Beginners Guide to Multi Room Audio Network

[smarties20]

Hi there, hopefully someone can help, or point me in the right direction, and apologies in advance for being a little clueless!

I would like to set up a multi-room audio system, that can be controlled from phone/tablet/pc etc but I'm on a fairly tight budget, so the Pi looks like it could be perfect. I have 2 existing hifi's that would be great if they could play simultaneous music, or independently pulling music from the same data source. I don't have any network storage at the moment either, all our music is on a 1Tb portable hard drive but its a nuisance linking it to the laptop, so only gets used in one of the rooms at party's etc when I connect it via a 3.5mm phono cable. I would be nice if it could be expanded at some point too.

I tried searching but couldn't quite get my head around what I would need, I think I require atleast 2 Pi's (One for each hifi), perhaps a USB DAC or hifiberry for each Pi (suggestions welcome?). Would I need an additional Pi to act as NAS or could one of the existing ones do that too or can I just attached a big hard-drive (I could purchase a independently powered one if required and its easier)?
I am a beginner (a little bit of fortran programming at uni) but a quick learner however I'm struggling to find out all this info in one place so getting a bit muddled. Quality is only fairly important as on quite a tight budget, so not looking for audiophile quality but still needs to sound reasonable. Any recommendations on software or a list of what kind of things I need, I don’t have anything purchased yet.

Any hints, tips or suggestions would be very welcome. Thanks in advance.

[w84no1]

I am getting ready to do the same thing with my Logitech Media Server http://www.mysqueezebox.com/download. I have it running on an old PC.

Use this to turn your PI into a squeezebox player http://www.instructables.com/id/Raspber ... /?ALLSTEPS

[smarties20]

Thanks for that, I think I can follow through instructions Ok. The bit that's confusing me still is how do I get the 'music' into the network and available to all, do I need a separate Pi to act as a NAS, or can I connect my portable hard drive to one of the Pis with the squeezebox (or equivalent) software? Also, can I use the 3.5mm jack on the Pi to output to the amps on my hifi (I know this won't be the best quality but want to know I can get something working before I spend lots on it).

Thanks

[Paul Webster]

You will probably need to power the USB disk from something other than the RPi but otherwise, nothing extra needed.
Simply plug your USB disk into the RPi.
If you start from Squeezeplug (seek and ye shall find) the. You will have a Raspbian-based setup that is specifically aimed at doing all of this and with a setup menu that guides you through the process.
There is a very slight danger that a mistake could be made at some point - so it would be prudent to have a back-up of your music filled USB disk.

[smarties20]

Magic! That's great thanks, had no issue following the instructions through just couldnt figure out that last wee bit on how it worked together! Thanks again, away to order a couple of Pi's and dig out a desktop hard drive and see how I get on as a starter