How to Setup Multi Room Audio + Surround Sound?

[JoshWarren]

Hi, all, and thanks for any help any of you can give me. A bit of background - we're closing on our new home in the next couple of weeks and I've had extensive prewiring done for home automation, security, whole house video distribution, etc., but the one thing I think I may have missed was multi room audio.

The good news is, we have prewire for speakers in several rooms with that prewiring running back to our media/wiring closet.

The bad news is, I just realized that what I want to do may not be possible with the way the prewiring is setup, and due to the layout of the 2 floors, I can't easily add additional wiring to the living room at this point.

What I have is:

1) 5.1 prewire in media room
2) 5.1 prewire in living room
3) 2 speaker prewire on patio

I plan to add either 2 or 5.1 to the master bedroom myself, and a 2 speaker setup in the gameroom myself. I have 2 spare Cat 5 running into most every room at switch-height so that I can add keypads, etc., as needed.

What I'd like to do is:

1) Be able to distribute music from a source in the media closet to all locations in the house (EXCEPT the media room - the 5.1 setup in the media room will just play the audio corresponding to whatever video source is being played there)
2) Be able to distribute the corresponding audio for the selected video source to the room that is watching that source - i.e., if the TiVo signal is being routed to the living room, I'd like to be able to distribute the audio from the TiVo to the 5.1 setup in the media room.

The problem I'm running into is that all of the whole-house/multi-room audio systems I've seen basically switch 4 or 6 sources to 4 or 6 rooms, and each room is limited to 2 speakers. How do you manage/switch when you have some sources and some rooms that are 5.1 and some that are simple stereo?

I'm hoping there's a solution out there; the ideal solution would be as automatic as possible - I'm going out of my way to make the system fully automated and simple to use so that it's easy for my wife, guests, etc., to use. Right now, on the home automation side of things I'll be running an Elk + ISY for alarm and Homeseer for most of the user-facing controls. Video is brought into each room via a 4X4 HDMI matrix and HDMI-over-Cat 6 baluns that also pipe all of the IR signals from remotes back into the wiring closet.

Any ideas? Help!

 

[apostolakisl]

I can't speak for every piece of equipment out there, but 5.1 is not something that is typically distributed to the whole house. 5.1 is specifically meant for audio that corresponds to a video image. It orients the listening experience to correspond spacially to the image you are looking at. With whole house audio there is no spacial orientation for the listener, so simple stereo is what is used.

In your situation I assume you have a tv in your living room. The 5.1 would be appropriate for sound that goes with the tv. But for mingling around with friends and family and having some background music, stereo would be best.

I would suggest two sets of speakers separting your 5.1 speakers for watching tv from your steroe speakers for background music.

If you wanted to challenge yourself and still use the same speakers for both your 5.1 experience and your background music experience, you could use a separate amp for your living room. Use an amp that can be integrated into the same system that controls the other amp for the rest of the house. You can setup IR macros that control both amps or you can use rs232 enabled amps and integrate them that way. But this gets very complex and will frustrate you.

Your best bet is to just have a different set of speakers for your 5.1 and your whole house audio.

 

[tmbrown97]

If you look at the higher end models of Russound or Nuvo, I know they have some zones that are non-amplified so you can run them to your own amp. Some have a set of outputs for each zone. Also most will let you expand to more zones and more rooms.

You can share the same speakers with a 5.1 video setup but what you'll likely find is that those zones can't be turned on/off or volume controlled the same as zones that are attached to the central controller. The idea of separate speakers for whole house will simplify life.

 

[Kevin L]

I have a 12-zone whole-house audio system using two Proficient Audio M6 audio controllers with separate keypads in each room, allowing each zone to play different or the same sources. I also have 7.1 in my family room driven by an Onkyo 809 HT receiver. All of my audio equipment, video equipment (other than TVs), and network, media, and HA servers located in an air-conditioned media closet.

