Whole house stereo

[GasX]

I am having a fair amount of work done on my house and was thinking of having speakers installed in several rooms as well as outside. What would I need to get in order to run this system?

I would likely keep all the equipment in a not yet made closet in the basement, so I would need some sort of remote system to operate it...

I was thinking something like this would be a start.

Also, anyone know if it would be feasible to run a DVD signal from one ond of the house to this type of system and then run the speaker line back to the original room?

 

[ElFenix]

a lot of wires


several speakers


it may be too far to run a video signal without serious degradation.

 

[lozina]

I have just installed a similar system in my house. Based on some advice from people here @ ATOT I went with this comapny: Russound

I decide don the CA-6.4i which I purchased in a kit including 6 gorgeous LCD keypads for each of the zones it supports. It supports 4 input sources and does Infared repeating so you can remotely send commands to any input source. For some of my zones I also purchased an additional expansion keypad which had programmable buttons which you can use for play/stop/pause, next track, previous track, etc... (the main keypad only has power/volume/Infared receiver.

The kit cost me a total of approx. $1280 shipped, from Digitally Unique (I see the price went up a bit- but they still look like the cheapest source)

Each keypad requires standard CAT 5 wire and are really simple to setup and program. The expansion keypad just plugs into the side of the main keypad (so does not require additional wiring- just make sure you have a double-gang box)

good luck

(BTW Russound also has more advanced receivers which include video, even one with onboard tuner with XM radio support)

 

[GasX]

How far can you run the sound signal from a DVD/CD player to a receiver and where do you get REALLY long cables?

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Mwilding
How far can you run the sound signal from a DVD/CD player to a receiver and where do you get REALLY long cables?

With digital, pretty far. No exact figures off the top of my head.

You could always DIY coaxial S/P-DIF cables, if you can't find them. It'd be cheaper, anyway.

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: Mwilding
How far can you run the sound signal from a DVD/CD player to a receiver and where do you get REALLY long cables?

Well, for really long audio cables you go to Home Depot and pick up spool of standard speaker wire. I'm not sure exactly what the range is but unless you are Bill Gates I'm sure you'll notice no loss in audio quality going from one end of your house to the other. Now, video I believe is a diff. story. I'm not well versed with video signal range but if you pick up a spool of whatever gauge wire your standard video cable is at Home Depot you should be OK. It's just crimping the connectors you want at the ends that are sometimes a pain.

 

[Jzero]

Seems these days you ought to be able to home-brew something with a bunch of SFF PCs, WiFi and some touchscreens...