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New member Username: BrianwPost Number: 1 Registered: Mar-06 | Planning to implement a 7.1 receiver for home theater and also have a requirement for stereo speakers in 6 rooms. 7.1 zone needs 8-ohms (which is typical), but looking at most 6 speaker selectors, they require 4 ohm receivers. Do any receivers offer this combination or is there a pair of receivers available that link up so you can plug all your sources in, ie cable box, cd changer, etc... into receiver #1 but access them from the #2 as well? |
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New member Username: BrianwPost Number: 4 Registered: Mar-06 | I was looking at Impedence Matching Volume Control Knobs and from what I read, it seems you can run 8 pairs of speakers and have the math come out to 8-ohm. Since I have not seen a home wired like this, most homes I see are wired in parallel but the wiring for these cab be in series though I think the devices convert it to parallel? http://www.smarthome.com/8262W.HTML |
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Silver Member Username: GeekboyTampa, FL United States Post Number: 422 Registered: Dec-03 | Brian: yes, the main problem with whole-house audio is impedance matching! You would want to use either those volume control knobs as you show there, OR, use a head-end device which has amplification. (Niles, Harmon Kardon, NAD, and Onkyo are amongst multi-room amplifier manufacturers.) The biggest thing is going to be how your wired those speakers! If you wired them serially, then you double the impedance for each speaker added, and of course, conversely, parallel connections halve the impedance. So, if I were building a new house... I would get a headend and wire each speaker back to the headend as home-runs (star topology). You can still use impedance matching volume controls in each rooms, so for instance, you wanted to have two or three or four or whatever count of speakers in that room, you could. There are also some advanced in A-Bus speaker control. For new manufacturing (pre-dry wall), this is probably the best! My H/K has A-Bus controls built-in, but being able to send audio (and I/R control) over CAT-5 is very useful! I have my entire wiring closet all a mess. I'm going through some automation changes in my house now. I'm finishing my whole-house audio project -- yeah eventually! -- and some networking changes. I'm using Leviton OnQ and putting in a phone switch as well. I currently have 10 runs (to all bedrooms (5), kitchen, apartment, and the playroom and family room and to the "demarc") of bundled cable which has 2 CAT5e and 2 RG-8 cable. I didn't have them run audio except in the home theater room (for surround), the pool deck for outdoor speakers, and the master bedroom (for surround). My mistake! I should have had additional speaker cable to each room. Or at least an additional CAT5e cable for A-Bus. I use a volume control knob outside for my pool deck. My master bedroom doesn't have any speakers in the ceiling yet but has the wires still dangling. They also punched out and put in a wire box for the volume control, but that's covered with a blank for now. If you get any 7.1 system, you'll be fine. I have the H/K AVR-525. I actually use it for 7.1 so I don't use the feature for taking the rear surround channels and using that as a 2nd powered zone. I do, however, send line-level audio to my second zone. That's powered by my Kenwood KR-V990D receiver. Right now, it's only powering the pool deck speakers (some JBL all wather white speakers for which I don't know the model). Let us know how you're doing. This isn't the right forum for Whole House Audio or any home automation related talk... as you can read! I suggest you talk to someone very knowledgeable about whole-house audio (preferably a technician) who can guide you. There are many ways to go. What fits your budget and what you really want to do, will dictate the appropriate system for you. |
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New member Username: BrianwPost Number: 7 Registered: Mar-06 | Well, again you are using a dedicated run for each room (typical configuration)... But then you also typically need a speaker selector and a higher end receiver that won't burn up from a 4-ohm configuration. I was just wondering if anyone had done it the way the description for the volume control knob mentions, ie daisy chain from one to the other and configure them at 64-ohm so in the end if you have 8 pairs of speakers you end up with 8-ohm configuration, which would be nice and clean at the receiver end because there would only be 1 pair of wires to stub out on the wall outlet vs 8 pairs, no need for a high end receiver, ie a Sony STR-DE998 would even work because you just set the throughout the home speakers to the Front B outputs, and no need for a speaker selector either because you are at 8-ohm, very simplified... The volume control knobs mention this is a serial wire configuration but when you look at the diagram, it ends up being parallel because you actually hook into the pass through connectors rather travel than through that speaker. Just wondering if anyone had done it this way, and if they did if it worked or if they had any problems ie volume loss at the farther end, etc... |
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Silver Member Username: GeekboyTampa, FL United States Post Number: 425 Registered: Dec-03 | Brian: cool. While I do use a receiver now for powering my patio deck, I would really rather use the A-Bus technique (over CAT5) since each room would have it's own "amplifier" and "pre-amp" in the wall module. But, I have no choice, and it's likely that my whole house project will have me using something like the H/K PA-4000 (not the more expensive Channel Vision amps). |