Home audio system for new house

newbuild06

Hi All
Hope i am posting this in the right forum

I am in the process of a new build and would like to have a home audio in the house.
What i want is a system that will have 3 to 4 zones to start with and allow me to add more if i want. I want to be able to listen to the radio, mp3, sky and dvds through this system.

i have looked at some systems such as the russound and the bose lifestyle 48 but they seem very expensive , the lifestlye 48 for example would be in the region of €7.000 fitted.

Would anyone know of a good system for what i am looking for and what sort of price range shoudl i be looking at ??

Has anybody else got the lifestyle system if so how do they find it ??

julesrtc

try www.futurehomes.ie

they are in little island in cork. I saw the at an exhibition and sounds good. Have no idea about prices but can wire up now and add on later.. im definately going with it... They do all the wiring themselves as sometimes when they tell electricians to do it a special way they mess up...

If you send in plan of house and tell them what u want they will send a quotation.. let me know how u get on if u do..

19hunters

Hi friend of mine has got a fully speced home entertainment systems. His cost E25,000 but it has everything, 6 zones multi audio, sky etc. LCD, Plasmas. His house is about 3000sq feet. He was recommended this company Impax, www.impax.ie.

Maybe could help

newbuild06

Thanks for the info l both look good systems, we have got a few quotes of companies like these such as smarthomes etc amd most of the quotes are coming in betweeen 7 and 11 and to be honest we dont really want to pay over 5 grand
we did get one for a 'opus octopus' system which was quiet reasonable, anyone heard of this system ??
we have been looking at the sonos system and it looks quiet impressive only thing is you can only listen to the radio through broadband and broadband is not really easy to get at the moment where we are building

wexfordman

Have a look at the sonos system www.sonos.com I have this and had also an older multiroom system until I replaced it with sonos about a year ago. 6 zones with 2 controllers cost me 3.6k and it is completely diy and far superior to many of the existing multiroom audio systems about now.

Could go into a rant about it (and have been known to ), but have a look, I think the system speaks for itself:-

1) Wireless with up to 32 zones
2) stream from external hard drive or pc, so unlimited number of streams to your zones
3) Internet radio streaming from your bb
4) Can listed to any device in any room that has audio outputs connected to a zoneplayer. Eg, connect sky to one zoneplayer, and you can listen to it in any of the other zones.
5) DIY install, so no big expense with setting it up
6) Expandable, start with 2 zones and work your way up.

Wexfordman

newbuild06

thanks wexfordman i have had a look at the sonos system and it looks very good
just a quick query on it though
i have planned with my electrician to have all my speaker cables go back to my comms room where i was going to have my main system. would this still work if i installed the sonos or would i need my speaker cables to come out at a certain point in each room and then attach them to the sonos box that i have in this room (hope that makes sense)
Can i have my tv go through it as well lets say froexample if i was watchin skyora dvd ???

wexfordman

Newbuild,

Sonos is a bit different than a standard multiroom system. It is better to have the zp's distributed about the house rather than in one room or your comms room. The reason for this, is that the controller is wireless and needs to be within coverage of at least one zp in order for you to control it, thats why its better to have them distributed about the house, or better still, a zp physically in each room that you intend to have speakers in.

If you have not done so already, i would plan to have your speaker cable terminated in each room with a zp in each room. Sonos zp's are wireless, but best option is to have them wired to each other also via cat5. Added bonus is each zp also has a 4 port switch, so you can connect other lan devices to it as part of your home network (my xbox360 is connected this way for example),.

With regards connecting your sky or dvd to sonos, yes this can be done, and i have done so also, but remember it is audio only, you will still need to distribute video seperately to sonos.

By the way newbuild, you can listed to standard radio via sonos no problem. Each ZP has an audio input on it, and if you connect any source to this input, you can then listen to that source anywhere around your house. I have a tuner connected to one of my zp's and it works great, although I have BB, so dont use it too often (radio 1 seems to be a problem on bb, so I use the tuner through sonos for this).

Wexfordman