I have inherited the job of getting an existing sound system hooked up, by being the one building out the entertainment center. I know next to nothing about audio components, etc. Can anyone talk me through what I need for just a no frills system.
Here is what I have:
8 (4 pairs) small flush mount speakers through out different rooms of the house, all home runned back to one wall with about 20ga speaker wire.
Would like to get them all connected to a new LCD TV, with ability to control at least manually volume, by pair of speakers in the other rooms.
What components, with some specs, do I need.
I assume the white and red audio output from the TV go to something.
I have heard of amps and receivers etc., but what exactly do I need and how are the speakers wired up.
Thanks Gary
Replies
bump, and oh, oh !
Just to be sure I understand... you want to be able to listen to the TV sound in other rooms? Or other audio as well? If you only need one room at a time to be live, there are speaker switches available. Otherwise you will need to utilize transformers to maintain a constant impedance to the output of the stereo, TV or whatever. In order to adjust the volume in each room independently, you need to use "L pads" which are like volume controls that are connected inline to each pair of speakers. No doubt there are online sites and books that will walk you through it butttttttttttttttt... if you don't do it properly you will very possibly destroy the output stage of whatever you're connecting all this to. Mightttttttttttttttttt be better off palming this off on a home theatre type of installer.
HTH
PaulB
Peesa kake.
http://www.amx.com/products/DAS-T0804-SIG.asp
I'm using an older version called "Martix Audio MRC-8" Each room where there are speakers has a switch on a nearby wall. The switch has a number of buttons (10) and an IR lens. The switch will allow selection between different inputs - for me: a tv, hard-drive based CD player, an iPod, and a set of plug in jacks by the piano.
From any room that has these controls, I can change the volume, channel, & source or turn it off completely - by hand or by remote.
You DO want to be able to turn off the tv sometime and listen to something else, believe me - your wife will let you know sooner or later.
Here's another:
http://www.smarthome.com/57301.html
Edited 2/25/2008 5:04 pm ET by peteshlagor
Make sure your amp and speaker impedances match. Bad things can happen. There's hardware to fix a mismatch, but you have to know to ask for it.
A client had 13 rooms of speakers/vol controls. 3 amps that kept burning out. I was the 4th guy to try to get the whole thing working. Does now. Hope I never hear about it again.
A dedicated system designed for your use makes great sense, over mix 'n match.
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
Having spent over a decade in the business of custom installed whole house a/v systems, may I suggest getting some sort of pro involved? You are about to open a big can of worms that may keep you married to this client for a long time.
Get a pro involved and off load the liability. Hanging lots of speakers on a single reciever is, to quote the guy I worked for, "tuning for smoke". I really doubt you want to speed the time required to get educated. Plus, everytime the customer wants an upgrade, that upgrade is going to focus attention on your design. Let alone warranty issues on the original system.
Good luck.
Like the other posters suggested I would recommend getting a pro installer involved. Find a good stereo shop (not Best Buy, <!----><!----><!---->Circuit<!----> <!---->City<!----><!----> or Tweeter) and get their installed to come out and evaluate what the home owner has and if it is even possible to do what they want.
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How far away from the amp are the speakers? 20ga speaker wire is pretty small, especially if the speakers are a long way from the receiver.
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There are switch boxes you can buy that allow you to hook up multiple pairs of speakers without frying your amplifier/receiver. Adcom used to make a unit that would allow you to hook-up 6 pairs of speakers to the receiver and run them all at the same time. The Adcom unit would impedance match everything, so that no matter how many of the 6 pairs of speakers were playing, the amp saw a continuous 8 ohm load.
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You also didn’t mention anything about home theater? Do they want or have one? Do they want all speakers to be intergraded?
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Get a qualified installer involved and they can start to give you a idea of what you need and how much it will cost.
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Trevor
This is a lot harder than you would think it to be.
There are three approaches.
The first is to go with a single-receiver and impedence matching switches and l-pads for remote volume control. Even the best of these systems can only be described as "mid-fi", and the cheaper ones sound pretty awful to me, and all of them may be limited in volume.
The second approach is to use a whole-house system. Essentially, you buy a component with a bunch of amps in it and appropriate switches, and then you put keypads and speakers in each room. You get full flexibility.
