Basic music distribution system

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Basic music distribution system - ideas please.

kiwifidget

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#204434 1-Oct-2016 13:06

I may have asked this before but I cant remember, and it would have been years ago anyway.

I have 6 rooms in my house that have a mono ceiling speaker installed. (its actually 5 now as I have converted 1 room to two speakers). Each room has its own volume controller.

All the speaker cables (12 of them so I know stereo is run to each room) end up in my wee comms area. They are just wires hanging out of the wall. I will need to get them terminated properly into wall ports, probably as I gradually replace the mono speakers with stereo ones.

Also in the comms cupboard is my Sonos Connect Amp to which the sole stereo speakers are connected. The wires just go straight to the Sonos.

For complete flexibility I guess I would need 6 Sonos Connect Amps. Well I'm not made of money, and there wouldn't be room in the cupboard anyway.

Is there some sort of device I can use to hook up all 6 rooms to the Sonos, which would allow me to change which room the Sonos was playing to?

I dont think I can see a need for all rooms to be going at once.

While it would be practical for each room to be able to play different music I dont believe that would be possible with this setup. I would have to implement something completely different. So I'm just trying to make the best of what is already in the house.

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Goosey

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#1643813 1-Oct-2016 13:59

Hi,

Search for a speaker selector. You will then get an idea of what you may or may not need. You can get passive ones therefore you connect those wires to the selectors outputs and then the input is connected to your main amp then simply select which output you want to use.

I wouldnt bother with faceplates to terminate the runs from the various parts of the house as you said its all in a cupboard anyway?

Goose.

nickb800

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#1643817 1-Oct-2016 14:08

When you say that each room has a volume control, do you mean an in-wall one in each room?

If so, do you know if it lists 'impedence matching' on its features?

e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001YIHB22...

If you have impedence matching volume controls in each room, then you can simply connect up all of the speaker cables together (in parallel) in your comms cupboard and connect to the one amp. The lowest volume setting would serve as 'off' for each room. Just need to check the manual for the volume controls and ensure that you have the correct setting for your speaker impedence, amp imepdence, and number of volume controls.

richms

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#1643850 1-Oct-2016 14:33

I would suggest buying a heap of the cheap breeze audio amps off AliExpress and use one for each room. Impedance matching controls are typically stepped rather than continuous and cost more than the cheap amps do.

See if you can find some old laptop power bricks to run them as they really need more than 12v to get any reasonable levels from them. I bought some 24v ones which is the max they can run from.

In the past I had some other small leipai amps. They are 12v max but I found the cheap volume controls on them quickly went nasty and made really bad static when I moved them.

Richard rich.ms

kiwifidget

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#1643879 1-Oct-2016 15:48

I dont know about impedence matching, the house already had them in when we bought it. But they are in the wall, like a light switch.

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Dunnersfella

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#1643924 1-Oct-2016 18:14

Have a look at the speaker volume controls (you'll need to take them off the wall) and check the model.

If they're impedance matching you'll be just fine to add a 6 way, transformer based speaker selector.

If they're not, you'll want to pick up an impedance matching 6 way speaker selector.

Ultimately though, you want 6 x Sonos Connects, or, if your speakers are 8 ohms, then 3 x Sonos Connect amps (almost all the products that act this way from Denon / Sonos / Yamaha etc are 4 ohm stable().

richms

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#1643928 1-Oct-2016 18:37

kiwifidget:

I dont know about impedence matching, the house already had them in when we bought it. But they are in the wall, like a light switch.

Do they click between positions?

In anycase, you may find that changing one will affect the volume of the others as the impedance matching just means that they will not present a too low one to the amplifier, the impedance goes up as it clicks down the taps on the transformer to get less power.

I tried a couple of them and the other speakers had a noticeable jump in volume as the other control went between steps. Seperate amps, and split the RCA input from the source and they are totally independant. There is a small change in level between powering one of the amps on or off or changing its control since the cheap amps are just passing the audio signal thru a potentiometer, rather than having a proper volume control but it was barely noticible compared to what I had with the 2 in wall controls.

Does mean I dont have an inwall control now, but for under a couple of hundred for all the amps and power supplies and just using the zone 3 output of a HT reciever as a source it was the best bang for buck result.

Richard rich.ms

kiwifidget

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#1643969 1-Oct-2016 20:48

Yes, the volume knobs click between positions.

This came up in a Google search - the Axium Mini4 Multiroom.

http://axium.co.nz/products/amplifiers

How does that install, it looks like it goes into some sort of rack, or does it mount in/on the wall?

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