Designing home sound system: Need advice on controlling it

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gtg465x

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So my dad is finishing his basement himself and I'm helping out with the computer and multimedia aspects. Here's a rough layout of the basement showing where speakers (red) will be placed in the ceiling. The speaker placement isn't very important at this point. I need ideas for controlling the speakers.

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We had a similar setup in our old house. The speakers were all connected to a little selection box which was connected to a receiver in the home theater. This allowed us to play CDs and radio over any of the speakers, but you had to go into the home theater to control everything.

1) It would be nice if they could play music from their computer (in the office) through the speakers as well.

2) It would also be nice if they didn't have to go into a single room to control the music and select the speakers.

One idea I had was to connect the speakers to their computer so they could control the music with an iPod Touch via the Remote application. That way they could control the music from any room, but they would still presumably have to go into the office to select speakers with the little box.

Please throw some ideas out. I'm open to about anything, but the cheaper the better.
 
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well there are many whole home audio setups that have what you want, with control pads and such

checkout smarthome.com for some ideas and/or AVSforums Audio Distribution forum
 
Thanks, although it seems like most of the home audio systems at places like smarthome.com don't have a means of controlling audio from a PC. They only control standalone CD/DVD players and receivers.

I was thinking someone in the HTPC section would have a good method for sending/controlling PC audio throughout the house, but I guess not.
 
You can buy impedance matching switches to put in every room. True, you cannot play different music in different rooms, but they are cheap and if you want the music off in that room, just walk over by the light switch. Impedance matching is nice as well.
 
Verge said:
You can buy impedance matching switches to put in every room. True, you cannot play different music in different rooms, but they are cheap and if you want the music off in that room, just walk over by the light switch. Impedance matching is nice as well.
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Yeah, that seems like a good option. Having different music in different rooms isn't that important.
 
gtg465x said:
Possibly a bit much. Not sure he's willing to spend thousands on the system.
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I don't blame you, i have like 50 controllers for Russound systems, i just don't want to drop the cash on the central unit,

But something like that which will handle up to 4 imputs would be nice
 
Verge said:
You can buy impedance matching switches to put in every room. True, you cannot play different music in different rooms, but they are cheap and if you want the music off in that room, just walk over by the light switch. Impedance matching is nice as well.
Click to expand...

gtg465x said:
Yeah, that seems like a good option. Having different music in different rooms isn't that important.
Click to expand...

If anyone made a three-way switch that is impedence matching, wouldn't that work as well? That way each room you could have one leg of the switch hooked up to a computer, one leg to the main system and the third leg would be off. However, you would probably need some type of small cheap amp for each set of speakers.
 
in about a year, or whenever i get my new house, i will have this same problem. however, i too will refuse to spend thousands on a proprietary system.

my idea was always to build tiny pc's for each control unit. or just build mATX pc's on the dirt cheap, and encase them inside the wall. on the front, it can be an lcd touchscreen. sure, youre still spending about $500 at each control pad- but the possibilities become virtually endless. more specifically, i would use the software that carpc hobbiest use today- their frontends run on top of windows and are completely touch friendly. just having that at each control pad would be amazing, and hearing the same thing over all the rooms could be accomplished via streaming with shoutcast or something similar. basically, the server pc could run a shoutcast station 24/7, and each pc control pad could remotely select what plays. then, each room you want to listen to that channel just open the .pls file and its on. the only problem with streaming over the network is that you cant sync up the clients, at least i dont know a way yet. once you can do that its really on.

maybe that's why i keep hoarding 1ghz+ mainbaords and other old pc parts... i know what im going to do with them someday:D
 
roary said:
If anyone made a three-way switch that is impedence matching, wouldn't that work as well? That way each room you could have one leg of the switch hooked up to a computer, one leg to the main system and the third leg would be off. However, you would probably need some type of small cheap amp for each set of speakers.
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They make as many way switches as you want... we used 2 way and they were very cheap. Only whole house audio install I've ever done though.
 
just me but I wouldnt want to run speaker wire all the way down the wall for volume. I would setup a Squeeze box reciever in each room, in a closet or something with speakers in the ceiling.

the use the remote with LCD screen to control volume and such....

or go and get a full on audio distribution system with keypads and such........
 
Adidas4275 said:
or go and get a full on audio distribution system with keypads and such........
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$$$



We are in a global economic crisis and the dollar could collapse at any moment... some people might be a little tight on funds.

That would definitely by the nicest way to do it, and pay somebody for the install as well.
 
Verge said:
$$$



We are in a global economic crisis and the dollar could collapse at any moment... some people might be a little tight on funds.

That would definitely by the nicest way to do it, and pay somebody for the install as well.
Click to expand...

I purchased a breathe audio 4 zone system off of ebay a while back for $150. Its basically a VERY simple nuvo system nearly identical to an older simplese system. 1.5 years ago, they were common on ebay, but now its more of a rarity. For zone on/off/volume control I use the wallpads, for music selection I use xbmc controlled via television display in the room or with my phone (via web interface using my phones wifi) in rooms that do not have a display. Yes, i wish i could have a system that had all controls in one touchpad, but i'm not close to being that rich.

The system is also 2 source, so one is coming from my receiver (which is set to xbmc for the receivers second zone) and the other is from a radio tuner.
 
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Verge said:
$$$



We are in a global economic crisis and the dollar could collapse at any moment... some people might be a little tight on funds.

That would definitely by the nicest way to do it, and pay somebody for the install as well.
Click to expand...


you could use mcontrol on a MCE machine to control a speaker swtich for each room.
http://www.embeddedautomation.com/EAHAmControl.htm

them build a couple in wall PCs (atom mini-itx motherbard) with $80 ELO touchscreens to control mcontrol
 
gtg465x said:
One idea I had was to connect the speakers to their computer so they could control the music with an iPod Touch via the Remote application. That way they could control the music from any room, but they would still presumably have to go into the office to select speakers with the little box.
Click to expand...

You could put an Airport Express in each room you want music, and hook that up to your speakers. Then, either from iTunes or the iPod Touch Remote you can select what speakers you want to output to.
 
ghostee said:
You could put an Airport Express in each room you want music, and hook that up to your speakers. Then, either from iTunes or the iPod Touch Remote you can select what speakers you want to output to.
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This is what I'm doing and it works great! I stream apple lossless audio to it. I play through my computer speakers, living room, and outdoors -- I only have one airport express so I have my receiver powering my living room/outdoors hooked up to it and play off the computer speakers as well. My parents also have one and love it. We all control ours via. iphones or ipod touches with the remote app. I really like how there isn't any lag between the output of the computer speakers and the stream from the airport express.

It really depends on how you have your receivers setup -- if you are pushing all the speakers off a single receiver you would only need one airport express, but you wouldn't be able to pick what room is playing.

The remote app rocks -- great searching through artists, volume control, etc.
 
The airport express would be kind of pointless for me. It's not hard for me to run a wire through the wall to the receiver that will be controlling all of the in-ceiling speakers. The basement where I'm installing the system doesn't have drywall up yet.
 
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