The third approach is a homebrew one, where you use a separate amp for each room and IR repeaters to handle volume and source selection. This can work well - my system uses this approach - but you need understanding to do it.
The second approach is great. It's also lots more $$$ than most people expect. Sonos makes nice stuff, but you'll spend $1K to do two rooms, without speakers.
Yikes, sounds complicated....How about what is the simplest way to get sound from the TV to just 2 pair of speakers in another room...Small 8" dia. flush mounted existing speakers...Manual vol. control at the component is fine...
Is there a component I could get at say Best Buy to do this..(Model# ??)
A quick schematic TV-component-speakers would be a big help..
This is not for multi media, surround sound, etc. just simple TV sound..
I would bring in a sound guy if that is what they wanted.
Do you need anymore specs??
Thanks
I'm not sure I follow. Why would someone want TV sound in another room?Anyway, 20 AWG is rather small for speaker wire. I ran 14 AWG and used the Pass-Seymour stuff. There is a distribution panel where the inputs run to, and then outputs go out to impedance balancing volume controls. From there to the speakers.Otherwise, you will need to sets of speaker outs.
All good college football fans run their team's soundtrack thru the whole house, and sometimes the outside.
And the Matrix Audio system I mentioned earlier uses Cat 5 wire - all 4 pairs.
It's sweet. Especially with a hard drive based CD player. The wife puts on her Xmas music right after Thanksgiving and it doesn't stop, day or nite, until the end of January. Of course, I'll turn it down in some rooms. Especially easy with an iPod.
Or if you're hosting a party. Different music in different rooms. Or if you got a soloist at the party, you can pipe her voice thruout.
Whole house sound is a admirable goal and from my experience, it doesn't require a "pro."
I'll admit, I've hired a few of those "pros" to run different systems thru the house. More times than not, I've had to go back and correct errors they made while rushing thru the project. And I had no deadline for them.
So my point of view is the cost of a fancy multi-amp (somewhere about a grand) and the switches (about 150 to 200 each) plus the cost of some Cat 5 wire, equals or is less than the price of a "pro."
Edited 2/28/2008 10:07 am ET by peteshlagor
Man I happened on this thread by accident and wow what a rabbit hole you can fall down doing whole house audio!!
The options seem to be these two:
You can get a big ole multi-channel amp and pump music to the different rooms like this thru an impedance matching volume control-How do you control the gear when you are sitting on the can on the third floor?
You can get some fancy turn the music into somethind digital and send that thru-out the house on cat-5 wire. Then at the individual rooms the volume control has a built in low power amp? Can this sound good and be loud enough? How do you control the equipment when you are in another part of the house?
Wife would like to have music in most rooms of the house, plus full surround in the TV room plus louder music in the shop plus louder music outside on the balcony and patio. Is there a system that could do all this sensibly?
Then there are the speakers....wow you can spend a lot of money on speakers holy mackerel...
Problem I am a bit of an audio snob and can't stand cruddy-muddy sounding music...
Daniel Neumansky
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
You can control the equipment remotely with either an IR remote or a keypad that emulates one. Xantech makes nice stuff to do this that isn't terribly expensive - I use that both for my remote music system and to control the main AV equipment that lives in a closet. I just have a small sensor in the shelf above my TV.
You can send digital audio around the house - I send the digital signal from my computer over 75 ohm coaxial cable (which is great for SPDIF coax) to my music receiver, and that's about 110' of cable. No problems at all. Digital works well for this - if you do analog you get ground loops and lots of hum, which takes you into baluns and lots of other pro audio stuff. Digital is a lot easier.
For my money, however, it's far easier to stuff an extra receiver in the same space where the main AV system is and just hook it up with normal RCA cables. Run some nice 10/12 gauge speaker wire to the remote location, a 3-wire cable (cat 3 or cat 5 is fine) to handle the IR repeater, and just put a IR remote receiver where you see it. It's simple to pick up a used receiver and do this for a few hundred bucks.
You can go with the high-end Sonos or Russound stuff to give you audio in all rooms, keypads in every room, etc. But they're really pricey.
Hi Eric,
For my money, however, it's far easier to stuff an extra receiver in the same space where the main AV system is and just hook it up with normal RCA cables. Run some nice 10/12 gauge speaker wire to the remote location, a 3-wire cable (cat 3 or cat 5 is fine) to handle the IR repeater, and just put a IR remote receiver where you see it. It's simple to pick up a used receiver and do this for a few hundred bucks.
