Home > DIY Multi-Room Home Audio System

I'm a bit obsessive about audio quality and have accrued a lot of speakers and equipment over the years. My most recent addition includes a 5.2 surround receiver and two surround speakers, which ended up freeing an existing amplifier and speakers. I wanted to use them all together so that wherever you are in the house, the sound is clear and balanced. I was inspired by legendary club sound systems like Paradise Garage and by visiting Nowadays club in New York, where speakers are placed strategically around the room for even coverage. The initial idea for this project came from my roommate: we wanted to be able to walk around the house and listen to music without having to swith which speaker or device was playing. I decided to build a custom system that streams Spotify to multiple rooms at once.

How It Works

Home server

Over the past few years, I've learned a lot tinkering with my home server, and I’ve also realized just how much amazing open-source software exists. When I started looking for ways to make this multi-room system, Snapcast immediately caught my attention. It works using a snapserver that distributes the audio signal and snapclients that receive the audio over Wi-Fi and play it back. I already had a server running 24/7 for my other services, so it made sense to use it as the snapserver. I spun up a Docker container for it, configured my audio sources, and got it up and running.

Raspberry Pi custom case

For the clients, I went with Raspberry Pis. My home server hobby actually started with a Pi years ago, and I like keeping power consumption low, so they were perfect. I imaged some micro SD cards with Pi OS and SSH’d into each one to install and configure the snapclient software. Each room now has a Raspberry Pi with a DAC that I soldered on for better audio quality, as the Raspberry Pis I was using only have micro-USB output. To house everything neatly, I designed and 3D-printed custom cases. I went through several iterations, testing the fit to make sure the DACs and boards were secure and nothing would come loose.

The Pis connect over Wi-Fi, which means when playing from snapserver the music plays from every source at once. Snapcast keeps everything in sync and accounts for delay, so there’s no lag or echo between rooms. The system uses Librespot to stream music straight from Spotify, which lets us control playback directly from the Spotify app on our phones. Later on I also started experimenting with the Snapcast configuration to eventually allow automatic switching between Spotify Connect and AirPlay.

The Inspiration

Paradise Garage sound system

A big part of this project was inspired by my love for high-quality sound and legendary club systems. Clubs like Paradise Garage didn’t just put speakers in a room but designed the space around the sound. I wanted to bring a little bit of that philosophy into my own home. Combining that inspiration with research I recently did concerning distributed systems and low-level programming made this project really fun: managing synchronized audio over Wi-Fi reminded me of working with Linux sockets, and ensuring everything stayed in sync was reminiscent of a small-scale distributed system.

Final Thoughts

The system is now fully functional, streaming Spotify throughout the house with clean, balanced sound. I'm always looking for projects to combine hardware, software, and design and it’s been a lot of fun refining it along the way. There’s still room to experiment with getting the volume levels synchronized between rooms and other tweaks, but for now its been very useful.