wired for sound?????? no cliff richard jokes please!!!

caroline peggy

Hi I need some advice.
I'm building my own house at the minute and i have wired every room for sound back to a central location in the living room. I thought all i had to do was buy speakers and an amplifier and connect these up to my stereo.
I was in Peats last night and Power city and was told that this is not the case ( probably because they wanted to sell me a wifi system for 1K ),
Can anyone recommend a system for me? I had a Yamaha Amplifier in mind but hadn't thought any further ahead.
Can anyone please help?

eddiem74

I done something similar. Wires back to living room, then bought a Speaker Selector which I connected to the return wires, and also to the output speaker wires from my Stereo. Then just added some speakers in the other rooms, I just used some old sets I had lying around from old stereos, etc.

Not fancy, but it works ! Hope this helps.

Idleater

You want a distribution amplifier, which is like a speaker selector but can run all or some of the channels simultaneously.

for example here is a 12 x 100w @ 8ohm one that will cost you probably heading for €3k. but you can spend less if you drop the w/ch and or the amount of channels.

the Yamaha amp you were looking at probably has a zone 2,3, and 4 output, which will connect into the inputs in the distribution amp, but it hasn't got enough speaker channels built in to drive all the zones.

How many zones do you have, and how many speakers per zone? Also, just to clarify, when you wired these rooms up, you ran speaker cable or did you run RCA (or balanced) terminated co/ax?

caroline peggy

hi,
we used speaker cable and there are 6 zones,4 have 2 speakers per zone, and 2 have 1 speaker per zone. i don't mind buying a good amplifier but i don't have 3K.
if i bought a speaker selector and a good amplifier, would that work?
Thanks for your help, my sparks is doing his second fix and i want to get it sorted before he finishes.

pH

This is nowhere near as simple as it sounds. So you "wire" every room back to a central location - what next.

Firstly do you want the ability to have different music playing simultaneously in more than one room? One sound source, with speakers in multiple rooms (which can be off and have a volume control) is relatively simple and cheap, multiple sources in multiple rooms (and the ability to switch between them on the fly) more expensive.

Then you've got to consider sources, most people would want *at least* radio, mp3/wma (from a disk) and CD. The system has to be able to switch the radio into the living room, the CD sound into the kitchen etc.

The next (and real problem) is controlling all this. It's possible to have IR receivers in each room that can talk back to the controller, but even this is not great. It's very hard to select tracks from a mp3 collection (or tune a radio) without any visual feedback on the remote - and things like a wifi IPAQ in each room to act as a remote gets very expensive very quick.

In fact after watching a mate spend a lot of money and time on this (and still not be happy with the results), I have to say that unless you're spending serious bucks on a very cool system, maybe the best way to go is independent sound systems in each room (you can buy some very discreet units these days). These can then access a central (wifi) storage system if you want.

caroline peggy

I only want to be able to switch the radio / cd player / mp3 palyer on at source and have it playing in every room and have the ability to switch on / off the speakers in each room. I don't need to have different music playing in each room.

eddiem74

caroline peggy wrote: »

I only want to be able to switch the radio / cd player / mp3 palyer on at source and have it playing in every room and have the ability to switch on / off the speakers in each room. I don't need to have different music playing in each room.

That's what I do with the speaker selector, and why I said quite manual, and not fancy.

I use an old JVC Stereo (Model: UXS59) which has radio, multi-CD player, and AUX input (so I can connect an iPOD) and connected it to the speaker selector via the speaker wire from the back the stereo.

Now as I have different speakers in each room, I end up with varying volume levels, however once you use the same speakers throughout I would expect that should minimize that issue.

Idleater

eddiem74 wrote: »

That's what I do with the speaker selector, and why I said quite manual, and not fancy.

I use an old JVC Stereo (Model: UXS59) which has radio, multi-CD player, and AUX input (so I can connect an iPOD) and connected it to the speaker selector via the speaker wire from the back the stereo.

Now as I have different speakers in each room, I end up with varying volume levels, however once you use the same speakers throughout I would expect that should minimize that issue.

The only problem is having enough watts to drive each of the speakers when they are all on.

there is a need to drive 10 channels.

OP have you looked at any speakers that you wanted to install? I have 6 of these in my place (2 zones) and am powering them with a 6x100w power amp.

eddiem74

nereid wrote: »

The only problem is having enough watts to drive each of the speakers when they are all on.

there is a need to drive 10 channels.

Yeah true, however in my case I rarely run everything at once. Usually the kitchen when in there, or bathroom when relaxing or getting ready to head out.

Love your ceiling speakers.

Mine is truely the basic set-up, I did look at trying to make it more flexible/automatic recently but quickly seen it was gonna cost a lota €€€'s, so its on the back burner for now. :rolleyes:

caroline peggy

no i haven't looked at speakers yet. can you recommend any? two of the zones in my house are bathrooms so i need 'moisture resistant' ( if thats the correct term) ones for there. how much would a 6x100W amp set me back? i really would only ever have 2 rooms switched on at any one time, which still means 4 speakers. i don't mind buying a good amp and speakers , nothing too expensive though.

Idleater

caroline peggy wrote: »

no i haven't looked at speakers yet. can you recommend any?

The ones I linked to in my post above are pretty good. Well, they are almost bottom of _that_ range but they are decent ceiling speakers. I don't know if they are "moisture retardant" but I have 2 in the kitchen as a zone.

caroline peggy wrote: »

how much would a 6x100W amp set me back?

I'd estimate €100 per channel (so €600 would get you a decent power amp). Remembering of course that you have to buy a reciever to switch the sources too which is another couple of hundred. I posted a suggestion of an Onkyo 606 on another thread which Richer sounds have for €400. That comes complete with 7 channels built in (for your main listening area) so you might only need one external power amp and connect the zone 2 output to the distribution amp.

I know the Rotel stuff that I linked to first have a feature that can distribute one incoming signal to all or some of the channels.