Routing and controlling audio throughout house

OhPinchy

I am trying to figure out how to route and control audio throughout my house that I am currently renovating. I have just plastered the walls and ceilings but before doing so I ran speaker cables from the hi-fi location in the living room to the ceiling of every other room in the house. The intention is to have speakers recessed into the ceiling in the kitchen and the bedrooms.

I would like to be able to listen to music from the living room hi-fi in the kitchen and bedrooms: this would require the ability to specify which speakers the audio should be routed to (don’t want speakers in all rooms playing at once) and also the ability to remotely control the living room hi-fi from each of the other rooms.

Any advice on how to best do this would be much appreciated.

I live in Ireland and am travelling to the US for a week next week and found this website I could use which seems to have relevant gear at decent prices: http://www.jr.com

In particular the Niles stuff looks relevant: http://www.jr.com/JRSectionView.pro...74&BrandStore=t

The NILES AUDIO MSU480 Multi-room IR Wireless Repeater System Hub looks like it would be useful for allowing multiple remote controls in the other rooms but what are the “one infrared sensor for each of your secondary listening rooms” it mentions – would the NILES AUDIO MF1VF Infrared MicroFlasher be the right thing (as in have the hub attached to the hi-fi and then have a flasher in each secondary room?).

The NILES AUDIO SS-6 Six-Pair Speaker Selector looks like it could be used for indicating which room the audio should be routed to (e.g. only speakers in bedroom A should receive the audio at this time) – is this correct? I don’t see how I could control this device remotely though – is there anyway I could pick up a remote in the kitchen and tell this device to route audio to the kitchen? The alternative would mean I would have to walk into living room to press the button to route it to the kitchen, but from then on I could control the tracks, stations, volume in the kitchen using the hi-fi remote with the above remote repaters – not ideal but ok.

Any advice on this would be much appreciated as I’m fairly new to this and am a bit overwhelmed by all the options. Also – do the prices on this site look good enough to merit the hassle of lugging them home or good I get similar deals in the UK?

Zynks

Have you considered Sonos as a music streaming solution. I am preparing to install one for a customer, and it seems to be one of the best out there. You can use wired or wireless distribution. The remote control and area management is great with up to 32 concurrent streams to different zones, controlled from a single, or multiple remote(s). They are on sale only in the US so far, so perfect for you.
Check www.sonos.com.

OhPinchy

Thanks Zynks - yeh I've come across the Sonos stuff and it looks good but is considerably more pricey than the alternatives I had in mind.

I'm probably going to put Windows Media Center in and am getting two extenders for cheap in the US and will pick up an Xbox 360 when it is launched - this would give me the ability to access media in bedroom, living room, kitchen and PC room - but this would all have to be done through TVs to control it, though the audio could be routed to hi-fis in each room - not ideal as I wanted to buy just one hi-fi.

The audio only solution I mention here would be cheaper and I could also use it to supplement Media Center by routing audio only to those rooms that do not have a Media Center Extender.

So what I need to know is:

The 6 way speaker selector - is there any way to remotely control which speakers are active at any one time?

Remotely controlling the hi-fi in the living room: if I get the wireless hub device what else do I need to be able to press say 'Pause' when in the bedroom and have the hi-fi in the living room go on pause - will an IR flasher in each room suffice?