I see they also sell 'dedicated' whole hose amps with like 12 stereo channels at 30watts per. With your above setup how do you control the volume in the different areas of the house?
Daniel Neumansky
Restoring our second Victorian home this time in Alamdea CA. Check out the blog http://www.chezneumansky.blogspot.com/
Oakland CA
Crazy Homeowner-Victorian Restorer
For my setup, a switch that fits inside a regular electric box, the size of a retangular GFI, has 10 buttons on it's front. Tiny (about 1/8" x 3/8") and arranged in two vertical rows.
The top left button is the on/off.
Under it and to the left side are 4 buttons - each represents the source (iPod, Cd player, TV, and an input near the piano for a remote something). You want the TV in that room. Turn the TV on (that is fed into the system) and then press the button for the TV in whatever room where you wanna hear it. Want the iPod? Press it's button - in whatever room you are in. Etc.
Then along the right side are two that have arrows - one pointing up (like that on the "6" key), the other down. Them's is your volume - for that room only. Have it blasting or bearly audible - your choice.
Below them are another two that controls the channel of the source - up or down.
And across the bottom is a red IR emitter/receiver. Programming the IR is probably the most complicated. I've never done that as I don't use the remote.
You'll have a Cat 5 line running to this switch from the "multiamp" - as I call the Matrix Audio thing. And another Cat 5 running from the switch to your speakers (one switch per speaker pair). That line has two dead pairs of wires as they're not needed.
We're NOT running 200 watts a channel here. And it is just fine. As much sound (or little) as you want.
My next house will probably have at least 6 inputs and 8 to 12 outputs.
With your above setup how do you control the volume in the different areas of the house?
The remote for the receiver (or a universal one programmed to do the same thing) lives where the speakers are.
When I looked at it, the Cat5 sound system stuff was way more expensive than regular audio. I didn't think it was worth it.There are more advanced systems that you can control what is being feed into the sound system remotely. My system just feeds the stereo into two distribution sites, one for the 2nd floor and one for the first floor. One speaker set to each. We can control only the volume at each speaker set, through an impedance matching volume control.If I were doing it again, I would check to see what some of the remote controlled systems cost. I'm still considering feeding a pc into the sound system somehow, probably through an input selector box.One nice feature now is that the jacks for the input have the distribution panel built into it. Very handy. Saves a run of speaker wire.If you are going to wire even part of house, expect to get at least a roll of speaker wire. I went 14 AWG and I'm happy. The electricians less so. It is stiff.
Geez, I guess all these guys telling me it's near impossible and will cost millions has me confused.
This is what I did: the previous owner had some cheep switch that had leads to each of the speakers in other rooms. He had his installer do the speakers. When he left, all that was there was wires sticking out of the wall going to this switch. I had another pair of speakers for another room and switched the ones outside for some nice Bose's.
I went to Cherry Creek Audio in Denver (maybe it was Cherry crick) and told them what I had and what I wanted.
The guy says, "This is what you need." He then ordered me the Matrix Audio unit with 4 inputs and 6 outputs. And included 5 switches. Somewhere about 2 to 2.5 grand.
I'm thinking this system is NOT digital. It simply controls the power so it's compatible with the speakers - which are simply installed in the wall - or ceiling. The Cat 5 wire is simply small gauge wire for the control of volume, channel, source, and power. Each has its own pair of wires.
It was easy to install and operate. Cherry Crick Audio wanted to install the stuff and I said I could do that. They were a bit pizzed that I wouldn't buy their install services, but after it was done, it wasn't really that hard.
Refer to the earlier links I posted for more information.
just 2 pair of speakers in another room...Small 8" dia. flush mounted existing speakers...Manual vol. control at the component is fine...
Easy to do, already did that type thing (mono though) when I was 8YO.
Radio shack clerks (or even best buy, etc) should be able to show you small cheap stereo 5-10W audio amps, often see them at Goodwill for less than $5 even.
