Multi-room audio help (1 Viewer)

[Brent Joye]

I have a nice room that I want to use for home theater and I also want multi room audio for the rest of the house. Right now I have a crappy old Technics receiver and a pair of Def Tech Pro Tower 400 main speakers.

Should I get something like the Niles multi-zone control system that does 30watts to 6 different zones for the house and then have a separate dedicated HT receiver? Or do you get one good HT receiver and try to run the multi-room off of that?

Suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

[John-J]

Hi Brent,

A key question here is whether you want to run different sources simultaneously - like watching a dvd in your main room but have music playing somewhere else in the house. If not, switch boxes like the Niles will work.

 

[Brent Joye]

John,
I don't think I'll be running different things simultaneously, but the Niles multi-zone receiver says you can send up to 4 different sources to 6 different zones simultaneously. I guess I'm asking if it's reasonable to do the multi-room audio with a home theater receiver and save some money. Obviously the Niles receiver wouldn't work for HT, but would an HT receiver work for multi-room audio? How do you run it? Get a receiver with 2 zones and then use the 1st zone for HT and split the second zone off for multi-room audio? An HT receiver would probably have 6 powered channels at the most right? So how do you power 6 or 8 rooms of speakers with it?