Audio gurus?

[Rogue Leader]

Any home audio gurus around? I need some equipment advice.

A friend is redoing his whole house, and he wants in ceiling speakers for music in 3 rooms. he also likes all that connectivity stuff (being able to use bluetooth or plugn in a USB, etc). Originally the plan was to use an Onkyo 7.1 surround sound to run all the speakers and just make sure its set to all channel stereo. It would be used for music only.

Then today 2 things happened, first he decided he wanted a 4th set of speakers outside. Also he wants the ability to only turn on specific pairs of speakers. I don't believe the Onkyo (or any surround sound for that matter) other than Zone A and B front speakers allows you to switch on and off speaker pairs. That and the whole extra channel of course. Using Zone A and B would work except he could only turn off set of speakers (we would use this for the outside speakers.)

Now we could use wall volume controls to be able to turn on and off speakers, but thats a pain to have to go to the physical room to do it.

Ive looked at regular stereo receives but all are only 4 channel. Of course all the connectivity features are a must as well.

Any thougths, does someone make a multi channel stereo amp like that? Or any of these network recievers allow you to turn on and off individual speaker pairs?

[WickerBill]

I'd tell you Sonos is the way to go except you have an in-ceiling requirement. Self-powered amazing sounding speakers eliminate the central amp issue and zones issue. Plus, any kind of media and phone / tablet control.

[KLang]

Niles Audio make multizone equipment and they've been around quite a while. No personal experience though. Also Smarthome sell a lot of this sort of stuff.

[gjc2]

Isn't life complicated enough already?

[gerhard911]

Lots of options. A whole home audio system with dedicated amplifiers for each room would be the most versatile but also the most expensive. You would need a receiver with the connectivity options required to drive it.

An impedance matching speaker selector driven by a pair of output channels might be enough to fit the bill. Proper impedance matching is very important when driving multiple pairs of speakers off of a single amp otherwise you will over load it resulting in premature failure.

Using zone 1 to drive the selector & zone 2 to directly drive another pair of speakers might give you enough volume control. Some high end AVRs even have zone 3. If not, in room volume controls could be utilized if room characteristics or listening preferences dictate. Sound to any room is turned off/on at the selector but volume levels could then be controlled in the room itself.

I use an Audioplex speaker selector to drive 4 rooms + deck speakers off of zone 2 outputs of either my Onkyo TX-SR876 (home theater system) or Yamaha RX-V773 (bedroom system). The selector has 2 inputs (only 1 is active at a time) and 6 outputs. It has impedance matching to automatically protect the amp regardless of the number of speakers being driven.

I only use a volume control in one room. The other rooms have speakers with similar output characteristics and work well at the same amplifier volume level.

[dando]

Don't get me started. :saywhat: OK, so we bought a McMansion in 2001 (closed in Aug 2002). I had a full house wired LAN and whole house audio installed for ~$10K. WiFi was spotty @ the time. OK, enough on that. I have a bundle of cables into my stack and hardwired controls in 6 rooms and two outside. I have two receivers in the stack...one dedicated to the family HT and the other to the whole house audio. Now keep in mind when I built this 'palace' BT didn't exist and multi-room was a feature on few (if any) receivers. So that being said, most of today's receivers do BT and multi-room very well. Wireless is not very good for speakers (yet), so wired speakers are needed. However, delivery of the signal to the receiver is MUCH better (BT, WiFi, LAN, etc). If he has time to spare, send him down the AVSForum.com rabbit hole. He may not come back for weeks. And yes, as KLANG mentioned Smarthome is a great resource...and sucker of income. ;)