How I built a high quality multi-room sound system for less than 200$

DIY Products&Projects
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How I built a high quality multi-room sound system for less than 200$

:wave: This is my first project using Arylic products. My goal was to build a tailor-made multi room sound system for my new apartment using my existing speakers:

  • a pair of passive Beovox S4500 from Bang & Olufsen (without amp)
  • a pair of active Yamaha HS3 which I used to produce music with

My vision of this project was to use vintage Beovox Bang & Olufsen speakers which I found on an auction for my living room, and my HS3 for my work station in another room. For a long time I thought this would be impossible. I thought I would have to invest in new smart speakers to get a multi room experience, such as Sonos which are already designed to connect to the network of your home. But then I found out that Arylic have a great DIY amplifiers and products designed for this purpose.

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Beovox S4500 from Bang & Olufsen

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Yamaha HS3

First I setup my Up2Stream Amp V4 with my Beovox in the living room. I have easily connected my two speakers to the board using the authentic B&O wires (you just need to cut the edge to divide the wire into two, which is equivalent of having one black and one red wire for each speaker). These are the white cables you see connected to the green cube in the pic below. And on the left of the green cube, connect to a 12V power charger.

You can choose with a switch on the amp between either Mono/Stereo. I have it switched to stereo mode and then built a nice transparent plexiglass case to avoid accumulating too much dust on it.

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Up2Stream Amp V4

The challenge was also to be able to use them to connect my turntable using bluetooth. With the Amp v4, I can switch between Wifi and Bluetooth very quickly using the remote control, or simply by pushing the dedicated switch button on the backside of the amp. I can now enjoy listening to my vinyl collection using my sound system, or watch a movie with high quality sound connecting it to my smart TV (this works the same way with any bluetooth unit you want to connect).

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Vinyl player and smart TV connected to the Beovox

Then I’ve setup my Up2Stream Mini V3 with my Yamaha for the workstation. My Yamahas are active speakers which means they already have an amp integrated in them. I have connected the Mini V3 using a jack cable (as seen in pic below) and simply connecting it to a USB C power charger.

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Up2Stream Mini V3

To finish, how do I connect the multi room?

Now I’ve got bothe my living room and workstation setup. To enable a multi room experience, I download the 4stream app available on IOS and Android. I used the app to connect my amps to my WIFI network and setup a name for each of them (in my case . Once that is done, one can simply use the interface to control all speakers. Either you want to use them as multi room system or as separate ones. I can even control the loudness for each of the speakers to have louder in one room and a lower volume in the other.

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4stream IOS app & Spotify Interface connected to Beovox

In conclusion, you can build a multi-room sound system for less than 200$ very easily with high quality speakers.

List of products:

Arylic:

Other suppliers:

  • 12V power charger, ca. 15$
  • USB C power cable, ca 10$
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