roof) I'd bet the range would improve . . . and there are better, legal, units out there . . . I have an earlier model of the one I linked to which was bought as a proof of concept kinda, might upgrade to one of the better units someday. . .

Pete C