How to set up pre-wired whole house audio ... from PC?

Question

Our home was wired with a whole house audio system by previous owners who sold all the speakers and stereo equipment prior to selling the home. We have 1/4 speaker outlets throughout the house (more than six zones, I'm not sure the total, some mono - one outlet, some stereo - two together?) and a room in the basement where lots of speaker wire drops in from the ceiling.

The speaker wire is still hooked up (soldered?) to an old telecom rack which is how they had it routed - they would manually connect the output - various radios, stereos, record players, etc., to the rack, which routed the audio to different rooms of the house.

I'd like to change the set up so I can have multiple sound cards on a networked PC to be able to select various audio sources to play in different rooms of the house wirelessly from any computer on the network.

What equipment would I need?

I figure:

1. Speakers ( any specs?)
2. Speaker to 1/4 inch adapter to plug them in
3. A huge expensive multi-source multi-zone amplifier or several smaller simpler cheaper ones.
4. Several usb-to-audio devices
5. Adapter turn speaker wires currently soldered to the rack to plugs able to connect to audio output (such as usb-to-audio devices)
6. Software to run several audio sources at once - say, from hard drive, pandora, streaming internet radio, google music, etc. to different audio devices.

Answer 1

very confusing subject. search onto yahoo or google. that will might help!

Answer 2

I purchased JRiver Media Center software which works with multiple "zones" which can be multiple sound cards, even USB sound cards. With some inexpensive adapters I have been able to run multiple speaker zones from the PC to the existing (50 year old) wiring and connect speakers around the house. With the software, I can pick which zone to send what media to (including the Smart TV through DLNA), and what media to play (audio or video from my hard drive connected to the PC. The software transcodes it to the TV, has volume adjustment and even zone sync between the different zones.



So, instead of spending the time and money to rewire the 20 or so zones around the house, and without spending $2,000 plus to put in a wifi stereo into each zone, I'm able to do this for under $100/room.

Answer 3

This day I wouldn't.



I would do it all over the network, with the PC serving content to network clients where it will be listened to. Those clients may be tablets. Each location would have a suitable sound system.