Inexpensive multizone setup?

[jmsgld]

It seems I have accidentally fried my Nuvo P3100 - no surge protection whilst doing electrical work elsewhere in the house. It was a 3 zone multi-room amp , controlled via an app.

The concept I love, however in practice it was buggy and apparently rather fragile. I have 4 zones of speakers all wired to a single cupboard.

I have a Denon reciever and use Heos on that a little, but also find that rather buggy, anyone else?

The Denon HEOS Drive HS2 would be a direct replacement, but is more than I want to spend.

Any ideas for a cheaper alternative. Chromecast audios + amps will be too clunky...

Anyone know of a Raspberry pi setup that is stable / low maintenance and allows for example Spotify to be sent to all 4 zones at once and individual zone volume control from phone?

Alternatively anyone know an inexpensive electronics repairer, ideally replacing individual components rather than just the whole power board?

Thanks, James

[2Btoo]

I know very little about HiFi and don't understand the setup you have described but use Chromecasts to do a multi-zone setup in our house and they work very well indeed - I'm chuffed with them. £25 a pop plus as cheap or expensive an amp as you want and likewise for speakers. I am just about to post another thread on speakers but one of my Chromecasts is hooked up to £40's worth of Class D chip amplifier and some £40 JBL Control 1's and it sounds very good indeed to my uneducated ears.

[FA57 VWT]

I’ve got a load of Echo Dot’s sprinkled all over the house, far from hifi quality sound, but for background music they do a great job. Dropping in on the kids is fun too

[RizzoTheRat]

You can also link echo dots to Bluetooth or stereo speakers for better quality audio. Still not going to be top quality but it's plenty good enough for my ears.

[VEX]

So you need a standard 6 Channel Power Amp, which you will feed one of three streaming sources.

Or, Just 3 Streaming Audio Sources with built in amp.

The cheapest way would be to use a Streaming Source with built in Amp.
Sonos is stupid pricing now for new kit.
You're not happy with Heos.

Have you considered Yamaha Musiccast. Their little WXA-50 is quite cool, can be found for around £350. Infact a installer friend has just picked us an exdemo one for £300, but not doesnt need it.

V.

[new_bloke]

I’ve got a multi room setup that I put together with Raspberry Pi and integrated dac / amplifiers (I have a mixture of hifiberry and iqaudio boards). These are all running shairport sync and I have a server running forked-daapd that supplies music from my library, internet radio and Spotify to one or more rooms, all in sync. There’s no reason that the server couldn’t be a Pi too. I’m happy to supply more detail and links if it’s useful..

Cheers,

NB

[AMST09]

Tried opening it up and checking the fuses?

[jmsgld]

I have been super busy at work so haven't had a chance to open it up. I did change the fuse in the plug, but a quick google suggests that there are no internal fuses. I'll open it up and have a look when I get the chance but I am not up to diagnosing individual component failures. There is a new power board on ebay for £150 which I will consider after some basic diagnostics.

I had forgotten about Yamaha musiccast, but needing at least 3 zones it is again going to be more than I want to spend.

It is largely ceiling speakers so hardly the last word in sound quality, but my girlfriend is currently using an echo dot in the kitchen and the sound quality makes my head hurt. It looks like the echo has a 3.5mm output so I'll hook it up to a spare amp tomorrow and see how it sounds. I'll also resurrect an old chromecast audio to compare.

It's amazon prime day coming up so another 3 echo dots and an 8 channel power amp could be the cheapest way to go.

If not I quite like the idea of a pi setup, I like the open access stuff, always seem to evolve more pleasingly, I don't have a lot of free time atm though...

Thanks for all the input, very useful

[VEX]

Actually, for cheap and not so dirty, this with a bunch of echo dots would work.

https://www.cybermarket.co.uk/shop/music-disco/sta...

[jmsgld]

I was a little disappointed with the sound quality from the echo dot amped through the ceiling speakers, it sounds really compressed, I might try another amp but suspect it is the echo. Impressed that the echo still picks up voice commands from inside a kitchen cupboard though. It's a shame it would be a really nice setup if it sounded better. Couldn't find the chromecast...

I took the lid off the nuvo, there are only 2 boards inside. It looks like there is a little surge protector before the power board and still 240V at the board. The LEDs for the zones are fed straight from the power board and don't come on at all so it seems likely that the fault is within the power board.

I think I'll buy the ebay power board, and if it works might try recapping the old one...

If not I think I'll explore the pi route, maybe even pi running echo...

[jmsgld]

Changed the board and all works as it should.

The new board had better quality components, Rubycon vs Lelon caps etc. It's a North American amp, retails for circa $1000, interesting that they used such crap quality components...