# New house setup



## Saffyre (Dec 5, 2010)

Hello all,
Just recently started wanting to move into getting my audio setup in my house. I haven't done much with Audio/Video in quite some time and don't know even where to start. I've been looking around for receivers first, then work on the speakers etc, but I can't find a receiver with what i'm looking for.

I'm planning to put audio throughout the whole house. Gym room, 3 bedrooms, outside porch, hallways, living area/dining room, and then a home theater system in the living room.

House does not have TV's in the bedrooms, I have already setup a storage closet and ran most of the cables for the TV's in the gym room and the living room. RF remotes, etc.


The problem I am having is finding a receiver which can take care of quite a few zones, and i'm thinking my only option is getting a whole home audio system, rather than a receiver for that. Any ideas? The audio does not really need to be able to play at the same time, with multiple inputs, mostly would like to be able to turn sound off from certain areas, maybe play different stuff in 2 rooms, home theater at same time, etc.

Home theater, the room in pretty long, dining room, kitchen, living room, pretty wide open plan. No back wall to mount speakers to. There are walls rather close to the couch on left and right walls, front wall is wide open as well where TV is mounted. I don't want anything except for the Sub/Subs on the floor.

Can anyone give me some recommendations? I'm looking for the best bang for the buck options, and don't want to spend too much money on this adventure. The whole home audio is a different project, but i'd like to be able to expand to that in the future. Fine with 5.1, but would prefer more, don't think the room needs more than 1 sub. Would prefer satelites over bookshelves if possible. Been looking at the Quintets, but finding mixed reviews.

Edit: Also 10' ceilings, if that makes much difference.


Thanks.


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## goyop (May 4, 2010)

I am certain that people here can help you with this. What I would need from you is a list to understand what the needs are. Make an Excel chart with the rooms listed as the left hand column, then across the top row, name a column for each listening situation like, "CD, Radio, TV w/ surround, etc." Then indicate if any of these will ever be playing something different than in other rooms.

If you can do that we can easily fit a cost effective system to your situation.


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## Saffyre (Dec 5, 2010)

Attached is a very easy/simple excel with each room and what I would like them to be able to play in each room. Living room is where the Home Theater is going, and needs to be able to play while the rest of the house might have some sort of music running. Mostly would like the ability to turn off and on certain zones, or most of them. The gym might have Music, or TV running through the stereo speakers in that room while the home theater is playing. I think its pretty basic, i'd be happy to get 2 zones, music playing in a room at the same time as home theater, that should accommodate for most of my needs. 3 zones would be a bit more future-proof.


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## TypeA (Aug 14, 2010)

Even the best receivers will only do 3 zones of passive speakers. I just recently built a 5.2 (with video support), 2.0 (with video support), and 2.0 (music towers) with all 3 zones driven by a single Onkyo receiver. Most all multi-zone receivers will drive different sources in different rooms, so thats no problem. According to your initial post I counted 8 zones, so Im not sure if you should even bother with a receiver in a system that extensive. What is your budget, thats always a good starting point...

BTW, my windows 7 machine wouldnt open your xls for lack of software support, might want to post a more universal format of your layout, like jpegs or gifs or something that doesnt require a spread sheet program to view...


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## bambino (Feb 21, 2010)

I'm having the same Problem, i can't open it either.:scratch:


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## 4U2NVME (Aug 20, 2010)

There are a few options for home distributed sound. I have looked at and researched three for sure. The system I think I have chosen to go with is by HTD. Its a good product which seems to give a good balance of features, power and quality. They will even help you design a system for your house if you have some plans. The support seems to be pretty decent, but the guy i have is either quite busy or does not respond back to emails as fast as I would like him to. They can be found at HTD and have three different levels of systems depending on what you want and can afford. The one draw back with this system is that they do not have a system that will control my IPOD, but there new top end system will play MP3's from a memory stick you put in their main system.

I have also looked at Russound, I really liked them and I saw it in some show homes here where I live. They also have different quality of product with different features. They can be found at Russound They can give a nice clean install that looks sweet. 

The other system that I was really looking at and wanted to get was the Niles system. The best place I found it was actually on EBAY, if you do that kind of thing. They cheapest I found the ZR6 system was for 2100 and that included 5 or 6 fancier zone controllers with Meta Data. I even sat in on online training session for Niles. If you wanted to spend a little more, you may want to look at this system.

I to was looking at using one big Receiver/Amp to drive multiple rooms but with research quickly found out that it was not going to give the quality or connivance I wanted. I did find the Onkyo 3007 for my main HT room on sale from Amazon for a *great* price, it would deliver picture to two room and sound to three rooms ( I will not be using this feature as I give up the 9.2 capabilities of the amp) as well as a smaller Onkyo Amp that I will be using for my 5.1 bedroom.

There are alot of great people on here who can help, good luck with your search and the only thing that is easy and quick to get rid of is all the $$$ you will start to spend lol

-NV


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## Saffyre (Dec 5, 2010)

TypeA said:


> BTW, my windows 7 machine wouldnt open your xls for lack of software support, might want to post a more universal format of your layout, like jpegs or gifs or something that doesnt require a spread sheet program to view...


Thanks for the heads up, it may be due to MAC vs PC. No biggy though, it really doesn't have much info in it, other than that i'd like 2 speakers in two bedrooms, 2 speakers in master, 2 speakers in gym, total of 4 rooms, + 5.1/5.2 or 7.1/7.2 in living room. All rooms would play nothing more than music, except the the home theater in living room.


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## nholmes1 (Oct 7, 2010)

If you don't care about having the other 4 areas as seperate zones you could get a 2/3 zone receiver, a 4 zone speaker selector and volume controls. This would allow you to turn on or off zones (albeit manually) as well as control the volume levels independently. Downside being they would all play the same source, obviously the main zone could play something different.


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## Saffyre (Dec 5, 2010)

4U2NVME said:


> There are a few options for home distributed sound. I have looked at and researched three for sure. The system I think I have chosen to go with is by HTD. Its a good product which seems to give a good balance of features, power and quality. They will even help you design a system for your house if you have some plans. The support seems to be pretty decent, but the guy i have is either quite busy or does not respond back to emails as fast as I would like him to. They can be found at and have three different levels of systems depending on what you want and can afford. The one draw back with this system is that they do not have a system that will control my IPOD, but there new top end system will play MP3's from a memory stick you put in their main system.
> 
> I have also looked at Russound, I really liked them and I saw it in some show homes here where I live. They also have different quality of product with different features. They can be found at, they can give a nice clean install that looks sweet.
> 
> ...


Looks like I have decided to go with the HTD, though I just need to wait on the support guys to let me know how it works with a main receiver plugged into it, if possible. I'm going to look more into that. I just would like it to be able to feed music into the receiver to play music from the speakers in living room during partys, etc.

Now I just need to find some speakers, and a receiver that would be pretty nice.  Any recommendations? Like I said before, i'd prefer satelites as my daughter would knock over tower speakers, plus the wall where the TV is mounted is clean with nothing near it other than TV. Wanna go with best bang for buck. Nothing too pricey, though price really isn't a concern. I don't want to spend like 400 bucks per speaker set or anything. 7.2. 2 subs.

Also - no one might by chance know of some really cool/nice looking racks for AV Equipment? all of the stuff I am finding are server racks, and I don't want to "Make" something work.
I converted the closet in the gym room into the A/V and Server Closet and need 2 racks.


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