Streaming family music collection

[DJEPSON]

Me, my partner and daughter all have our own laptops with itunes and our own music collection on 1 a MacBook and 2 laptops, what is the best way to bring the whole collection together so that it accessible to us all and then what is the best system to play this, I was looking as the logitech and sonos systems.

Thanks

 

[mcjwalters]

IMO the Sonos is by far the better option, and if you have an iphone or itouch you can get a free app to control the system saving you money. Yes the Sonos is not cheap but really so easy to set up, supports all music files, does what it says on the box and customer services are great help, if you need it. I would also get a NAS hard drive, transfer the files onto it, and and connect it to router so that the computers don't need to be on to play music.
Look for a local shop that may have an ex-demo for sale.
I really think it was the best money I have spent in a long time, and using Napster gives you limitless music, I don't use my saved music anymore as my playlists on Napster has everything and more that I have ripped.

 

[Andy H]

Also consider what format/bitrate your music is ripped in. If it's in a low rate mp3 you would be better re-ripping into one of the lossless formats to get better sound, especially if your going to spend a bit on some kit.

Just a thought.

 

[DJEPSON]

If I get a NAS drive would I be able to copy all the music from everyones itunes and convert to say FLAC as I copy it rather then re-ripping every CD that we have already in iTunes.

 

[John Duncan]

A NAS and a Sonos is quite an expensive route to go down, especially when there are others (with varying cost and complexity). My initial thought was to enable home sharing on all your laptops in itunes, which will sync all music on all three. Then you could use something as simple as an airport express to stream music from any of them to your hifi. This doesn't give you a dsplay or a remote, but at least it's cheap and simple. How much were you looking at spending? There may be other options...

 

[DJEPSON]

I wanted the option of not having to have the laptops on in order to listen to the music, I was thinking of getting a NAS drive anyway because my daughter has the teenage habit of ignoring me when I tell her not to download stuff from obscure websites and despite having AVG running she has on a a couple of occasions corrupted her laptop so with a NAS at least I can keep regular back-ups (which we currently don't do).

For now I can get away with just the music downstairs in the lounge and kitchen which are next to each other so would only need either the Sonos ZP90 or the Squeezebox duet as I have a Denon 1910 amp, then add to the system later - or is this still overkill?