What's the best low cost setup for multiroom iTunes/iPod listening?

[davester]

I would like to be able to listen to relatively good fidelity music, including vinyl, CDs, and also my iTunes collection, in my living room, kitchen and perhaps elsewhere in the house with remote access without the need to visit my computer to change music. There's a very nice 70s stereo system with CD, turntable, cassette, etc in my living room, and I was thinking of adding a second set of speakers in the kitchen (the previous owner had installed speaker wire to these locations already). However, I'm not sure of the best way to integrate my iTunes collection into this system. I prefer to not have my computer running all the time.

Here are some alternatives I can think of:

1. Ideally, I would put my iPod in a dock on the stereo then have some way to control the iPod remotely, or perhaps get an iPod touch and have it stream directly to an Airport Express hooked into the stereo. Is this possible?...Is there a gizmo out there that does this?

2. Keep the mac running, buy an Airport Express to hook to the stereo, buy a cheap used bluetooth phone or Palm or some cheap wifi device and use Sailing Clicker to control iTunes on the mac (unfortunately my current bluetooth phone is a Cingular RAZR which is apparently incompatible with Sailing Clicker).

3. Buy a cheap as dirt additional mac (ideas?) that functions only as an iTunes server, hook it straight into the stereo and use Sailing Clicker to control that. The concern I have with this is that I don't want to keep a computer running and burning up energy all the time...can Sailing Clicker wake a computer from sleep?

Or, perhaps there are some other options or products that I'm not thinking of. It seems to me that there should be a lot of people out there that would want to do this. Is there an easy comprehensive solution that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

Your thoughts?

[mattkime]

http://www.slimdevices.com/

http://www.soundbridge.com/

I have the low end soundbridge and i love it. it does need to connect to a mac to play music but it can also play internet radio without connecting to a mac.

[SteveO]

I have (thus far) wired speakers in two rooms for use with a setup similar to what you describe: a '77 Marantz receiver (heh heh, classic with tubes), turntable and CD player. I have AirTunes wired to the receiver (and picking up my regular snow AirPort) so I run that from my PowerBook. Wire an iPod directly into the AirTunes? I don't think AirTunes supports that.

But you could run your iPod through your receiver and not have to mess with the sailing clicker stuff...just grab an iPod 3rd party remote / receiver (hooks into your Pod) and use that to control the Pod from the next room. I've seen these at my local MicroCenter so they are out there.

Or just get something with rich sound that can span rooms like the Bose iPod dock; or Altec Lansing im600 which also has an FM receiver. I just picked up the im600 (great sounding and very small footprint, it also has a rechargeable batt) at Costco for $99. It also has a remote. The remote is a little finicky with its signal.

The JBL model that's donut shaped has awesome remote capability (I can point the remote the opposite direction and it'll bounce its way to the JBL) and decent sound, so that would be another one to consider.

To get remote control of your receiver, you may need to upgrade to a newer model.

[deckeda]

SteveO --- Marantz went to transistors long before your receiver was but a gleam in their eye.

davester, I feel your pain. Mostly because there are a zillion ways to skin this cat, so asking for advice is a crapshoot.

You might consider a NAS instead of a Mac. Pros and cons there. On the other hand, using a low-power-consuming Mac such as a laptop/mini/Cube means keeping it current. Got money?

A big part of the answer will come from how you wish to control the music. Computers have iTunes. AirPort Express has remote controls you can buy for it. So do iPods. Or there's the Sonos system. And the Roku or Slim Devices are there.

[GGD]

I use the Roku M1001 connected to a 1970s Stereo. But I also have a Mac (TiPB 400MHz very low power consumption) dedicated as the always-on home server. It stores the iTunes library and runs iTunes to share the library so that any computer in the house and the Roku can access all of the music at any time (and they all don't have to listen to the same thing at the same time).

The Roku cannot play iTunes DRM protected music, but that's not an issue for me, all of mine is ripped from my CD collection. Roku recently dropped prices, the M1001 lists for $149. I think the main difference between it and the M500 is the display. The M1001 does Ethernet and WIFI, but since I have Ethernet running to the stereo cabinet, I'm using Ethernet.

Besides acting as an iTunes server, my home server also has a large hard drive to serve as the dumping ground for automatic SuperDuper backups from all of the computers in the house. And it's also my weighing station with the Radioshack USB Scale connected.

[deckeda]

I generally like the Macintosh iTunes server method the best, having seen it in action. Also, I've heard some unpleasant things about serving it from a NAS.

My biggest concern here, however, is that I've read that the server and clients all need the same version of iTunes. This is OK today but would wipe out a lot of older Macs when the next updates require Leopard to run iTunes, no?

[GGD]

[quote deckeda]My biggest concern here, however, is that I've read that the server and clients all need the same version of iTunes. This is OK today but would wipe out a lot of older Macs when the next updates require Leopard to run iTunes, no?
I don't think the compatibility is as bad as you think. I think newer iTunes can play music that is being shared by an older version of iTunes. This was an issue for the Roku when iTunes 7 came out, the Roku couldn't play it's shared music for several months while they worked on a firmware update, but it could still play iTunes 6 shared music and the computers with iTunes 7 could also play the iTunes 6 shared music.

I think there is probably some limit to how many version back Apple supports sharing compatibility with, but Apple is also pretty good at making newer iTunes run on older versions of the OS, the current 7.5 version will run on Panther 10.3.9, Apple has some motivation for this, even if you don't buy the latest hardware or OS from them, they still want to sell you a few 99 cent songs.

[mattkime]

soundbridge can also use FireFly. FireFly runs in the background to serve your itunes collection. This way you don't need to launch itunes to have access to your music. It supports 10.3-10.5. Its very simple and works well.

[davester]

Interesting. I hadn't even thought about the Roku. I'm wondering why nobody has suggested running a server with Sailing Clicker. That seems like it'd be a great solution, giving you wifi or bluetooth control and a GUI on your remote (phone or palm/pocketpc). Another item I spotted was this: http://www.scosche.com/scosche.bluetooth . This allows you to carry your iPod around as a remote music server without need for a computer. Anybody have any experience with this?

[DaviDC.]

My Mac is located in the center of the house & has a pair of good speakers with subwoofer connected to it. There's an AirPort Express in the living room connected to the stereo & one in the kitchen feeding a set of JBL Creature Speakers. Seamless music from the back door to the front door is a glorious thing!