Kitchen sound system with Apple TV?

13 years ago

We just found out our ceiling is being sheetrocked TOMORROW and we are scrambling to finalize our sound system plans. Originally we thought we would buy some decent in-ceiling speakers and run some speaker wire over to the area where the cabinet that will house our TV and amp will be (and decide on the specific components later), but after researching Sonos systems, my hubby is working on a new plan using Apple TV.

Right now we have 2 Apple TVs and use them to stream music (and photos, slideshows, etc.) from our iPods, iMacs and iPads to our TVs, plus to listen to Pandora and other stations, and watch Netflix and YouTube, etc. We're thinking about having a dedicated Apple TV in the kitchen and hooking it up to in-ceiling speakers. We have a rough idea of how this could be done, but I'm wondering if any of you have already tried it. The cabinet over our fridge will be able to house the TV, amp and Apple TV, but I could use some guidance on what speakers and amp to be looking at that will work best with this setup.

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Comments (3)

function_first
13 years ago
We did this a year ago, before Apple updated their Apple t.v., so we used an Airport Express, but it's the same process (we now have added apple t.v.'s to 2 other rooms, and they work essentially the same way except that we don't need Airfoil to run them)-- here's dh's description from a previous pos after we finished a year ago -- if you have more questions contact me via e-mail and I'll put you in touch with him.

Kris found some Cambridge Soundworks Ambience 80 speakers, which install in the ceiling. We ordered four of them (2 in the kitchen and 2 in the living room) and got permission from our contractor to run some speaker wire while the ceiling was torn off, and I ran wiring from where we wanted to speakers installed over to the location of our pantry, where we planned to install the sound equipment. We also had the electrician install an electrical outlet inside the cabinet. After the kitchen was finished, we cut holes in the ceiling to install and wire up the speakers. Inside the pantry, we ran the other end of the speaker wires into an electrical box with speaker terminals.

For sound equipment, we got an Airport Express, which has a mode that allows it to stream music from iTunes. The hardest part was finding an amplifier that would fit inside the pantry and not generate too much heat. We ended up buying two small PylePCA3 amplitiers - one each for the kitchen and living room speakers. We put these in the pantry, along with the Airport Express and connected the audio out jack on the airport into the amplifiers (we had to use an RCA jack splitter to connect to both amps). We keep the amplifiers on, and can stream music from our laptops anywhere in the house. We also use a third party software program called Airfoil (for Macs only) that allows us to stream music from *any* application, not just iTunes.
worldmom
Original Author
13 years ago
Perfect! Thank you! I was just looking at those Pyle amps on Amazon last night, too. :)
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chillcox
13 years ago
This is my plan as well, but keep in mind that the new Apple TVs only have a digital out, so you may need to convert it. I believe monoprice has an adapter, but it apparently can have some noise when there's no sound.

The amplifier below gets rave reviews and is cheap, worth considering in addition to the Pyle amps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dayton Audio DTA-1