help please! whole house audio system

I'll look into the Russound CAV6.6 then... I did run cat5e along with the 16 4 wire to all the gang boxes from the source point... thanks. Fred

holy cats... $2200 just for the box... I'm just an old farm boy.. I aint got that kinda money.. any less expensive routes for me to go? jeez... the wife just wants to be able to hear christmas music in the rooms and I want to be able to control the volume in each room. More ideas?

Easiest route to take is to install a Russound CAV6.6. Six sources out to six rooms. Controlled via CAT5 at a double-gang wall plate and feeding speakers from a built-in central amp.

If all you have is speaker wire (no cat5) then you'd have to look into a passive system instead.

As for single speakers, they make round speaker units that will take both left and right signals. I use them in some bathrooms and a small kitchen. They work great.

-Bill Kearney

One amp and a stack of $30 impedence matching volume controls should do nicely, presuming you don't overload the amp. I wouldn't drive it right from your reciever, I'd use a poweramp designed for it. You can get them cheap. Round that out with some mid-priced in- or on-wall speakers, and you'll be set.

No need to make it fancy unless you want to.

You won't be able to control the music from those locations, and all locations will have to listen to the same thing.

I've installed really slick mulitzone systems, and in talking to the clients later, 80% of them would have been fine with a single zone setup consisting of speakers and an amp.

This one is easy, Fred. You only need impedance matching volume controls and speakers. Wire all of the left channel speaker cables together at the end where the receiver will be. Do the same with the right channel cables.

In each remote room install an impedance matching volume control and set it to "8X". That will protect the amplifier by keeping the overall load above 8 Ohms.

Some people like to use a speaker selector at the head end. The theory is that this will provide a centralized means of selecting where music will play. IMO it's usually better to use volume controls with an off position in the rooms so you can choose to listen or not at the room.

No problem. I design multi-room sound systems all the time. This one will be a snap to install. If you have not yet selected a supplier, you might want to browse my online store. I carry several good lines of in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, as well as a selection of impedance matching volume controls.

Regards, Robert L Bass

In my original post to this thread I didn't see that you already have CAT6 wiring or I'd have suggested the Russound CAM6.6. The CAM6.6 is similar to the CAV6.6 but without video and with more advanced audio controls.

Regards, Robert L Bass

In that case, please refer to my first post to this thread regarding impedance matching volume controls.

Regards, Robert L Bass

Simple impedance matching volume controls would work. They only give you volume control, obviously and only a single source.

If you want to send IR commands from remotes back to the source equipment you can look at things like Russound's A-Bus kits. Either as a single source distributed to 4 zones or 4 source to 4 zones. Additional kits can be added for more output zones (still single or 4 sources).

On average we use 4 sources. Two mp3 streams from a PC, an FM tuner and DirecTV Tivo. The other two sources are for the DVD player and 5 disc CD changer. We have yet to use the DVD signal as we tend to only watch them in the home theatre. The disc changer only gets used when there are discs that haven't yet been ripped to mp3 files (or wma lossless).

Being able to control simple start/stop and next/previous from a wall keypad is a lot more convenient than having to dig up a remote and point it at the keypad. This is why we went with the CAV6.6.

Yes, it would be nice if it were less expensive. But when you factor in 6 output amplifiers along with integration with keypads and 6 audio AND video source switching it's not an unreasonable expense. I looked seriously at alternatives and cobbling up solutions with individual pieces of equipment wasn't significantly less expensive. That and it's CERTAINLY a lot more of a pain in the ass to use/maintain, a factor to consider if you're talking about the WAF (Wife Acceptace Factor).

-Bill Kearney

Would they have been happy with or without wall keypad control of the source? For me the most valuable aspect of our setup is the ability to start/stop and select next/previous from the wall keypad. Besides the on/off and volume control, obviously! Not having to dig up the remote is a HUGE improvement. I could live with it being only a single source but not without wall control. I hate, Hate, HATE having to keep track of remotes and their endless appetite for batteries...

-Bill Kearney