Mastiff wrote, "... You may look at my website, it can give you a few ideas"
I finally got a moment to do this.
Wow, what a collection of wires, IR-RF converters, control amps, software, etc. What a magnificent history lesson.
I could not imagine putting the time into all this eclectic system engineering .. but with a modern wireless handheld and powered speakers such labor is now unnecessary. I know that when you began your efforts no other way was possible. But now I can just walk into a room with my handheld, plug in the powered speakers wire, and stream away. Plus any tagging changes make it back to the server. If you can get bit perfect data, wirelessly through the walls, and offload server to boot, with handheld based decode, why not? Do the decodes as close to the powered speakers as possible. Provides multizone playing of different songs, or synchronizeding playing of the same song at multiple locations. Since the ethernet already solves the data distribution and control problem why do it again?
Thanks for making your web site available. Lots to learn.