Best way to do simple multiroom with an Atom

I’m looking to set up a rudimentary multiroom setup for a vacation home. There is a pair of speakers in the living room, and a pair of speakers in the kitchen, and the home layout is open so each set of speakers is readily audible from the other room, so the speakers in both rooms will always be playing the same music in sync (so no need for separate sources to play different tracks in the different rooms at the same time). However, I need to be able to independently turn off the set of speakers in the kitchen as these are near the kid’s bedrooms and at night the kitchen speakers need to be off so as not to keep the kids awake. The living room speakers would still be used at night.

I was thinking I’d like to use an Atom as the head unit for the living room speakers, but I’m not sure what options I would have to also supply the signal to an outboard amp which would power the kitchen speakers, which would also allow me to stop the signal going to the outboard amp and thus “turn off” the kitchen speakers at night. Does the Atom have a pre out? I don’t need separate volume control for each room as long as the output levels are similar, so I don’t need a second preamp for the kitchen zone. Also, I don’t mind NOT spending a ton for the kitchen amp, so frugality earns extra points.

Apologies if this question has obvious answers. I’m not that familiar with Naim’s multiroom solutions.

Oh, and a potential complicating factor: This house is off the grid. There is no internet. I will have to set up a wifi network to allow streaming from my phone to the Atom as the source, but there will be no connection to the outside web.

Thoughts?

If it were me, I’d use a qb in the kitchen, and just multiroom to it when you want.

You should be able to create a home wifi /wired network with just a router (to give each thing a network address via dhcp) but without an internet connection.

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I agree with @robert_h. Naim multiroom is easy to use and well thought out. I use it with my Atom and original QB in the bedroom.

A couple of points: how good are the speakers? Whilst at the bottom of the Naim hierarchy, the Atom shines with decent (which needn’t mean expensive) speakers. There’s some good deals with Atom + speakers available at present. And you might be able to save on phone bills if you copy a selection of albums onto a usb stick or hard drive and use the Atom as server.

Roger

I agree with the comments above about using a multiroom setup to play music in sync over a network rather that running long interconnects around the house. However, multiroom systems are proprietary, and Naim’s will only work with the Atom and another Naim streamer, thus the Muso suggestion.
If you want to keep your existing kitchen system, there are other ways of adding it to a multiroom group with the Atom by using either Apple AirPlay or Chromecast Audio. How this would work will depend on what amp/source you have for the kitchen?

I use multi room throughout my place using my Atom/272/Muso. All wired, having music everywhere all in sync is a great advantage.

Think you will need to a head unit at each outlet though.

You can do it cheaply by using an Apple TV unit and Apple Music.

Looking at the back of the Atom, I see it has pre-out. Could I use that to connect the Atom to an outboard amp and use the Atom’s amp to power one speaker pair and the outboard amp to power the other speaker pair? In this setup the Atom would control volume for both amps without the ability to vary one amp vs. the other, which is fine for this scenario, as long as the outputs of the amps was similar. Also, the speaker wires for both sets of speakers terminate in the same spot so I don’t need to have wireless connections between the two amplifiers since they’ll be sitting next to one another. Or does using the preout on the Atom disable the onboard amplifier section of the Atom?

The Muso option is less appealing. The speakers in the kitchen are on top of cabinets (this is NOT a “HiFi” setup, and achieving that is not the goal). I don’t want to put a Muso up there. Plus, there’s no power up there, so nowhere to plug in the Muso.

I really just need a way to get output from the Atom into another amp which will allow both amps (the outboard and the Atom amp) to power speakers with a common volume control. Would this work?

You can run a second power amp from the Atom. However, you should contact Naim support and check whether it will drive a long cable into a different room.

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