Hi,
I am looking to build new home. I am planning to add whole home audio. House has Master on 1st floor and 3 bed rooms up stair. Here is what i wanna do :
Wire Master and Living room for 5.1.2 or 7.1.2, then have 2 speakers each in kitchen, formal dining, formal living, 3 bedrooms up stairs, garage and back porch.
My question are :
1) Can i control all from my basement or will i need to put receivers for my living and master separate as there are 5.1.2 or 7.1.2
2) If it needs separate receivers for living and master, what do i need to do to connect them to other speakers.
3) Should i use 16/4, 14/4 or 14/2 wires for all speakers.
4) What are the other suggestions you guys have and any recommended devices/recievers.
I have attached floor plan layout in case someone wanna look.
I am looking to build new home. I am planning to add whole home audio. House has Master on 1st floor and 3 bed rooms up stair. Here is what i wanna do :
Wire Master and Living room for 5.1.2 or 7.1.2, then have 2 speakers each in kitchen, formal dining, formal living, 3 bedrooms up stairs, garage and back porch.
My question are :
1) Can i control all from my basement or will i need to put receivers for my living and master separate as there are 5.1.2 or 7.1.2
2) If it needs separate receivers for living and master, what do i need to do to connect them to other speakers.
3) Should i use 16/4, 14/4 or 14/2 wires for all speakers.
4) What are the other suggestions you guys have and any recommended devices/recievers.
I have attached floor plan layout in case someone wanna look.
Attachments
Not the first (or last) house I've seen where the garage makes the best (symmetrical) listening room.
Um, forget the wires. Just send audio wirelessly to systems (e.g. powered loudspeakers and client computer) that plug into the main AC wherever you want to place them. Move or reconfigure them anytime.
I am close to finishing a free bash-based (e.g. linux) application for this that you might be interested in. See:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-b...audio-system-client-controller-gstreamer.html
No offense but hard wiring your home for audio is not going to add to its value. And down the road it will be just like all those homes where the thoughtful builder put a cable TV receptacle in the wall. How useful are those today?
I owned a home once that was built with which, at the time, must have been a state of the art intercom and audio distribution system. Every bedroom has this custom plug for a unit, and there were speakers outside the home and on the patio. The system died and after removing it I was left with the legacy holes in the wall and holes in my exterior walls where I removed the units.
I am close to finishing a free bash-based (e.g. linux) application for this that you might be interested in. See:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-b...audio-system-client-controller-gstreamer.html
No offense but hard wiring your home for audio is not going to add to its value. And down the road it will be just like all those homes where the thoughtful builder put a cable TV receptacle in the wall. How useful are those today?
I owned a home once that was built with which, at the time, must have been a state of the art intercom and audio distribution system. Every bedroom has this custom plug for a unit, and there were speakers outside the home and on the patio. The system died and after removing it I was left with the legacy holes in the wall and holes in my exterior walls where I removed the units.
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My house came pre-wired for whole-house sound. The builder ran regular 14/2 (I think) speaker wire all over, centrally terminated in a basement closet. Actually the second floor just has pull strings and hole "caps" so I can semi-easily run the cable upstairs. The basement has the wires run, but no speakers.
When I bought the house, it came with an AVR which controlled all the speakers (which are just on the main floor). The AVR was kept in the basement and controlled by an iPad app. The app was garbage (IMO) and the receiver was a huge monstrosity using a ton of power and producing a lot of heat. So I scrapped it all, replacing it with a BeagleBone Black running Volumio: this runs MPD for which there are countless clients for every platform. I built a basic class-D amplifier (lower power/low heat) that sits between the BBB and a speaker selector. The speaker selector is basically a multiplexer so the one stereo pair coming out of the amp gets multiplied into N pairs for the house's builtin speakers.
This arrangement is "OK", but the biggest problem is bass (or lack thereof). I don't know if they make truly fullrange in-wall speakers that can do convincing bass. I'm guessing the speakers I have cut off around 100 MHz or so.
I need to build some kind of line-level crossover and find a way to send that signal to a powered subwoofer.
My wife likes the whole house sound system as-is. I'm lukewarm on it.
I don't have any interest in doing more channels than classic stereo, so I can't give you specific advice. However, if you don't put a receiver in the same room as your speakers, you need to find some way to control the device while you're in the listening area. So do some research on what kind of remote-control apps are available for whatever AVR you end up with. As I said above, the one I had was crap.
I would think most people with multi-channel setups would also integrate their TV into the arrangement. So if the AVR isn't in the same room as your TV, you'll likely be making long runs of video cable (e.g. HDMI). Personally I think it could get messy.
Also, as another poster said, if you run the wires in the wall, you kind of "lock in" the furniture arrangement for the life of the house. I.e., if you ever want to re-arrange your furniture, you might have to give up the 7.2 sound system.
