Options for HK Audio

[Mike]

I realized the other day that my current multi-room setup (a Harmon Kardon proprietary setup from an AVR 525 and using their 8 channel amp and keypads) will eventually break (may not be for awhile but eventually it will die).

Unfortunately I did not wire this in an ideal fashion and was wondering about my options.

The wiring currently is:

Reciever - Cat 5 to the individual keypads
( separate, no speaker wire is run to the keypads)
Receiver - Speaker wire to each speaker.

The way I see it, there are two options when the time comes (or things I need to work towards between now and then)

1. Work on rewiring so that speaker wire goes to the keypad location and then out to the speakers (the way it should have been done).
2. Controllable keypads that route back to where the reciever(s) are and control it 'remotely'. The reciever(s) or zone controller then routes to the speakers themselves directly.

Fortunately everything is working right now, but the right way to solve this problem would be to rewire it 'properly' and get the speaker wire to go to the keypad locations, right?

 

[sic0048]

Actually the current wiring is fine. Most of the commonly used whole house systems (like Russound, Nuvo, etc) all wiring just like you have: 1 cat5e from the receiver to the keypad and the speaker wires from the receiver to the individual speakers. The only time you really need the speaker wire run from the receiver to the keypad location and then on to the speakers is if you are using a basic volume control knob or IP based systems - both of which are pretty uncommon.

So don't fret about it IMHO. You should be fine with your current setup.

 

[Mike]

That is great to hear. I had not looked into the other systems in some time and thought they had speaker wire to the volume control/keypads.

One less thing to worry about.