pete_c
Guru
When I was looking for the CAS44 did come across some new old stock for $499 on Ebay. I paid only a bit less purchasing each of the pieces. Its really too what people are willing to pay that sets the price. Relating to speakers I've been getting rid of the legacy speakers over the last 30 years; much of the time because of their large footprints. (IE: Bose 901's, Kilpch Heresy's, etc). My last pair (largest footprint) were called Altec Lansing Stonehedge III. They stood about 4 feet or so and had 15" woofer / horn tweeters (voice of the theater speakers). Today in the house went to "in-wall" speakers (cheap Pyle, Polk and smaller JBL's). My family room is a combo with two small tower JBL's, Center Bose, Polk middle set and no name rear external speakers. The MM stereo doesn't feed audio directly to the whole house sound but rather just line level to the whole house amplifier and vice versa for the whole house audio with a line level feeding the MM stereo. I use HA/Audio mostly for TTS. "Garage door is open" type stuff. I keep the streaming audio, audio storage and media playback devices separate. I can control the audio "basics" with HA and Russound. Basics are just volume, balance, source etc. Playlists relating to source. (MM Audio would be either Tivo, MM Tank, Tversity, Satellite, network attached device, etc).
The second CAS44 that I purchased I installed for a friend in her new Dental office. I was able to work with the contractor for the layout of the sound zones. Only one zone is stereo (waiting room) and the rest are mono (stations and utility rooms). Her preference of music is classical; sources being radio, CD's and IPod. I used a plain IPOD dock with IR control. All of the audio equipment is sitting adjacent to her computer equipment in a designated "server" room. She didn't want to incur any monthly costs for satellite so initially connected a tuner. I had very poor radio reception in server room so extended one of the Russound CAS44 audio inputs to the opposite side of her office adjacent to a window to get her radio reception. I want to set up streaming internet (she has BB) so purchased an internet device (it will be a gift) but haven't set it up yet.
The second CAS44 that I purchased I installed for a friend in her new Dental office. I was able to work with the contractor for the layout of the sound zones. Only one zone is stereo (waiting room) and the rest are mono (stations and utility rooms). Her preference of music is classical; sources being radio, CD's and IPod. I used a plain IPOD dock with IR control. All of the audio equipment is sitting adjacent to her computer equipment in a designated "server" room. She didn't want to incur any monthly costs for satellite so initially connected a tuner. I had very poor radio reception in server room so extended one of the Russound CAS44 audio inputs to the opposite side of her office adjacent to a window to get her radio reception. I want to set up streaming internet (she has BB) so purchased an internet device (it will be a gift) but haven't set it up yet.