At any rate: my family is also looking at building a home, and my plans are to just go crazy with Ethernet wiring. Yes, standards come and go, but I'm willing to bet Ethernet won't be obsolete any time soon. If you go with shielded Ethernet wire, it can do just about anything: data (obviously), speaker-level signal, line-level signal, telephone, TV (see HDHomeRun), cameras (digital or analog), power delivery, USB-over-Ethernet, HDMI-over-Ethernet, intercom, alarms...
My plan is basically to have dual-, quad- or hex-RJ-45 receptacles right next to every AC outlet. My goal is to create "general purpose" wiring.
matt - I think you're right to suspect there are few conventional "full range" in wall systems capable of convincing bass - and even if there were, the normal construction of most interior walls would likely be a significantly limiting factor in how well they'd do.
There are Bluetooth subwoofer transmitter / receiver gadgets available, but the sonic quality would be, well, Bluetooth - probably more than adequate for background / casual "Muzak", but maybe not for serious audio or home theatre.
As for surround receivers, while I've not played with any of the most recent crop, I've set up a couple of Marantz units for family members, and as well recently updated my own to an Onkyo. Aside from the fact that all of these machine have more features than you can shake a stick at, and a confusing array of input and output configurations, I can't think of any significant criticisms of either brand. Most current models now seem to have remote apps for iOS or Android devices.
I'd be inclined not to run significant lengths of Ethernet cabling as speaker wiring - for anything longer than a few dozen feet I think the 14/2 certified speaker wiring would be the best bet for in-wall wiring. In a large home, some of those runs could easily exceed 200ft from a central "closet" .
There are Bluetooth subwoofer transmitter / receiver gadgets available, but the sonic quality would be, well, Bluetooth - probably more than adequate for background / casual "Muzak", but maybe not for serious audio or home theatre.
As for surround receivers, while I've not played with any of the most recent crop, I've set up a couple of Marantz units for family members, and as well recently updated my own to an Onkyo. Aside from the fact that all of these machine have more features than you can shake a stick at, and a confusing array of input and output configurations, I can't think of any significant criticisms of either brand. Most current models now seem to have remote apps for iOS or Android devices.
I'd be inclined not to run significant lengths of Ethernet cabling as speaker wiring - for anything longer than a few dozen feet I think the 14/2 certified speaker wiring would be the best bet for in-wall wiring. In a large home, some of those runs could easily exceed 200ft from a central "closet" .
Adding my 2 cents worth. My wife and I designed our whole-house system while we were designing the house. Our goal included three main listening areas: Living Room, Dining Room, and Master Bedroom. The rest of the house has in-ceiling speakers, and have little real bass. For background music, that's really just fine.
The hardware that runs everything other than the amp(s) for the whole house is located in the Dining Room, totally within a cabinet, with nothing showing. OrangePi + with MPD does duty to play the music, and the USB sound card sends sub signal to the Living Room, high-pass to the adjoining Dining Room, and line-level to the rest of the house without filtering (using 6 of the 7+1 channels of the sound card).
The Master bedroom has a separate satellite/sub system that also works with the TV. The whole-house system is all on one amp, upstairs in my office.
This all works actually better than expected....
The hardware that runs everything other than the amp(s) for the whole house is located in the Dining Room, totally within a cabinet, with nothing showing. OrangePi + with MPD does duty to play the music, and the USB sound card sends sub signal to the Living Room, high-pass to the adjoining Dining Room, and line-level to the rest of the house without filtering (using 6 of the 7+1 channels of the sound card).
The Master bedroom has a separate satellite/sub system that also works with the TV. The whole-house system is all on one amp, upstairs in my office.
This all works actually better than expected....
What gauge wire did you use, and what you do estimate the longest home run to equipment closet? -
Speaker wire is 14/2 and 14/4, depending on location. Longest runs are to speakers under the overhangs outside, near 100 feet. Speaker runs from Dining Room to Living Room, where most listening happens are short, 20 to 30 feet. "Line level" from the Dining Room to my upstairs office is 75 feet or so. "Microphone cable."
My intent was that the in-ceiling speakers would be for background music, and get used when we have people over, not for serious listening...
If you want to get an idea of the project, we took thousands of pictures, and have a site with several: Dream
The first page starts with bare ground and plans. "Realize" is finished and moved in.
My intent was that the in-ceiling speakers would be for background music, and get used when we have people over, not for serious listening...
If you want to get an idea of the project, we took thousands of pictures, and have a site with several: Dream
The first page starts with bare ground and plans. "Realize" is finished and moved in.
For sure... After 4 years designing it, and two years building... It's the best sounding room I've ever put a system in, and that includes some very high-end places...
My wife is a very talented designer.
My wife is a very talented designer.
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