Another Whole House Audio Question

[upstatemike]

I had somebody ask me for my opinion on a good whole-house audio solution with a bit of a twist. It is a retrofit, not new construction, and there is no good way to do any kind of wall keypads or touch panels or anything like that. This person was also not wild about using an IR or wireless remote in each room so a PDA or universal remote option is out. The best solution would be a multizone music sytem that uses tabletop controllers instead of wall mounted ones. Does anybody know of such an animal?

Another feature this person wants is to have a central control location in addition to the local room controls. In other words, they want to go to the source equipment and put on a CD or whatever and set which rooms are on and off and the volume at each location right from the equipment rack. Then the tabletop control in each location will allow volume and source changes in that location.

Only idea I could come up with was to somehow mount Russound keypads into a tabletop case for the local locations and then use keypad splitters to mount a second keypad for each zone (in some kind of multi-gang case) right at the Russound amp. This seems expensive for a kluge solution. Maybe there is something more elegant available?

 

[DavidL]

Mike, It shouldn't be hard to fashion a desktop case to mount a Russound keypad. Dependent on the decor of the house. It would be very easy to fashion out of wood in a few hours. I gotta believe that there is a plastic box that is available that would work as well, cosmetics being the challenge. You would than have to make a heavier duty cord than typical Cat5, but that shouldn't be too bad either.

You can also mount a touchscreen in the control rack for monitoring / control over the entire system. You can use MainLobby / Cav6.6 plugin to control and monitor the Russound (and all else). Of course that also opens up wireless PDA too, if the customer changes their mind.
Suprised there isn't any place for a touchscreen. a Rad I/O would fit just about anywhere.

 

[upstatemike]

Very little wall space available because of windows, built-in bookshelves and such. Also not the kind of walls you can get inside of so everything would have to be surface mounted with wiremold. Which in turn means it must be very shallow. Tabletop is a lot easier because it just involves a surface jack at the baseboard.

 

[IVB]

By "tabletop", do you mean actually integrated into the table, or do you mean something that sits on top of the table?

If on top, check this thread out. It's my 3400 in the dock. Is putting this on a table with a wifi card with his software of choice a viable option, or does he want to stick with a hardware-based solution?

 

[upstatemike]

On the table is what I meant. He doesn't use Wi-Fi now so I think hard wired would be the way to go. Can the screen be used while it is in the dock? Can you feed it power over spare conductors in the cat5 network cable so you don't need a separate power cord?

 

[smee]

I think I'd try to avoid hardwired if at all possible. My apartment is a mess with wires running everywhere, but at least they are only along the walls. I find wires running across the floor to be a problem. I used to have an Audrey on the table in front of the sofa, but it required 2 wires running back to the wall. It's now sitting on the table beside the sofa instead.

Wires running across the floor become a trip hazard - or mean that you keep pulling the table-top remote off the table. Thinking about this just made me remember my friends extremely old VCR - it had a large wired remote.

In my distributed audio system, I pretty much control volume locally - with a receiver in each room. But the source is distributed from a single location. I use x10 palmpads to control source/destination stuff. This works very well for me, but requires a computer to receive the RF x10 information (in my case) and convert it to something else to control the AV multiplexor (which, in my case, is connected to the computer over my wired network).

 

[upstatemike]

In my distributed audio system, I pretty much control volume locally - with a receiver in each room. But the source is distributed from a single location.

What do you suggest for receivers? They need to be relatively cheap, silver or white finish... I know black won't fly there, and have an easy to use tuner section with easy to read digital or a nice old fashioned "slide rule" analog dial. Can you even buy a stereo (i.e. not A/V) receiver anymore?

 

[smee]

In my distributed audio system, I pretty much control volume locally - with a receiver in each room. But the source is distributed from a single location.

What do you suggest for receivers? They need to be relatively cheap, silver or white finish... I know black won't fly there, and have an easy to use tuner section with easy to read digital or a nice old fashioned "slide rule" analog dial. Can you even buy a stereo (i.e. not A/V) receiver anymore?

I'm talking full-blown av receivers here. One receiver handles 2 zones with same source (A/B speakers). The other receiver handles the other zone. It's an apartment so I only need 3. When I replaced my living room receiver with a new one, I needed to do something with the old one. I didn't have any place to store it, so I figured I'd use it.

So, they are definitely not discrete. And, they are both black.

I use a Xantech IR distribution system. So, the receivers could both be hidden somewhere and just speaker wires run to each room. Volume could be controlled with normal IR remotes.

 

[ctwilliams]

I am sure you have thought of this, but it sounds like the Sonos system may work out in this case....That system just takes care of about everything.

I am building a new house and have open walls and everything, but I am going with the Sonos.

CT

 

[upstatemike]

I am sure you have thought of this, but it sounds like the Sonos system may work out in this case....That system just takes care of about everything.

I am building a new house and have open walls and everything, but I am going with the Sonos.

CT

I have mentioned in other threads that I would look more closely at Sonos if it was hard wired. I'm not a big fan of wireless technologies myself and I sure don't want to recommend wireless to someone else and then be responsible for any issues that come up.

As I recall, Sonos is also pretty expensive. Also, in rooms where you don't want to keep track of the Sonos remote; is there an option for a fixed controller of some sort?

 

[IVB]

On the table is what I meant. He doesn't use Wi-Fi now so I think hard wired would be the way to go. Can the screen be used while it is in the dock? Can you feed it power over spare conductors in the cat5 network cable so you don't need a separate power cord?

- Yes, it can be used while in the dock.
- I don't actually know much about CAT5, and which are used for data and which are unused. I can't remember the power usage, but assuming the 24g CAT5 can handle it, I don't see why you couldn't crimp a cheapo radioshack adapter plug thingey onto that. Interesting idea, I should look into that myself...

 

[ctwilliams]

I have mentioned in other threads that I would look more closely at Sonos if it was hard wired. I'm not a big fan of wireless technologies myself and I sure don't want to recommend wireless to someone else and then be responsible for any issues that come up.

As I recall, Sonos is also pretty expensive. Also, in rooms where you don't want to keep track of the Sonos remote; is there an option for a fixed controller of some sort?

I do not have one yet, but from what I am reading it can be run hardwired if desired. When not hardwired it uses its own 802.11 style network seperate from any other wireless nextwork. Their appear to be two "official" ways to control it, via the handheld control or via a computer running Sonos software.

It appears that people are starting to write applications to control it other ways as well such as via the web using a ppc or smartphone type device. Someone has also written scripts to control it with homeseer.

It is expensive, that is a problem.

CT

 

[upstatemike]

I'll read up on it again and see if it might be an option but I doubt it.

 

[upstatemike]

OK, I looked at the Sonos site and am prepared to consider suggesting it to this guy. The remotes can control any room so he can keep one near the source equipment, and the tabletop stand is cool.

Two questions though...

1- I couldn't get the demo to run so I don't understand how the local inputs get streamed. Does the Sonos remote learn IR codes to control the locally attached equipment in a room?

2- Can the fancy screen display anything besides album covers? Can I view my IP cameras on it?

Also since the amp is included, the sticker shock is not as bad as I thought.

 

[ctwilliams]

You can connect a local source to each zone player that can be streamed to all of the other players, but as far as I know it will stream it only, there is no ability to control it through Sonos.

The controllers show the current song informat, but are also used to contol the system, such as volume of individual players or all them, determining what sources go where, picking songs for queue, managing queues, etc.