Hi all,
I joined because I heard that this is the friendliest audio forum on the internet and I really need some friendly help.
This is going to be a long post - please bear with me.
To give a little context about myself first: I like music and listening to music, but I am not very knowledgable about hardware (read: I have no clue). I usually listen to music on Spotify and don't own any records or CD's *gasp*. However, I am thinking about buying a turntable at some point because my dad has hundreds of records and I like the whole air around him putting on a "proper" record.
We recently built a house and in all the crazyness around planning and building, I did not consult someone knowledgable around audio and just had some cables placed in the walls where I saw fit. Hindsight is 20/20 and I now feel I made some pretty serious mistakes.
This is a drawing of the setup I am working with:
As you can see, there is a server room with a rack that has internet, NAS, etc. That is also where all audio cables end up. In the living room, I have four speaker cables, some RJ45 connectors and some power connectors. In the kitchen, I only have audio cables, no power and also no possibility of getting power there, either (the cables end up on a ledge about 3m off the ground).
There are a few scenarios that I would like to be able to cater for:
- Listening to music only in the kitchen, only in the living room or both together (the same music, not different sources). This could be either through Spotify streaming (or jack or AirPlay) or from the turntable.
- Watching TV with surround sound
Ideally, it should be super easy to switch between those scenarios. I have a smart home system, so I can hook up some devices to that and have it controlled by the system, if that helps.
My question to you beautiful people is: how can I achieve this? What hardware would you recommend, where should I place it and how do I best connect it? I don't want to spend bucketloads of money, as I think I would probably be wasted on me. I do like the idea of buying multiple devices that have very specific purposes instead of one really expensive device that does everything.
To give you an idea of the budget I am aiming for: I've been looking around a bit and I feel that in the kitchen, I could best place two Elac Debut B6.2. Next to the TV two Q Acoustics 3050i or maybe just the whole Q Acoustics 3050i 5.1 Cinema Pack.
My problem is that I have no idea which amplifier(s) or other hardware I could best use and where to put them. I am pretty sure that the situation around the TV will be a problem because I have too few audio cables. Is audio over RJ45 *another gasp* an option? Or can I better have some local cables running there somehow and only go to the server room for the multi-room audio? Maybe a local Sonos setup is even more logical? So m any questions!
I really hope that you can help me with this. Any suggestions you have would be great, and it would be totally awesome if you could recommend actual products, too.
Thank you so much and please let me know if there is any other information you would need!
I joined because I heard that this is the friendliest audio forum on the internet and I really need some friendly help.
This is going to be a long post - please bear with me.
To give a little context about myself first: I like music and listening to music, but I am not very knowledgable about hardware (read: I have no clue). I usually listen to music on Spotify and don't own any records or CD's *gasp*. However, I am thinking about buying a turntable at some point because my dad has hundreds of records and I like the whole air around him putting on a "proper" record.
We recently built a house and in all the crazyness around planning and building, I did not consult someone knowledgable around audio and just had some cables placed in the walls where I saw fit. Hindsight is 20/20 and I now feel I made some pretty serious mistakes.
This is a drawing of the setup I am working with:
As you can see, there is a server room with a rack that has internet, NAS, etc. That is also where all audio cables end up. In the living room, I have four speaker cables, some RJ45 connectors and some power connectors. In the kitchen, I only have audio cables, no power and also no possibility of getting power there, either (the cables end up on a ledge about 3m off the ground).
There are a few scenarios that I would like to be able to cater for:
- Listening to music only in the kitchen, only in the living room or both together (the same music, not different sources). This could be either through Spotify streaming (or jack or AirPlay) or from the turntable.
- Watching TV with surround sound
Ideally, it should be super easy to switch between those scenarios. I have a smart home system, so I can hook up some devices to that and have it controlled by the system, if that helps.
My question to you beautiful people is: how can I achieve this? What hardware would you recommend, where should I place it and how do I best connect it? I don't want to spend bucketloads of money, as I think I would probably be wasted on me. I do like the idea of buying multiple devices that have very specific purposes instead of one really expensive device that does everything.
To give you an idea of the budget I am aiming for: I've been looking around a bit and I feel that in the kitchen, I could best place two Elac Debut B6.2. Next to the TV two Q Acoustics 3050i or maybe just the whole Q Acoustics 3050i 5.1 Cinema Pack.
My problem is that I have no idea which amplifier(s) or other hardware I could best use and where to put them. I am pretty sure that the situation around the TV will be a problem because I have too few audio cables. Is audio over RJ45 *another gasp* an option? Or can I better have some local cables running there somehow and only go to the server room for the multi-room audio? Maybe a local Sonos setup is even more logical? So m any questions!
I really hope that you can help me with this. Any suggestions you have would be great, and it would be totally awesome if you could recommend actual products, too.
Thank you so much and please let me know if there is any other information you would need!