I had considered playing the whole house audio through some of the 7.1 speakers, but figured it was much easier to add a dedicated speaker for the whole house. Since the whole house is background music, I'm usually moving around when listening. Most of the zones have one dual voice coil twin-tweeter stereo speaker playing both channels, since normal stereo separation is pointless. In a couple of places where I'd be in the same location, like the home office and the exercise room, I have normal pairs of ceiling speakers. I do have two squeezebox players going through the M6s so I can play just about anything. This setup has worked quite well.

Good luck,
Kevin

 

[JoshWarren]

This is what I was afraid of - basically, I need to add dedicated speakers to the living room to be part of the multi-room audio setup (my plan never was to use the full 5.1 setup in that room as part of the multi-room setup; basically, I was hoping to be able to use the 2 rear channel speakers as a zone for the multi-room setup AND use the rear channel speakers as part of the 5.1 system, of course, and just switch between the two, but it does sound like going down this road will be expensive, frustrating and more difficult to operate.)

So, now I get to figure out how to add speakers in the living room. Crap. Anyone add speakers to a first-floor room that is entirely under a 2nd floor before? The only places anywhere near this area that I can access from an attic don't really make sense for the speakers. Although, I need to go back to my construction photos because if things are setup the way I think/hope they are, there might not be anything blocking me from running the wire all the way along the ceiling in the living room, above the drywall - I think the supports all run parallel to where I would want to run the wire. It's just a matter of getting it into that space.

You all bring up a good point about how stereo separation is meaningless. The living room is fairly large (roughly 22' x 22') and it opens to a 11' x 12' dining room and a 12' x 14' kitchen along one side - the kitchen also has a 10' x 14' breakfast area, but that's isolated a bit from the living room. I'm wondering if one speaker will be good enough to provide background music for this entire area, if I place it roughly where the dining room, living room and kitchen all 'meet'. This happens to be -almost- (but not quite, I think) directly under my media/wiring closet, so placing one speaker here might be do-able. Would one be sufficient for the entire area? What sort of specs should I look for to make sure it covers the area well?

What hardware do you guys recommend for the whole-house audio setup? I know most the Russound integrates with both Homeseer and Elk from what I can see?

For the 5.1 setup in the living room, what's the easiest way to run the audio? I'm using an HDMI Matrix to switch various sources to various TVs; so, I'll have an HDMI cable going from the matrix to the TV. I know I'll need an amp for the 5.1 setup, but what do I connect the amp to in order to simplify ensuring that when you switch video sources, the audio is switched too?

Thanks for the help!

 

[apostolakisl]

The easiest way to hook up your amp is to get one with hdmi inputs on it. Run from your matrix to your amp, then out the amp to the tv. This will require that you always use the amp, however, so if sometimes you want to just use the tv speakers, this won't work.

An alternate way is to run a toslink or coax digital from your video sources into the amp and run the hdmi directly to the tv. I have done it this way and it works just great. If I want to use the amp and the 5.1 sounds, I mute the tv. But most of the time I just use the tv speakers.

If running wire to your speakers is a real killer, you might consider using an A/B speaker switch. They make ones that are controlled via ir remote which might be able to be incorporated into your universal remote macro scheme (assuming you have this). Make the output go to your rear channels and one input is from your whole house audio distribution setup and the other is from your 5.1 amp. Another option is to use wireless bookshelf type speakers.

 

[tmbrown97]

This is what I was afraid of - basically, I need to add dedicated speakers to the living room to be part of the multi-room audio setup (my plan never was to use the full 5.1 setup in that room as part of the multi-room setup; basically, I was hoping to be able to use the 2 rear channel speakers as a zone for the multi-room setup AND use the rear channel speakers as part of the 5.1 system, of course, and just switch between the two, but it does sound like going down this road will be expensive, frustrating and more difficult to operate.)

