whole house audio distribution help (1 Viewer)

[Tim K]

I want to set up a system for whole house audio. I've been searching and reading and everything is written to be much more complex than it has to be. I'm hoping someone can clue me in on what I need.

I want to run audio to 6 rooms in my house. I want a single zone system (meaning one source for the whole house) with volume control in each room. Running wire should not be a problem because there is access to the main cable run from each room. My questions are more about the equipment.

I plan on using a typical receiver as the main source. I'm wondering how well a typical $200-300 stereo receiver can power 12 speakers (6 rooms)? It seems like I'd need more amplification than that. Once the source is determined, where do I go from there? It seems that there would need to be a distribution block of some sort near the source. Something to split the speaker level source into 6 separate runs or do you use line level outputs? Do you run speaker wire throughout the house from this distribution block? Then, in each room I would want a volume control knob and a pair of speakers. Do you need power for these volume controls?

Help....please.

 

[Jim Howe]

check out niles audio website, niles audio . com for some different equipment that should answer some of these questions for you

 

[Tim Bargar]

Tim, check out hometech.com (hometech.com/learn/index.html) for some tutorials on whole house audio. You have the right idea, a distribution block near the source with impedence matched volume controls for each speaker pair.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Check out what are called A-Bus systems. I know that Russound makes them as well as some other manufacturers. An a-bus system has a controller near the source into which line-level audio is run. A cat5e cable is run from the controller to a volume control in each room. Speaker wire runs from the volume control to the speaker pair. It seems pretty simple.

 

[KenA]

My first whole-house audio system was just the "B" speaker outputs to three rooms and my backyard with impedance matching volume controls between the amp and each pair of speakers. I recently upgraded to a Kustom 4 source 6 zone system, but I'm helping a friend of mine with an impedence matching system. Works well, just a little lossy.