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Music Throughout The House
By joe | February 8, 2009
When I was young, I used to play vinyl records, one side at a time, with headphones on, while I laid in front of the family hi-fi. Even by the standards of the day, it was cheap. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the music and lyrics, when the needle wasn’t popping from the dirt in the grooves of the record.
It is times like today, when I sit back and listen to my new speakers in the dining room, selecting one of over 7500 songs from my music library stored on my computer in my office on another floor, that I have to take time to appreciate how far technology has come during my lifetime. Combining the iPhone, AirPort Express, Apple TV, and iTunes, I have the ability to access my entire music library wherever in the house I want.
Growing up, I have listened to music on 8-tracks, cassettes, vinyl, CDs, and various digital formats. I can remember going to the big Peaches record stores back in Philadelphia as a kid to look for something that I might have liked. I usually stuck with artists I knew, since cash was hard to come by. Over the years, there were some attempts at listening stations by retailers, but it was either too limited or too inconvenient in a crowded retail store environment. When digital music came out, it was traded freely, because it could be, and it was easier to find what you wanted without spending a lot of money. Music producers and electronics makers were way behind the curve when it came to digital music. They didn’t offer the ease of use demanded by consumers. Instead of focusing on providing a product consumers were willing to pay for, they spent their energy prosecuting consumers.
Apple came up from nowhere and quickly dominated the market for media delivery, creation, distribution, and consumer enjoyment. Each product worked really well alone, with other Apple products, or with products from other vendors. Apple provided a simple way to store your media files with iTunes. It was also an easy way to browse for new music, purchase it, play it, and share it, all in one program. Now, I can use it to listen to music anywhere in my house. Instead of laying in front of my family’s hi-fi, I can enjoy my music on a variety of quality equipment, even some comfortable ear buds.
By combining relatively inexpensive components, you can set up a listening station anywhere in your house. You can grow this as your budget and time allow. There is no need to install wiring, speakers, amps and control pads throughout your house to enjoy your media anywhere. If you were to start out from scratch, some of the up front costs might be considered significant. But, you probably already have a computer these days, and likely a mobile phone – you’ll need an iPhone, or the iPod Touch to run the Remote app. The cost to add a simple listening station, with access to all the media stored on your computer would only cost you a few hundred dollars for the remaining components, less if you use an existing stereo.
There are three different listening/watching stations I have set up, outside of listening directly from my computer. The first includes an Apple TV attached to an existing receiver and television. This comes in 40GB ($229) and 160GB ($329) versions. I’d suggest the 160GB version, in case you want to keep a full copy of your music library and have plenty of room for your movie rentals and other videos and photos. If you just want to use it to rent HD movies and as streaming output device, the 40GB model will certainly suffice for that.
Apple calls their streaming music technology AirTunes. This allows you to output music from a computer running iTunes (Mac or PC) to a speaker output on the network. The Apple TV and AirPort Express can be configured to act as speaker outputs. Once configured, along with your iTunes preferences, you can find speaker output options in the lower right of your iTunes window automatically. You use this option to select where the music from the currently playing track should play. This can be single or multiple speaker outputs.
Speaker Outputs in iTunes
The Apple TV acts as an AirTunes speaker output on your network. You could use your computer to control the music at this point, but for total control, while roaming around the house away from your computer, you’ll need an iPhone running the Remote app. With your music stored on your computer, you use the iPhone Remote app to play the music from your computer, and output it on your Apple TV. This interface provides access to all your music and playlists. You can leave your TV running, if you like watching the picture show screensaver, or you can leave it off, so long as your receiver is on.
If you are replicating your entire music library to the Apple TV, then you don’t even need your computer to be running with this setup. You can access the library on the Apple TV from the Remote app. You can also output the sound from the Apple TV to local or other speaker outputs on the network. This comes close to providing a central, redundant music library, but currently it’s not as convenient for multi-user environments – like if your wife wants to purchase music or listen to her own library, it’s a bit of a chore. Our music becomes mixed as a result, and when you throw in DRM, ugh. Hopefully, with Apple’s move to eliminate DRM, we can see better multi-user products for media.
