Epic write up via hifiberry.com
Since a long time I wanted to overhaul my multiroom audio system completely to adapt it to one which fits better to my needs and with a superior sound quality, while keeping control over the budget. If you don’t know multiroom systems yet: These audio systems allow you to play back sound in different rooms of your house, so you can listen to the music you want wherever you want.
I can say, I am absolutely satisfied with this system! Finally my multiroom system is how I want it to be. In the switch cabinet, it is relatively clean and compact. The power consumption is, as I can see from Fibaro, in total approx. 25 W, which is completely fine for playing music in 7 rooms. Much less cables and easy maintenance. The only downside is the noisy power supply with its tiny ventilation which runs the whole time. This is not a big problem since it is in the garage, but this needs to be in mind when you think about where to place the system. Otherwise a less noisy power supply needs to be found, I guess a PC power supply with a big 12 cm ventilation should be fine.
On the quality side: no noise or humming when no music is played back, even at maximal volume. Great! Therefore the system is running all the time, when I don’t play any music, I can use it for audio notifications of the home automation system in all rooms (this will be explained in a later article). When playing back music, the sound quality is awesome, especially for my entry level loudspeakers. Some of the speakers I will update in the future for sure, e.g. in the living room, but for the moment the sound is really great.
The usability is highly improved. If for example my wife finds a nice lullaby on youtube, 2 s later she has send it through Airplay into our children’s room. iPeng is a tiny bit more complicated, but it is very easy to get used to it. The only thing I still have to figure out is how to give our kids control over the speakers in their rooms, so they would not need any other HiFi system in their rooms.