I am in the process of having a new media room built in my basement. Approx 18x15. My thought process is to have a couple of big hard drives to play flacs through. The room will be set up for surround sound 7.1. The guy will run whatever kind of wiring I want wherever I want it. My problem is I really dont know where to begin.
Do I use a laptop and hook into a nice receiver?
Do I use something like a squeeze box?
Looking for some guidance or suggestions
Thanks!
Do you currently have flac files stored somewhere in your home ? (ie. pc laptop etc) ?
If starting from scratch I would suggest a centralized server to act as your main media storage. A simply PC or mac or whatever can take on this role nicely. Now getting it to your stereo is going to be where you make your decisions.
Option #1
Have your PC / mac media server directly connected to the stereo. This requires that the computer be relatively close to the stereo setup. It also brings the issue of PC related noise in to the mix (ie fans etc etc)
Option #2
Use a squeezebox device. This gives you a lot of flexibility as the media server does not need to be anywhere near the stereo. It can be anywhere in your home provided it can feed a signal to the squeezebox
I went with option #1 when I tied my PC into my stereo. I did this before the squeezebox was out so there really wasn't an option #2. If I was doing it again today w/o question I would use a squeezebox product. It eliminates the need to have a really highend PC soundcard. it eliminates the computer being in proximity, and it has a nice small form factor and from what everyone says sounds great.
I would have the installer run 2 or 3 ethernet runs from the back of the stereo area to a central point where you can tie it in to your computer network. You could also not do any ethernt runs and just use the wireless function of the squeezebox but if i had the opportunity to run ethernet I would do it now. It will allow you to be hardwired for the squeezebox as well as any other systems that you might want to use here (Ps3, xbox etc) also newer HDTVs are coming with ethernet as well. You really only need 1 run and could just add a hub or switch at either end to give yourself the necessary jacks so whatever makes sense to you.
Hope this makes sense.