Building a house: what would you do for whole-house audio?

[KeenanCannon]

We are considering building a vacation home. At our prior beach house, I had a Squeezebox 3 hooked up to an old Windows laptop with FLAC files on an external hard drive. We played through a compact stereo system in the main room, which was basically the whole downstairs. I had a separate SB1 that I sometimes ran with powered speakers on the porch. With a new build, I am wondering about a wired whole-house system like we have at home, or maybe even something wireless through wifi. Four zones will probably suffice. I haven't really kept up with what's available and what works well these days, as what has been in place in our house for at least 15 years still works well, except for needing the occasional reset. So, I'm looking for suggestions. If you were starting fresh, what would you do? I'd like to be able to use my digital files but also stream, as I have SiriusXM and Amazon music. What do you recommend?

[BkeKay]

For new construction or major renovation there are lots of choices, but at a minimum, no matter what else I do, and whether I even need it or not, I'd do the following:

0. I'd still use LMS and squeezeboxes or squeezebox replacements (rPi with piCoreplayer OS). You can stream your own music and lots of internet streaming (but not SiriusXM, at least without some other messing about).

1. runs of ethernet cable (and probably runs of fiber optics at the same time) to at least two locations in each room (probably two runs to each location). Just think of this as electrical outlets... you don't know exactly where you'll need them.

2. All those ethernet/fiber runs will head back to a single panel, where they can be connected to a switch, the modem/router, etc. fed from outside the house.

3. There needs to be good runs back to some back room/closet/cabinet where you can set a headless computer music server, where it is out of sight, out of mind, and noise, fans, etc. are irrelvant to the music listening spaces.

3. When I say all rooms, I mean all. Running cable in open walls is dirt cheap. In a major restoration, we ran ethernet to everything, including bathrooms. But I didn't run to my wife's large walk in closet or the back utility room. I now have music in those areas with Squeezeboxes on WIFI or ethernet over powerline. Who knew my wife wanted to hear stuff in her closet in the mornings!

4. You'll want to run cable for cable TV, etc., even if you don't think you'll need it. Someone might, and again, easy and cheap.

5. I'm old school from the days before networked systems that could play synched music to different endpoints, but I'd also figure out a place or two where I might have major stereo system (amp/preamp) and then run quality speaker wire from every room back to those central points, in case I want to ever use some central distributed music system. Again, wiring is cheap when walls are open.

6. You might want in ceiling/wall speakers in some places (bedrooms, etc). Running speaker wiring for those back to a central place where you can have several rPis set up as players with miniamps/dacs, etc. would allow music in rooms with no need for systems in those rooms. And these systems can be controlled via phone apps, etc.

I'm sure I'm forgetting somethings, but you get the drift. Over do the cables! If you have the right wiring, you have unlimited choices. WIFI works, but why even try, when you have open walls!

[parentingyrnf]

It's a good idea to build a country house. Unfortunately, I don't know how you can make the whole house sound. With a question like that, I think you'd better go to a company specializing in residential real estate surveying. I have used www.sjonessurveying.co.uk several times before for home surveys. I have always had great communication with the surveyor. His review was outstanding and very detailed, and he provided numerous photos to support it. Thanks to his survey, I was able to resolve all building defects. I am very satisfied, recommend it 100%, and will definitely use it again if needed.