20 ga zip cord fine for this small type work. Attach the stripes on the zip cord to the same side speaker terminals and phasing will be fine. (Google speaker phasing if you dont know what that is)
Now, if you got a big buck client with 2kW tri-amp, 40 channel equalizer and 80W piezio tweeters, then ya gotta use silver wires to let the brilliant highs get reproduced, etc, BS, etc....... there actually are folks gullible enought to buy silver wire components for their audio....
i have multiple speaker pairs throughout the house and shop that run back to a niles impedance matching speaker selector switch with volume controls, that is connected to a single yamaha av receiver, which is fed by my pc, playing itunes and internet radio. that is the least expensive sound distribution system that i could come up with.
I vote with those who recommend expert help. I installed my own home theater and one for my son. I spent two years researching this and even with some background in digital electronics, I got stymied. If it were for yourself, I'd say have fun, take your time and enjoy. But this is a can of worms, even beyond some of what's been brought up. There's not likely to be a magic bullet at Best Buy and you don't know what the previous guy did selecting and wiring the speakers. Did he even position them appropriately? If you don't immediately know the answer, you could be on the hook for repositioning speakers, rerunning wires...yikes!
Frank
Hi Gary,
It's really not that hard. The speaker gauge sounds a liitle small, we run 16Ga at a minimum. As I understand it the speakers are already installed and the wires run directly back to a center point with no volume controls in each room.
If this is correct,first you need an amplifier, I would suggest the R235LS, if this will be used only for background level audio.
http://www.russound.com/amplifiers.htm
You connect the TV line level output using red & white RCA cables to the amplifier. Then using at least 16Ga speaker wire connect the amp speaker output to the SDB-4.1 Speaker Selector/Volume Control input.
http://www.russound.com/speaker_selectors.htm
Read the instructions that come with the speaker selector carefully, you must make sure they are all the same impedance 4 ohm or 8 ohm, connect the speakers and your all set.
If your not comfortable with this, you can contact one of my fellow CEDIA members at
http://www.cedia.net/
to get a quote on performing the install for you, nobody does it better than a certified CEDIA contractor.
Hope this helps, goodluck
what everyone seems to be missing in gary's post is that all speaker wires are "home runs" back to one central spot.
i sense the poster isn't interested/capable of running Cat5 wires to each room to provide individual volume control via infrared or otherwise.
time to keep it simple.
here is what you need:
http://www.smarthome.com/82804.html
View Image
Turn Your Existing Stereo into a Whole-House Audio System!
4 Pair Stereo Speaker Volume Control & Selector with 2 Inputs
This device will allow you to plug all 4 pairs of speakers into one box and give you the capability of controlling the volume of each pair individually.
You MUST have one of these boxes because if you try to hook all of those speaker wires into the back of a typical stereo receiver, you will overload and fry it as mentioned.
This box then gets connected to a typical receiver. Receivers you can get at Best Buy. Modern receivers have jacks for TV sets so you can plug your TV into the receiver and it will play on the speakers.
Your CD player, iPod, DVD player, VHS player etc. all plug into the receiver with RCA type cables (standard)
So, get one of these boxes, hook it up to a receiver you already have, or git goin to Best Buy.
And then git to Barnes and Noble and get a Stereos for Dummies book.
Good luck.
carpenter in transition
That's what the guy before me had in the house. Wadda POS. I ain't about to leave my poker table to run upstairs to adjust the volume when I've got 4 of a kind. That little switch right over there can be handled by somebody with a pair of treys.
Besides that, while one is upstairs adjusting the volume, when do you stop? How do you know the volume is right? Scream louder than the speakers? Cell phones? Send someone to pass a message? Smoke signals?
I'm happier than a pig in shid with my setup. But most importantly, so is the DW. And as we all know, what else matters?
pete
the poster doesn't know jacksquat about any of this. i think this statement says it all
I assume the white and red audio output from the TV go to something.
i'm reading into what he is saying and making an assumption that he isn't capable of doing a setup like what you've got.
i'll bet i'm right that he isn't about to pull Cat5 to setup an infrared control system.
yes it should have been done from the getgo, but then, who would bury 20 ga speaker wire in the walls ?
the least they could have done was hard wire individual volume controls in each room.
the guy is looking for simple, that's what i gave him.
in my next house, i'll have what you have because i, like you, spent the time to educate myself.
carpenter in transition
Edited 3/1/2008 11:13 am ET by timkline
OOO, I missed that statement. You be right.