my dad is building a house. from what i understand he wants to have 1 reciver in the house and speakers throughout the house. but also wants to be able to control what speakers play where
say press a button the living room plays
press another button and living room & patio & bedroom 1 plays
is there a way to do this
OR
wireless speakers and turn on the speakers as he wants the set on in the room.
its at the point where we would put speaker wire in the walls and have the outlets.
if you could post up what you know or some websites of products
If he is building, now is the absolute best time to run any / all data & distribution wiring. WHILE THE WALLS ARE STILL OPEN.
Anything that is not an electrical wire needs to have 2" of separation, IOW, drill the studs 2" (or more) away from where your electrical runs are. At least in Amherst code. We went through this ~3 weeks ago.
Other then actually running the wires (which IMO is “easier” / reliable then wireless), its just a matter of choosing a reciever that can handle the rooms.
…
If he is running to ALOT of rooms (more then the receiver can manage), you can easily setup a distribution system.
there’s a lot more to it than just running speaker wires. often, you need to run cat5 to a control-pad location (and usually 2 or 4 wire to that, for power, relays - it’s all 12v but unless you’ve got a control system that uses PoE it needs to GET that 12v somewhere) - sometimes you even need to run coax to those depending on the control surface (aka if you get one that’s touch-screen / color LCD and want to see sources as you change them etc).
talk to a professional - in Rochester there’s SoundWorks - not sure about Amherst.
No offense, those parts express distro panels are just plain CRAP… I wouldn’t touch them with a 10ft pole. If you want some decent stuff for custom installation, look up Niles, AudioControl, Sonance, Sherbourn, Vutec, Crestron, Matrix Audio, B&W, B&K, Elan…
there’s a lot more to it than just running speaker wires. often, you need to run cat5 to a control-pad location (and usually 2 or 4 wire to that, for power, relays - it’s all 12v but unless you’ve got a control system that uses PoE it needs to GET that 12v somewhere) - sometimes you even need to run coax to those depending on the control surface (aka if you get one that’s touch-screen / color LCD and want to see sources as you change them etc).
talk to a professional - in Rochester there’s SoundWorks - not sure about Amherst.
No offense, those parts express distro panels are just plain CRAP… I wouldn’t touch them with a 10ft pole. If you want some decent stuff for custom installation, look up Niles, AudioControl, Sonance, Sherbourn, Vutec, Crestron, Matrix Audio, B&W, B&K, Elan…
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I couldn’t agree more. But when you start telling people to run network cable, they start getting :bloated:, so I keep it simple :redface:
The parts express parts were examples… sorry, didn’t intend to endorse them
thanks for all the info! thats pretty much what i was looking for and i would be more than willing to toy around with wires and such to see what i could do anyway. and i asked this now, cuz as i said, its at the time to lay wires.
i will have to see what he wants to run for rooms
i would guess
surround in living room
stereo outside to patio & a bedroom maybe a hall
Although I’m no pro, just an enthusiast / DIY… I’d say pick out a reciever that you like, run the “B” speaker leads to a plate switch LIKEthis style, then simply switch on the patio / hall / bdrm as you wish.
I’d recommend installing a couple of IR ports in the Bdrm & on the Patio though, so that you can change stations / songs / etc without having to go back into the lvg room. $0.02.
Read up, make sure your drivers & components are compatible or if they need Lpads, etc.
Install is not very hard. Running the wires, wiring the switchs, and mounting the drivers.
Picking out a nice receiver & drivers will be far harder. lol.
There are a ton of resources online with references, reviews, writeups, etc. Though many of these people probably wouldn’t qualify a “a Professional” as dMoffitt states.
If you want award winning sound, clarity, and price - have an expert / pro come out and walk through it all. Go from there.
If you just want it to sound great (e.g.- you don’t need to hear absolute details of the 8th violin in the concerto), it still won’t be “cheap” if done well, but you could easily do it for $800 - $2k, and up.
My dad wants to re-wire his house for multiple rooms. The primary room will be a home theater, and then there will be three additional zones with speakers (dining room, great room, patio). However, he would like the ability to have all of these rooms on at once.
Ability to control the entire system from various locations would be nice too. Money for the hardware isn’t an issue, but not trying to get too crazy with it. We are also going to be doing this ourselves.
I haven’t tried to do this many rooms before, so any suggestions would be appreciated.
