I am looking for help trying to design and upgrade my existing home with a whole house audio setup. Right now I just have a hodgepodge of equipment, ranging from the Bose Cubes that came with the home to some KEF XQ10’s and KEF HST-3001 satellite speakers. My hope is to install all Ci Q Series In-Ceiling and In-Wall speakers throughout my house which seem to need more power than an Arduino AMP can put out.
Thanks in advance.
-Hays
@Hays_Clark You can also go Wireless… With that said… If you care for HiFi around your house, Look at Bluesound Pulse Line:
http://www.bluesound.com/en-us/
If CD quality is ok around your house you can go for Sonos Play line:
I use Sonos around my house, I currently own 4. 3- Play:1 and 1- Play:3 and love them!
Works flawlessly with Roon.
I have to mention that good quality wireless makes this whole experience that much better as far as connectivity and stability with your connection.
On another note, You can never go wrong with KEF! Excellent choice.
Thanks Tech_Whisky_Lab! I do like the Bluesound lineup, yet I still don’t understand if the setup has (or needs) the ‘sync’ functionality offered by Logitech. I hope to check out the units more closely at a local showroom.
@Hays_Clark if you are going to use Roon for your Audio you wont need Logitech “Sync”, Roon supports Bluseound natively and can do whole home audio 
My strategy has been to run Roon using existing speakers and amplifiers with Raspberries running either USB DAC’s or I2S dac’s. Roon very nicely allows you to link and unlink different endpoints. By doing so I avoided investing in Sonos or Bluesound, but had to invest in an Intel I5 computer for running Roon. Apart from a current temporary problem with internet radio it works very well. I was using the logitech/ squeezebox before, and this is simpler - my wife tells that as well.
A good suggestion indeed.
Setting up for the first time may be a bit of work but when going, It goes for ever! 
As stated, WiFi on the Pi can be well a pain in the Pi 
Thank’s Henry!
I did look at the Raspberries and DIY options and they look cool. I think it’s a good option for many. I wasn’t impressed with the power output from the various AMP daughterboards. Free time is my limiting factor these days, so I’ll likely be sticking with commercial solutions.
If you have the time, could you expand on ‘natively’ supporting Bluesound or shoot me a link?
Read this:
http://www.bluesound.com/en-us/news-en-us/2016/bluesound-announces-roon-partnership/
and
and one more:
In a nut shell, Bluesound supports RAAT protocol which means that you get the best HiFi experience that Roon can offer as far as wireless streaming down to your device.
No extra hardware need it. Just plug, eanble, and enjoy
What did you go with in the end?
@Tobin_Harris Sorry for the delay! I ended up being convinced by my wife that I had better things to spend my money on at the moment. She had a good point because most of the time I have my headphones on. 
Actually, I am revisiting the issue because my Logitech Squeezebox Duet will sometime start to hitch in the newer version of Roon. I am going to buy the Bluesound POWERNODE 2, but don’t plan on ordering it until later this month. I was leaning towards replacing my KEF XQ10’s with a pair of simpler LS50 Wireless speakers, largely for the convenience or removing wires etc; however, I really love the look of our Birdseye Maple XC10. 
Thus far my Logitech Transporter is still going strong and I have not found anything that is worth replacing it. Mostly because I enjoy the LED graphic visualizers… what can I say… I’m a child of the 80’s. 
I finally purchased my PowerNode 2 and it’s pretty awesome. It’s a huge audio upgrade from the Logitech Duet, my wife and I are amazed how much brighter and richer our KEF XQ10’s sound.
The PowerNode 2 confused me for a bit when I was trying to get it up and running. It started to download a Firmware update right after I plugged it into my LAN network and it took me a minute to realize what was going on. By the time I finished downloading the BluSound app from the App Store the device had almost completed it’s update and moments later it showed up in Roon’s list of available hardware. I likely will delete the BluSound app, as I just want to use the device with Roon.
As I mentioned, it sounds wonderful. My Duet was always a pretty poor consumer device, but it’s always gratifying when your significant other notices the improvement in audio quality, which helps justify future purchases.
Congrats on the purchase, nice!
I’m very tempted by the Bluesound system to replace my Sonos.