Meet AxiomAir: a portable, great sounding multiroom system, based on Volumio.

AxiomAir brings the best of Axiom Audio and Volumio philosophies into one:

• Quality: No compromises on Sound Quality. The System is designed to play up to 24/192, withouth resampling, compression or sound degradation. The unit features an high quality DAC and a 150W Class D amplifier, feeding 2  6,5 aluminium dome woofer and 2 titanium dome tweeters.

• Freedom:  Plays everything. From your  files on USB or NAS to streaming services. WebRadios, UPNP, DLNA and much more. We’re working hard to integrate it with every music service available. And, due to its open nature, AxiomAir will be updatable and up with the times. Furthermore, being based on Volumio, there will be plenty of room for tinkering (yes, open access and freedom to mess with it).

• Convenience: As you do with Volumio, control it via a completely redesigned WebUI. Or from its Android or iOs app. And if you want it portable, just add a battery pack and bring it everywhere, for up to 18 hours of music.

What makes it so special

I’ve had various feedbacks from people asking what’s really new about AxiomAir, often referring to similar solutions, like Sonos for example. Well, AxiomAir is designed to be as intuitive, but you’ll get at least 3 advantages:

• Portable, while others aren’t
• Better Sounding, (and I know what I’m talking about). Way better sounding, I could add.
• Flexible: try to play from a USB key with other solutions, or from a NAS… BTW, did I mention that AxiomAir has also a AUX input?

Another interesting feature that we wanted to bring into AxiomAir is a wireless hotspot: so you can play your tunes wirelessly even without a home network. Besides convenience, Wireless connection has a great advantage as well: compared to Bluetooth, it doesn’t affect sound quality at all.

So, if you want to see what Volumio can do at its most splendor, AxiomAir is such thing. And by backing on Kickstarter, you’ll not also help making it reality, but you’ll also get an outstanding product saving over the retail price.

The People and Philosophy behind the project

What you see here is the result of over a year of a truly inspiring partnership with Ian (Axiom’s CEO), Andrew (Axiom’s electronic and acoustic genious) and the whole Axiom team. From the very beginning we took the committment to bring the best of Open Source and Community driven approach, and take it to the next level with a great hardware design. Knowing them, and knowing how much passion is going into this, I have no doubt that this is going to be simply excellent.
What’s also notable, is that Ian and Axiom want this committment to get back to the community, releasing as much as possible of the improvements made for AxiomAir to the community.

That’s something unique here: driven by passion, powered by open source.

Technical Specifications

I apologize for being driven by excitement, and  not getting too technical. But, for those of you in need of specs (and I know you are…) here you’ll see:

What more to say? Back it! And most important, spread the word: share it to your friends, to your favourite troll, to mom, dad and boss!

I am also eager to know your comments and suggestions: since it comes from Volumio (and Volumio is what it is also thanks to you, the community) every suggestion can contribute to make it a better product!

The post AxiomAir: a great WiFi Multiroom Sound System on Kickstarter appeared first on Volumio.

Gens,

one of the new features that you may have noticed on Volumio is multi room audio system support via sound@home, the brand new, shiny, uberfantastic app made by fellow Volumio contributor Diego Tafuto.

This app (available on google play) does a great job of being a remote client for Volumio. I must actually admit that it behaves generally better than the native Volumio’s WebUi on mobile phones. Here’s a first screenshot:

So you got plenty of playback options right into main screen, I must admit this is pretty straightforwarding! Furthermore, you are also able to configure Volumio, with most of the otpion you may find on it’s native WebUi. So definetely a good work, Diego!!!

Then, the real candy. The veterans of RaspyFi may know that one of my dreams was to make it suitable for multi room audio system playback, well, after an year he finally did it! You can configure Volumio to serve 5 different locations, they could be rooms, floors or whatever. Just place five different Volumio powered devices, connected to the same network, whenever you want, and add them to sound@home:

Then you can select which position to sound what, or even to sync them alltogheter:

Fantastic, isn’t it?

But let’s put apart some enthusiastic announcements, and let’s stop and think it  on for a while. Personally, I believe that with Volumio and sound@home is finally possible to build a multi room audio system at a cost of a fraction (and I mean a little, little fraction) of commercial solutions. Just multiply the cost of your favourite Volumio powered device, and you got your quote.
Some say it sounds really good also…

So, I’ll let you judge by yourself and leave you with some few words from Diego:

Hi, my name is Diego,  also known as digx.
Why I decided to develop something like Sound@home?
Simply my passion brought me to know Michelangelo’s RaspyFi and Volumio projects; so I thought that this could have been the best starting point for achieve my dream to develop an home system.

At the end we successfully started a great collaboration with results you can see today.

Sound@home is based on the assumption that when every kind of tool or application is developed,
the first impact users have is on how they can control it.
Here comes the well known sentence: “Power is nothing without control!” …
This is why Sound@home Android application is born.

With Sound@home application you can now control the Volumio OS to spread your favourite Music and Radio to your home.
But more, you can use Volumio with multiple devices to have a Multi Rooms system thanks to Sound@home.
Sound@home will permit you to configure multiple devices with Volumio with very simple and intuitive UI and automatic configuration.
You will simply control each of your room preferred music just with your Android phone or Tablet.
You need to try it to enjoy it; so try to downlaod on your phone/Tablet and feel free to give me any feedback at: digx@hotmail.it

So, what are you wating for ? You can find sound@home on Play or hit that QR!

Let us know what you think about Volumio + sound@home multiroom audio system via comments below, or discuss it on the sound@home forum thread!

The post sound@home – Open Source multi room Audio system with Volumio and Android appeared first on Volumio.