Station 1
The next station I have set up includes an Apple AirPort Express connected to an older receiver. This allows me to do the same thing as I did with the Apple TV, except it has no ability to rent movies. It does, however, provide an extension to my wireless network in the house, and even share a printer – if I wasn’t too picky about access to extended features on the printer, and didn’t mind turning off the power saving features (nothing is perfect). This old receiver connects all my remaining media formats I have left – vinyl, cassette, and CD. This option only costs $99 for the AirPort Express, but does require an existing receiver/amp and speakers. The AirPort Express could also act as your broadband router, sharing your Internet connection. This, would require your stereo to be close to your broadband gateway.
Station 3
The last station replaces the receiver from the last station with a set of powered Bose Companion 3 Multimedia Speakers. This is a very small footprint setup, making it ideal for places like our dining room, where installing a receiver and speakers might not be convenient with food around. There seem to be a whole lot more iPod docking stations than decent sounding self powered speaker setups like those you attach to your computer. This was the preference, since the amp is built into the subwoofer, and the control/input interface was compact.
The Bose speakers seemed to be a good balance of quality, cost, and size for our purposes. It also helped our decision to get them refurbished at the outlet store in Leesburg. For such a small set of speakers, Bose doesn’t disappoint with the Companion 3. They also packs a lot more base into these speakers than you’d expect out of computer speakers. The midrange was not too bad either. Bose sometimes lacks in this area with it’s smaller speaker systems. There are no tone controls, aside from subwoofer output. I didn’t find myself disappointed in this; the music quality was good and room filling, for such a small set of speakers.
Station 3
With each of these setups, you’ll need a specific cable to connect the device to your receiver or speakers. This can be analog or digital, depending on your situation – both the Apple TV and the AirPort Express support analog or digital outputs. The Apple Store is going to have most of the cables you’ll need for a variety of connections. If you want the digital cable, the Apple Store is a must, since very few places carry the adapters you’ll need for digital connectivity with the AirPort Express. Surprisingly, the Apple Store has the best deal on these cables, as well as HDMI (in case you pick up the Apple TV).
Apple seemed to drive all vendors into reducing their pricing on digital cables. I can recall the first HDMI cable I bought costing around $125 from Circuit City. Now, similar cables cost $20 at the Apple Store. Perhaps that’s why Apple’s profits are growing, and Circuit City is going out of business? Probably more than just those cables, but I think things like that played a part.
The source computer for any of this can be a Mac or a PC. You can also combine all of your output stations to play at the same time, allowing you to listen to your music throughout the whole house at once. This comes in handy for parties and spring cleaning.
You might say, that you could have music anywhere by just carrying around a docking station, and docking an iPod. This is certainly an option, and is part of our setup. However, we don’t always carry around an iPod, but we do usually carry around our phones, or have them nearby. Since the iPhones can’t carry around all of our music, we can use them to access our libraries more conveniently than by using the dock and an iPod.
This is non-techie tested. My wife is my non-techie test subject. Once I set up the components for her, using it was a snap for her to pick up – so much so, that she was able to use it on her own the second time, with no questions. The one gotcha I found was the firewall software installed on the Windows computers. I had to disable this to get the iTunes library sharing to work properly. There is probably an exception that I need to implement, to allow the firewall to run, along with sharing the library – I just haven’t taken the time to look it up yet. So, as far as component setup (iTunes, AirPort, Remote usage), there may be a few things you’re going to want a tech savvy partner or friend to help you out with on initial setup. You might even try the Apple Store for advice or guidance – they are usually very helpful.
There are still a few missing pieces to Apple’s lineup. I’ve heard about some third party options, but haven’t had the opportunity to check them out yet. Anyone who has, please leave me a comment with your experiences. The features I’d like to see, include central library storage for household members, with persistent access (computers tend to go into power saving mode). In addition, I’d like to see video streaming added to the Remote/AirTunes. Local storage is still finite on the Apple TV, and being able to centrally store all of your music, videos, and photos is much more efficient and easier to protect (backup).
Having implemented various media distribution solutions in my home over the years, using mostly consumer grade components, this is the all around best ROI for me that I’ve found. It also consumes the least amount of resources and was easier to get non-techies to learn and want to use it. Each of the Apple components are great to use on their own, but together, even better.
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