Just had a friend ask about her built-in speakers that all terminate in the basement. I figure she has some sort of whole-house system. They bought the house as the first owners (it had been rented for a few years before, but the renters never used it).

Anyone have any experience with them? A quick google suggests it's still a viable market (though the local AV guy wanted to move her to Sonos). Anyone every used one and have any recommendations?

thanks!

-jk

I don't have any experience with whole-house audio systems, but it really sounds like a disappearing technology to me, being replaced by systems like the Sonos you mentioned.

From the looks of it, they require a pricey and complicated multi-zone A/V receiver/amplifier at the wire termination location. I happen to be looking at A/V receivers now, and most of the consumer grade ones I'm looking at are all 2 zones maximum. To get into the ones where there are enough zones to handle each room in a big house separately, they start to run into money and your selection starts to get much narrower.

I suppose if your main TV and movie-watching location was in that basement where the wires terminate, then it might make sense to make use of the wiring by spending the extra dough on a multi-zone receiver. I'm guessing that the whole point here is that you can either pipe the same music through the whole house from the same receiver, or, pipe different music to different rooms by rerouting inputs and outputs? This sounds like the complexity of managing all the input and output sources would be daunting.

Personally, I never have a need to have the same music playing through the whole house (though I know some folks might like/want that feature). But if I want to play different music in different rooms, then I would rather just have a phone dock or a bluetooth receiver in each room. No need to worry about whether the switching system is on the right inputs or whatnot.

Example of a system for this sort of thing: https://www.htd.com/Products/Whole-House-Audio/Lync

That system does look kind of cool because it includes things like integrated intercom and front/back door communication features. I suppose if I had a large mansion I might want something like that.

I have a recommendation: she can hire me (I'm in the area and this is the stuff I do for a living)

But to answer your question: yes, this kind of setup is still popular. I have clients who have insisted on ceiling speakers instead of going with a multi-room bookshelf speaker system like Sonos or Homepod. Some people want the speakers to be up off the furniture so they're more "hidden."

Tony is right that most home theater receivers support a maximum of 2 zones, and I promise that the UI to make use of that second zone is not going to be pleasurable, so I suggest avoiding that route.

The first thing I would ask is this: how many rooms/speakers? That would be a big factor in what I'd recommend for them. For example, my mother's house has speakers in four rooms. Two of those rooms are the kitchen and the living room right next to it. The other two are her bedroom and the master bath right off of it. This would be, in my opinion, a two-zone system at minimum and a three-zone at maximum (where I'd split the master suite rooms in two, but that's if she lived with someone).

As you can see, in this home I would never consider a system like Tony linked to. It's overkill. But if your friend had many rooms on many floors, you might need something like that system. Or perhaps a less expensive version like this (the control pads aren't required). But with either of those you still need sources.

And that's another question: does your friend have volume controls in the walls? It's not a problem if she does, but there's a question of how the volume is controlled if those controls are present. I don't actually like them because it limits how you control volume. You sort of have to use those wall controls and not do it remotely through your phone or whatever. Otherwise it's like adjusting your computer speaker knobs and also the volume level in your OS. On your computer it's best to leave one set and control levels with the other.

Here is my favorite setup, the one I end up selling most of my pre-wiring customers on, and one that can apply to your friend:

- speakers in the ceiling of the rooms they're most often in
- divide the home into logical zones
- for each zone, install a Sonos Amp
- for remote control, use the phone
- for local control, use Lutron Caseta Audio Pico remotes mounted to the wall or on stands

And that's pretty much it. You have a single volume control, and locally you can play favorite stations, pause, or skip tracks. You can also control the system with Siri and use Airplay 2.

The one thing this setup isn't ... is cheap. Each Sonos Amp is $600. The Caseta remotes aren't too pricey (around $70 for the hub and $40 for the remotes and $8 for each mount).

And of course in a new home there's the cost of the speakers and wire, but clearly that's not a factor here.

Withe Amp, you could combine a zones for now and break them up later. One Amp can power two pairs of speakers on its own, or four pairs with an impedance-matching speaker selector. With the selector you could physically disable a pair of speakers and perhaps only enable it for a party or something.

Anyway, I'd be happy to take a look at the home if your friend would like. I give free estimates

My parents' condo was set up with something along these lines: six zones (two channels per zone), and each one has a wall panel with an input selector, volume adjustments, and track skip buttons. As originally set up, it used an IR blaster to talk to a CD player. These days, we now have it rigged to the audio output from an Apple TV box.

If/when the box dies, it's unclear my parents would pony up for another one, versus cobbling something together from cheaper parts.

I've always liked Casatunes . Their solution is pretty scalable. Since last week they are now Sonos compatible as well. And they also support those Pico remotes.

Thanks, everyone (especially Matt)! I'm going to check out her setup tomorrow to get a better idea of what she actually has and what she wants to do with it.

-jk

So it turns out the speakers are integrated into a home intercom system (with weird 45 Ohm speakes,too). They actually like this idea, so we're seeing what we can do with it.

thanks anyway, everyone!

-jk

Ah, so they're not music speakers at all to begin with? Just intercom?

45 ohm is normal for home intercom systems. The wiring is typically 24ga, so they need higher voltage / less current.

Music is also a usual function of home intercoms, you can get pretty good speakers.