Whole Home Audio with PC's and Tablets

[newcbomb]

I would like to make a whole home audio system using a Dedicated PC as a host (with pandora/spotify) with iPads and android tablets as "wall units". Does any one know of a solution for what im trying to accomplish. 

 

Thanks

[FloRolf]

do you want to use the tablets to play music? Just install spotify on each tablet?

[newcbomb]

57 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

do you want to use the tablets to play music? Just install spotify on each tablet?

I would like multiple sources and ability to play the same source. 

[Daniel644]

maybe, atleast in theory I know how to do the 2 halves of this but I don't know if they will "mesh" properly and also not certain about multiple devices around the house.

 

to get music from your PC out to multiple devices is decently easy, my go to for this would be to install Kodi on all the "wall units" then you direct kodi to the network folder (which needs to be a shared folder) on the PC to see the music and you'll be able to play music on a wall unit level of control, but would not be able to "link" the wall units so if you wanted to change the song you would need to return to the original wall unit to do so, for apps like Spotify you could try installing the plugins that have been built for Kodi if you want to maintain the interface as much as possible or just use the native app for the device.

 

as for "wall unit" to speakers, from my research SONOS is what you want, other smart speakers suck feature wise, like the Amazon Echo's are either individually controlled or can have ONE group setup (rendering the groups function useless IMHO and I have experience with this at work), Sonos (from my research) on the other hand lets you change speaker configurations on the fly in the app and allows multiple groups, their is even a Sonos plugin from 3rd party devs for Kodi (further keeping you in the Kodi interface).

 

the biggest potential issue is the idea of multiple "wall units" around the house each fighting for control of he different speakers and lack of cohesion between them, this design is really more suited for keeping the "wall unit" on your person as you go from room to room.

[cragger89]

Logitech Media Server on a PC, Chromecast Audios connected in each room you want to stream to, install "Squeezer" or its equivalent on your tablets to control the playback. There is a plugin you can install to allow streaming to Chromecasts. LMS has a HTML site you can "visit" for controlling, but the apps are generally better. Fairly sure there are plugins for Pandora and Spotify to work with LMS, but Spotify supports Chromecast natively anyway.

 

I've been using the above setup with 4 Chromecast Audio devices connected to various amps/docks in my home and it is rock solid. I've often experienced issues with Kodi where I've had to reconfigure it after the PC has received windows updates, with LMS, I have never had a reliability issue. 

 

I use Spotify/Tidal and Logitech Media Server as sources with mine. I can play different sources in different rooms or I can make groups so that the same music is played all round the house.