I just gave my home audio playback capabilities a major overhaul and I am thrilled with the results. The setup before was that I had my stereo in the living room hooked up to a pair of speakers there and in the kitchen. A Radio Shack “High Power Stereo Speaker Control Center” allowed me to switch playback back and forth from these locations. The problem was that I download a lot of music and it was getting to be a pain loading up the mp3 player with a new album just to rock out on that stereo. Maybe I’m lazy and/or impatient but what I really wanted to be able to do was grab something from emusic or wherever and then play it right away through my main stereo. Listening to stuff on the computer was always an option but not nearly as satisfying as the crunch of my Infinitys. I also didn’t want to be limited to that one room.

So for the price of a foot long drill bit plus an afternoon of crawling around in my creepy crawlspace, I now have a wicked cool home stereo setup. Basically all I did was move my amplifier back to the computer room and connect it to the computer using the line-out jack on the sound card. Then I got up the nerve to drill some holes in our wood floors so that I could run the speaker wire under the house to the living room and kitchen. As a bonus I hooked up an extra pair of bookshelf speakers that were in storage to take the place of the far inferior computer speakers in the computer room. Now all of my music output sources are in one location and I’ve eliminated the extra step of having to transfer files to my Nomad Zen. I also like being able to see the playlist on a monitor instead of a roughly 1.25″ x 2.75″ screen. With three sets of speakers hooked up, I can pretty much be anywhere in the house and still clearly hear whatever is playing. And did I mention it sounds great? Rawk!