Receiver with four zones that can be turned on/off by iPhone / Android? (1 Viewer)

[zorkiii]

I've been combing the forum and online a bit, but having a hard time finding a receiver that meets this criteria. I know that the Sonos system does something similar to this, but wondered if anyone here is working with or currently using a system of some sort that will allow me to:

1. Give me control of turning the amp on/off, and selecting the source from an iPhone or Android app
2. Give me the ability to turn these zones on or off with an app on an iPhone or Android phone (I am looking at 4 zones. I know that 2 zone receivers are around but looking for more zones)

Is there a receiver that does this, currently? I'm not dealing with home theater in the sense of surround or anything, I am a strictly 2 speaker per zone setup kind of guy, and listen to a lot of vinyl. I also stream my music collection bluetooth from my PC to a Miccus Home RTX, as well as my iPhone / Spotify streaming to it. I am currently using a super old school 2 channel receiver that I love, just looking to ease my ability of switching between speaker zones from an app if possible.

 

[Sam Posten]

It is dark in here Richard, you are likely to be eaten by a Grue. =)

Seriously tho, I am not familiar with any having more than two zones. And those have not been particularly helpful for my needs, where I wanted to take HDMI input and funnel it to stereo for a whole house sound system. No can do HDMI->Stereo on secondary zones apparently.

 

[zorkiii]

Haha, awesome Sam, I love that you picked up on my username reference

Yeah I am not sure what route to go or what I might be able to do. I have this shiny utopian vision of how it all should work and I would be the happiest multi-zone connected audio nerd on the planet but can't find the solution quite yet.

 

[Sam Posten]

The world awaits someone, maybe Apple, to come riding in like a white knight to simplify all of this, for sure.

 

[JohnRice]

When looking for something this elaborate, I tend to believe it is best (and probably the only way) to stream to four different systems, rather than distributing one system to four locations. I currently have that setuo, with 5 systems, but with maybe more limited iPhone control than you want.

 

[zorkiii]

When looking for something this elaborate, I tend to believe it is best (and probably the only way) to stream to four different systems, rather than distributing one system to four locations.

Cool, I appreciate the input. I've been thinking about just that, as I do have enough receivers to do it, but still not sure how to go about doing the zone on/off portion with a phone.

This might sound like a silly concept to some, or lazy - but I am in different rooms in the house quite a bit, for extended periods of time, and it would be super convenient to switch on the receiver through an app, feed my phone audio to it, and select the zones the audio is going to. I don't know, I do have a hardware speaker selector box with several outputs on it and have used that before.

I even thought of getting the wemo outlets and putting receivers on those that are already being fed an output from the main receiver, as wemo has an app where you can turn devices on/off. But that would be a lot of money. I'll probably just have to stop thinking about it and shut up and play music conventionally like most everyone else.

 

[JohnRice]

I'm not hugely into the automation, but I'm pretty sure the ability to turn receivers on/off is the major sticking point. There may be 12v remotely controlled switches, but you need properly equipped receivers, and most are only built to control that way, not be controlled. Just shutting the power on/off to them typically won't work, since modern receivers typically don't turn back on when power is restored. Now, having them turned on and streaming/not streaming anything to them is easy. My system uses iTunes and AirPort Express and AppleTVs. You can control the whole system using the IOS Remote app, at the computer or at each individual device. There are certainly less Apple focused options, but I'm completely Mac based, so that makes the most sense for me.