Welcome, dear reader, to the first installment of what will undeniably end up as a multi-part saga—The Quest for Airplay Everywhere. How many parts, you ask? Honestly, not a clue. Could be two, could be ten, or maybe I’ll give up halfway through and you’ll never hear from me again. But hey, we’ll surely get there… eventually… Maybe.

It all started on a quiet evening at home. My girlfriend and I were trying to listen to some tunes, drinking wine and solving jigsaw puzzles. A fantastic way to spend a friday night by the way. There were just one issue, we wanted to change tracks, forcing us to use the new Sonos app. We absolutely hate that App. Back in the day I used spotify or Tidal, they have the connect feature, so you can stream directly from the app, but now, we both use Apple Music. We also listen to a lot of podcasts.
What we really need, is airplay support. We already have Airplay in the living room, and build into the apple TV, so we got two rooms covered.

Now, here’s the thing—I’m not about to drop a small fortune on new Sonos speakers that actually support Airplay. That would be too easy, and way too expensive. Being the tech guy I am, I dug an old Raspberry Pis from the tech graveyard (a.k.a. my closet). Surely someone, somewhere, had concocted a magical piece of software that could turn these humble Pis into Airplay receivers.

And guess what? I was right. Enter Volumio, stage left.

With Volumio loaded onto one of my Raspberry Pis, I hooked it up to a small 12v amp I had laying around and a USB DAC—because let’s face it, using the built-in 3.5mm jack is like drinking White Russians made with skim milk, it just won’t do.
The setup was almost too easy, flashed the SD card, powered on the Pi, and it showed up in the Volumio app on my phone, for the last few configurations.
The sound quality? It’s no audiophile’s dream, but for background music in the shower or while whipping up a meal, it’s more than enough. Besides, not everything has to be a Creedence tape played on full blast.

With my first Pi happily streaming podcasts and background music, a lightbulb went off in my head. “Why not scale this up?” I thought. After all, I am already in the middle of renovating the second floor, so why not go all-in and wire up the entire house?

Next thing I knew, I was mapping out a plan to centralize the audio system across multiple rooms. The goal? 4 or 5 Pis with amps, placed in a rack on the second floor, with conduit for speaker wires to the relevant rooms, to create a seamless Airplay experience in every room.

To support this madness, I bought a 24v power supply for the amps and a separate one for the Pis. I even scored four Bang & Olufsen CX50 speakers for a steal—because if you’re going to do something crazy, you might as well do it with style.

For now, the project is on hold until the renovation is complete. It’s going to take some time before I can continue wiring and setting up the rest of the system. But I’m excited about the potential and look forward to sharing the next steps in this journey.

Stay tuned for the next chapter, where I either complete my DIY Airplay network or lose my sanity trying. Either way, it should be entertaining.