This could be doable - but you'd have to use something that senses power on the receiver so that, when on, it takes over the speakers - and when off, it gives them back to the whole house audio. Many receivers have switched outlets on the back for controlling other devices - a 12V wall wart plugged into a relay or two would do it pretty easily and for about $10.

I have a 2-story house, no basement... I wired the hole place... there were some places I had to cut access holes to drill and fee wires so I kept them the size of one or two gang boxes then put blanks over them - and kept them in inconspicuous places. My single most complex run was one where I had to drop down an interior wall from the attic, then go to ground level... then remove the baseboard and the drywall behind the baseboard, then drill through the studs and route the wires around 2 16' or so walls. Not fun, but was really about a weekend project at the end of it all.

As far as those spaces you describe - you need way more than one speaker to cover that unless you want a loud spot surrounded by a bunch of places where it's insufficient. It's meant to be background music so this isn't ideal.

It's been years since I did this more professionally, but back then I remember there were measurements for how much dispersion you get per speaker which help you lay out where they should go - maybe the manufacturer could help - but if it were me, that'd be 8-10 speakers to cover those spaces without loud spots.

 

[apostolakisl]

This could be doable - but you'd have to use something that senses power on the receiver so that, when on, it takes over the speakers - and when off, it gives them back to the whole house audio. Many receivers have switched outlets on the back for controlling other devices - a 12V wall wart plugged into a relay or two would do it pretty easily and for about $10.

That's a good idea. I think I might try that. But I would skip the wall wart and just go with a single dpdt 120v relay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/110VAC-30A-DPDT-Power-Relay-Motor-Control-Silver-Alloy-/280701739196?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item415b20a0bc

 

[Kevin L]

Hi, Josh.

I also have an open floor plan without walls between the dining room, living room, kitchen, and family room. I don't think you would be happy with one speaker for your area. I have a speaker in the living room (located close to the dining room), one in the kitchen, and another in the family room. I have keypads in the dining, kitchen, and family room. I've attached a floor plan (an early version, only one I had here) for the first floor of my home and added the speaker locations in red. The two rectangular speakers are outside in the lanai and by the spa. As you can see, the only room with two speakers is the office, since that's the one room I'm seated in the same place (at my desk) when listening. All the others are single point stereo speakers. BTW, all my speakers are also from Proficient Audio, too.

If you have a point where you can access the attic, you should be able to snake wire to the speaker locations. You're not likely to have cats blocking the way. Use a good stud finder to see if there's anything blocking the path. If it's clear, it will probably be easier to cut the hole in the ceiling and snake from there to the attic rather the other way around.

Kevin

View attachment Lee 1st fl.pdf

 

[JoshWarren]

Thanks, all, for the continued advice. I wish I had posted some of these questions sooner, before the house was drywalled.

So, I'm going to look at some of my pre-drywall photos and figure out the simplest places to add speakers to; thanks for posting you floorplan, Kevin, that is similar to our setup and really, really helps.

One last question (for now!) - what equipment do you guys use or recommend for multi-room audio? The home automation portion of my setup is going to be run by a Homeseer machine, with an Elk M1 in there as well - I've heard Russound equipment works well with both of those systems; any others I should look at? Planning on finalizing all my purchases next week, then installing the week after. I'll make sure to let you all know how it goes!

 

[Kevin L]

You're welcome, Josh. I know the hassles of trying to think of everything when building a home. This is the first new home I've owned, and spent two years designing it before taking the plans to a builder. We've been in the house four years now, and there are very few things we didn't think of, and those few items aren't major.

I have two Proficient Audio M6 audio controllers. I've been very pleased with it. It does have RS-232 and the Elk M1G supports it. I also have Homeseer but never looked into integration, though I still have a lot of work to do regarding HA. There are two styles of keypads, the standard pushbutton pads that come with it, and the Source LCD keypad/wheel controller that is optional.

Here's a link to the brochure: http://www.proficientaudio.com/images/stories/pdf/lit/HomeAudioComponentsBrochure.pdf