All My Music In Every Room

Easy

What I  did:

1. Build a house

2. While building, wire the whole house for stereo.

Yeah it's old school. but so am I.

I bought a house wired for stereo (great room, two bedrooms, and outside).

PC is upstairs with Itunes.

I used to have a Roku sound bridge to use my WiFi to access my computer/itunes/internet for streaming audio.  It konked out on me but I didn't replace it because my PS3 can get access to my computer via WiFi, and I also have laptop than I can hook into the stereo and I homegroup share to my desktop - or my Ipad, or even my old PSP allowed me to get internet radio...

There are SO many options...

What I did:

1. Move

2. While looking for a new house, have a secret criteria that it must be wired for whole house sound.

1) Computer with iTunes connected to wireless network.

2) iPod touch with wifi ( this is your "remote" ).  Use the "Remote" app to control your iTunes.

3) An airport express unit each place you want to connect speakers.  It has an audio out jack to connect to the speakers/line-in/etc.

From the iPod you can control what speakers are being used, it synchs itself so if you play multiple speakers it is in synch.  It works great for me.

If you have an iPhone already you can use that too.  Just depends on what you have already.

We use apple TV for our televisions, but it plays through the TV (I usually set a slideshow as background to the music) but if you don't like your TV for music then just do the airport express thing.  They have airplay speakers for indoor and outdoor both.

You can play on the speakers from anything you have on wifi and is capable of airplay (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air).  Something to remember though, If you want to use your MacBook Pro as a "home base" for storage, then you will have to have it on all the time or play the music from your iDevice that IS on.  If you utilize iCloud and iTunes Match you can have access to your music and movies (that are stored in iCloud) when your pro is shut down.

What I'm getting at is that I found that if I wanted to play anything, anytime, anywhere, I was better off buying an iMac that I keep on 24/7 with iTunes pulled up (I had an old Powerbook G4 that i used as a "home base" for everything).  That way I don't have to turn on any device or go looking.  I just pick up the remote or iPhone (which I never put down) and get it going from there.  I had a laptop and found it to be a booger to go track it down and turn it on every time I wanted to listen to music.  The iPad seems to cover things otherwise as far as a mobile processing.  May consider a MacBook Air, but I don't know.

Now if you are getting into video that's a different story.  For video my suggestion would be a MacMini with Plex running on it.  Works wonderfully.  It's the center of my home media system.

The ATV is too limited IMO (won't play AVIs for example).

We bought a house like this.  At the time I thought it was sorta superfluous, but now that I have it, I LOVE it and use it ALL the time.  And, it's also outside so I can jam while gardening or sitting aroundthe fire - totally awesome.  I can play my Ipod, cd, or radio. I'll never want to have a home without it now that I've had it!!

You are using a Mac - you don't need a tech.

Sorry, but I can't help you since I'm still ol' skool -

Sonos is the ideal solution but a little more expensive. I have a Western Digital media player connected  into my TV and stereo. All my music is stored there and streamed to the computers. This is nice because it does not require the computer to be on if I want to watch netflix, listen to music, etc. I also use it to backup the computers, and have a lot of photos on there so I keep a slideshow going on the big screen tv.

This is the set up that you need. <----link