Piped Music?

1922

would like music piped around a new house. say into the kitchen, living, dining, sitting room and halls and landings....luckly i'm building at the moment so can fit the wires first....is there a type of control box i can get to control what music goes where??

davelerave

1922 wrote: »

would like music piped around a new house. say into the kitchen, living, dining, sitting room and halls and landings....luckly i'm building at the moment so can fit the wires first....is there a type of control box i can get to control what music goes where??

theres lots of info over at the home entertainment forum.got some there recently myself

Stoner

Moved to general home entertainment from electrical

knx

There are a few ways of doing what you want to do. First answer these questions. Have you any HiFi equipment already. How do you listen to music at the moment, as in do you have cds, mp3s or just radio. How many different zones do you want to cover.

1922

knx wrote: »

There are a few ways of doing what you want to do. First answer these questions. Have you any HiFi equipment already. How do you listen to music at the moment, as in do you have cds, mp3s or just radio. How many different zones do you want to cover.

i suppose ideally i'd like something to plug into my pc...have all my music on that and add it to my ipod from there. but ya ideally something to plug in the pc and be able to direct it to different rooms

say sitting, living, dining room, kitchen, hall and landing

Idleater

What's your budget for this?

There are many ways, some not even using wires, but you need to get a better idea of what you want first.

The basic principle of audio is that you need an amplifier and speakers in order to listen to it.

Next you can add controls to select what you want to listen to.

Then you add controls to select what you listen to where.

You can either have the (distribution) amplifier in one central location and run speaker wire to the zones, or you can run "connections" to the zones and feed them into an amplifier there.

There will be a signal degradation factor to be overcome on long runs so this is why I ask you to pick a budget, or you will be just throwing money at something that won't work to your satisfaction.

chiefwiggum

check out the sonos system...i have one ...brilliant

1922

i dont want to spend much and its certainly not high on my priority....i dont even necessarily need to control which rooms it goes to cause its only going to a few central areas

basically i want to hook it to a pc, pipe to living, sitting, dining room, kitchen, landing and hall.

akaSol

You need to decide how many speakers you need, what general volume you will be using them at,there after celling or wall speakers and how many do you want in use at any one time.

Most stereo amps can support four speakers (2 Pairs ), then you can add a speaker splitter. Some can do eight (4 Pairs). And they all will support TV/IPOD/PC connections.

>Sol

1922

akaSol wrote: »

You need to decide how many speakers you need, what general volume you will be using them at,there after celling or wall speakers and how many do you want in use at any one time.

Most stereo amps can support four speakers (2 Pairs ), then you can add a speaker splitter. Some can do eight (4 Pairs). And they all will support TV/IPOD/PC connections.

>Sol

i reckon i'll feed my pc in an amp and then into a 5 way splitter. can you recommend a good amp and splitter...around 200w is loads. have a few on ebay uncertain about them. don't need massive volume but a bit of punch would be nice. the spekaer don't really matter, wall or roof, not pushed

Idleater

1922 wrote: »

i reckon i'll feed my pc in an amp and then into a 5 way splitter.

speakers _do_ matter when you are splitting them. For example if you use small 4 ohm ones, then the current draw will be massive across 10 speakers.

Speaker switches are generally used for switching between different speakers rather than opening the floodgates to them all.

What you probably want to look at are distribution amplifiers, which cost I'd say €800 up for 8 channels @ 40w and would be capable of small 4 ohm speakers.

Homer

He could just get a simple either resistor based or transformer based impedance matching speaker switch and marry it with a good high powered amplifier to achieve what he wants. As lons he understands the importance of impedance and it is all connected correctly it would work fine for a lot less than €800?

Just my 0.2c!

knx

You should really look at actual multiroom systems and forget about speaker switches and the like. Nuvo and Niles do decent enough entry level 4 zone systems with 20 watts per channel. You will also have a keypad per zone. Niles entry level offering has a built in tuner as well. If you moved up to the next level, to a system with displays on the keypads you could incorporate an ipod dock giving you direct control over your ipod and feedback. Whatever you decide you should wire for one of these systems now and you can always install it at a later date. It will require some cat 5 runs on top of the speaker cables you were goin to pull in anyway..

akaSol

Not over killing on the price with this : AMP + 5 Pairs cheap of cheap speakers.
A Logitec DUET maybe with a few receivers for distribution?

Heck a couple of small hi fi's and a duet receiver on each if you want ultra cheep.

>Sol