Not really sure if it can be done at all, but I'd like to make a few speakers, that receive music via TCP/IP. The whole idea is to spread them around the house, most likely inside the ceiling drywall and stream music from a centralized home entertainment server, while being able to choose to which speaker to stream in a particular moment.
I imagine an Arduino Uno with an Ethernet shield, a DAC and some small amp (its power depending on the actual speakers) in each unit. Perhaps using POE to power them, but might consider separate wiring for supplying power.
What I'm not certain about is whether the Arduino can handle such a thing. Any input will be appreciated
Well, for a start you have definitely picked the wrong microcontroller series here. While I have never examined the "Audio" forum here, I think we agree the UNO and its ilk are not suitable for entertainment audio.
Best to say you should be looking at a Raspberry Pi or similar together with USB speakers.
I've always considered RPi to be an overkill for this task. However @Paul_B you confirmed my fear that Arduino might not be sufficient for the task.
As for @SteveMann's proposal to just use Amazon Alexa - it's true, my idea shares a lot of functionality with the Echo devices, however I want something that is wired (for number of reasons I prefer not to use WiFi for this) and at the same time I want to have the freedom for custom control both in regard to hardware and software. Additional reason I considered Arduino for this was the price - given that I need at the least 8 of those with the option to further add at least 4 more, the total price of this gets on the steeper side if going with Echos.
What about the overhead of audio decompression? The only way streaming systems can work is by compressing the sound data a lot. Ogg or MP3 decoding isn't exactly a breeze. On that subject, what is your level of programming expertise?
I would pick something like an RPi even if it is overkill, just because things like Ogg are freely available for it, and no worries about processor speed. IIRC, the audio hardware is available too. Basically you are just creating an alternate computer network. You could do it with surplus laptops or things like that, too.
