Taking advantage of the occasional break in the weather, one of my neighbours (an entirely young male household of multiple occupancy) holds barbecues every weekend.

Apart from the 'eau de charcoal' sweeping through the neighbourhood, these lads tend to put their stereo on in the house very loud so that it can be heard outside on the patio. An annoyance. I haven't spoken to them about it yet. I was always told that if you have a complaint, its always useful to be armed with a solution.

I recently wrote about streaming audio and video around the house (Smart Special - Smart Home Tech). I mentioned two competing systems, Sonos and Apple's Airplay. Since I already have an Apple TV and one Airplay compatible device, I thought that I would flick the switch. Now, although you can send music through multiple speakers on several devices, Apple makes no claims to be able to broadcast around the home in sync. But on my network it does.

There's nothing special about my set-up. It's a standard 802.11n wifi network with powerline networking to the TV devices. The advantage of this is that if I want to put a few tunes on, I don't have to blast it from one end of the house to be heard at the other. I can 'distribute' the sound evenly around the building.

The advantage is that the audio does not travel far from my boundaries - which my neighbours will be very happy.

Edited: 02 July 2012 at 09:23 AM by Stop. Pause. Play. Moderator