Change Your Entire Home's Mood and Feel With Whole-Home Audio

Best Quality

There are a few different flavors of streaming whole-home audio. One is more akin to the hardwired home of the past with all the speaker wire running to a central location using a multi-room amplifier and a streaming source as an input. This streaming source is usually a dedicated, purpose-built device from the likes of Autonomic, Control4, Nuvo or any of several other manufacturers. These are very robust systems, are usually very reliable and almost all integrate well with your home control system (ie, Control4, Crestron, Savant, Elan, etc), if you have one. If you have a home control system, this is probably the preferred option, assuming all the speaker wire is in place or can be easily run. The benefits of these systems are higher resolution audio (typically), better integration with control systems, robust reliability and personalized customer support from your AV professional who performed the installation.

Easier and Faster But Lower Quality and Reliability

If you are not renovating or do not already have a home control system in place (and don’t plan on getting one in the future), then there are several Wi-Fi based systems that would like work very well for you. Examples of these are Sonos, Denon HEOS, BlueSound and a few others. The benefits to these systems are that they do not need to be wired together (although if you are using in ceiling or in-wall speakers, the player does need to be wired to those). The systems also have all-in-one players with built-in speakers that can sit on a shelf or countertop and connect to the rest of the system wirelessly - all they need is power. These all-in-ones are the modern day boombox and are great for secondary rooms like bedrooms and bathrooms. Each player on the system talks to the others wirelessly, so they can all be synched up to play the same thing in a ‘party-mode’ or to play different things in different rooms. Sonos is the pioneer in this category and has a great product lineup with all-in-one players, components that connect to speakers, sound bars and a subwoofer. In addition, Sonos probably has the broadest array of streaming services available - everything from Spotify and Pandora to more obscure services that play music from other countries. There are also services for commercial use like Mood and SoundMachine, which ensure all the music being played is properly licensed for commercial use (in a bar, restaurant or office, using Pandora or Spotify in a commercial or public space is a violation of copyright laws and opens the owner up to lawsuits and fines). While Sonos is the leader, HEOS and BlueSound are close on their heels, mainly due to the fact that they play nicer with other systems and for BlueSound is based on high resolution audio. Sonos is a pretty closed ecosystem and it doesn’t work well with home control or universal remotes. The other systems are more open and integrate more easily.

Summary

Whatever system you choose, please get something! There is nothing more enjoyable than playing music throughout your home either to relax, set the mood for a nice family dinner, while cleaning the house or while having a cocktail or dinner party. You will never go back to that Amazon Echo speaker on the counter or worse, the speaker on your mobile phone!