Newbie Question, Please help. (1 Viewer)

[hotstang46]

I've been buzzing around for a while and learning alot but now I have a question. And hello to all as well ...I just moved into a home that has 5 in wall speakercraft speakers and would like to get them going in a price concious fashion. I would like to add 2 bose speakers for the outside as well making the total 7. That being said, I don't need the ability to control them individually and would like them all to play at the same volume levels, don't think i need "zones". Best buy was in here evaluating my set up and is trying to rip me off on an install, 2 grand and they say I need a 2channel receiver and will only be able to use 2 speakers at once and will have to choose the room i want the music in and can't power them all.

I'm sure there is another alternative. Being this will only be powering speakers for music, is there not an economical solution here to power them all at once? Thanks for any help....OH, and I'm excited, based off of what everyone said here I think I'm going with a samsung 42 plasma (720p), pioneer elite receiver and Triad inwalls for the Home theater.

 

[homthtr]

I'm reading into this that the 5 speakers must be in the same room for a surround sound room? 2 front, 2 rear, and a center. If that is the case then......
You need a 2 zone Reciever, but don't need to spend $2k to do that! Denon and Yamaha both make great 2 zone amps for less than $600.

 

[hotstang46]

they are in different zones.......2 speakers kitchen, 2 master bed, 1 office, and the 2 i would like to add to the outside......and again, these will only be for music and I could care less if i can control them individually, but i do want them all to run at the same time...

 

[homthtr]

You can run them all off a standard stereo receiver amp then. If there are no
Volume controls installed you will need a Speaker Selector at minimum to match the impediance in the system. I would suggest a Speaker selector that also has volume control capabilities as you will probably want to balance the sound. The outdoor speakers will require more power than the indoor speakers. Are all the Speaker lines run directly from the rooms to your equipment area?

 

[hotstang46]

the wires are all run to the same place....I will have to run the wires for the outside to the same place as well, which shouldn't be too difficult.....I just came back from the store and saw a 2 channel sony on closeout for $89. Only thing it really does is stereo, which is fine, as I have a denon for home theater...

so if I bought the two channel I would obviously need an amp....and then I could run the amp right to the seven speakers right?!? I was told speaker selectors suck power out of the system, is this true? (not a big deal though, I won't be blasting the tunes)

 

[homthtr]

A Speaker Selector Adjusts the Impedance for the amount of speakers you connect. If you connect 4 rooms directly to the amp and if the speakers are 8 ohms each you would be dropping the impedance to 2 ohms which will cause the amp to overheat and eventually fail. If the Amp has speaker a and b you could (not really recomended) connect two pair to A and two pair to B Dropping the Impedance to 4 ohms. Depending on the amp... if it's rated to be stable at 4 ohms you should be ok, I wouldn't propose this setup to a customer, but it will "work".

 

[hotstang46]

again, I'm new to this whole home theater amp scene and haven't done really any research as I've never had an application where i've needed. That being said I'm really into car audio so I'm somewhat familair....

but why would I run the speakers in line, do they not have multi channel amps for the home theater?

 

[homthtr]

You can power you whole house with just about anything. I've gone as far as hooking up 14 piar of speakers all in parallel to a boombox. Without anything else. Needless to say the boombox what very hot after a few minutes of use as the impedance was down to almost Zero. You could get an amp that has plenty of seperate A,B,C,D,E,F Speaker connections, but I was under the impression that you wanted to do this with minimual expense.

Again.. Any Stereo Amp as long as you have a Speaker Selector in line. You can just leave them all turned on all the time just using the selector to correctly match the impedance.

It's going to take more cords, maybe Y-cords (ick) if you want to share any of your sources. A Low-Mid range 2 Zone amp would take care of it all... your Home theater surround room and the rest of you home all at the same time. You will still need the secector on the Zone2 to protect the amp given the fact that there are no impediance matching volume controls wired to any of your rooms.

Here's my suggestions...

Denon 2106
http://www.usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/554.asp#

Monster Cable ss-4
http://www.monstercable.com/productPage.asp?pin=1423

 

[hotstang46]

Hey thanks for all the help, I get it now.....so if I'm correct, I'm going to go get this speaker selector you mentioned.....and I'm going to pick up a dedicated sony am/fm 2 channel reciever off of ebay or something...Since I do have a yamaha for the 5.1 system for my tele...

thanks so much for clearing that up for me

 

[homthtr]

Not a problem! Glad we're able to get on the same page!

Let us know how things turn out!

Steve