DJ sounds in different rooms, wirelessly?

[admin_exported]

Hi,

A friend is having a party and wants to set up some decks but wants to pump the sound through to 3 rooms wirelessly. The furthest room would be about 30m away and goes through 4 walls.

1) Could this be done using airport express and active speakers? - My worry is time delay between rooms

2) Sonos? - quite expensive

3) Wireless means digital. Do any of the systems available have a built in ADC to convert analogue signal from decks?

What is the cheapest way to do this effectively (about £500-1000?). Can it be done?

Many thanks, Lee

 

[The_Lhc]

Sonos can take an analogue line-input and send it to all other zones, however as you point out 30m and several walls might be an issue, unless you can run ethernet cable temporarily between each zoneplayer. Actually you might have to do that, Sonos has two options for line-input transmission, compressed and uncompressed. If you use uncompressed you'll run into wireless bandwidth issues a lot sooner (especially over distance/through walls), if you use compressed then you'll probably find the zones won't be perfectly synchronised (which may or may not be an issue), wiring the ZPs together will allow you to run uncompressed without any trouble.

As you say though, it's "quite" expensive just for a party, assuming you already have amps in each room you're looking at three ZP90s, which will roll in at around £840, if you want ZP120s (which probably won't give you the volume you're looking for) then you're talking more like £1200.

And yes I have already thought about 6 S5s in three stereo pair setups! £2100...

 

[brendonw]

I'd be tempted to use homeplugs for each room to allow a wired connection.

No problems with wireless at all then.

 

[The_Lhc]

Yeah for a more permanent solution that'd be good, if it's just for a party then daisy chaining the ZPs directly should work, provided one of them is wired to a router of some sort. Mind you, if it's just for a party I can't see anyone spending that kind of money in the first place...

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks the_lhc and brendonw

Homeplug? One of these:

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=5419

What is the signal quality like and does it just connect into an amp via RCA? Or is it still digital and could acommodate active speakers?

 

[The_Lhc]

Err, I think we were talking about the homeplug network adapters, same principal as that but purely for your network connectivity, as a way of wiring the Sonos Zoneplayers together.

I've no idea about those things, I've never seen them before but they appear to have analogue connections on them, so they must be doing DtoA and AtoD conversion internally.

 

[Anonymous]

So, as I understand, these homeplugs can

send a signal using the mains on a 200m loop.

There is an audio one which appears to have a built in DAC (quality unknown)

There is an ethernet one which, in some way, you could connect an external dac around your house.

An ADC would still be needed adjacent to the decks to convert the analogue signal into digital (at a push could the mic in on a laptop be used?).

 

[The_Lhc]

leenorris78: So, as I understand, these homeplugs can send a signal using the mains on a 200m loop.
There is an audio one which appears to have a built in DAC (quality unknown)

There is an ethernet one which, in some way, you could connect an external dac around your house.

Errr, no, the network one is just that, network, it's for connecting network appliances together, like PCs, NASs, Sonos ZPs etc. It's got nothing to do with audio.

An ADC would still be needed adjacent to the decks to convert the analogue signal into digital

Well, like I said, Sonos can do that.

(at a push could the mic in on a laptop be used?).

I doubt it, I think the signal levels are wrong for a start.