Multi Room Set up...

[djenks]

I'm sure this has been covered before, but I have a unique set up that I'm building upon...it's kind of haphazardly put together but thus far it's actually worked well.

I have three rooms that need to be playing the same music:

Room A has a 5.1 surround sound receiver
Room B has a 5.1 surround sound receiver
Room C has not been hooked up yet, but it will most likely be a receiver, a stereo amp that powers 4 more speakers.

Room A and B are right next to each other, so therefore, my audio source is being split with RCA splitters, and ran to each surround sound receiver via RCA cables. It's not the greatest set up in the world, but it works, and it covers the 2,000 sq feet that I need it to without a problem. In short, Room A and B are already hooked up and playing the same thing from the same source.

Now, Room C's set up is 150' feet away and I'm having some issues looking into what needs to be done to send the signal from the receiver in room B over to it.

Do i split the incoming signal to Room B again and run a 150' foot RCA over to Room C? Searching has proven this to be a bad idea. RCA runs shouldn't be long.

Then i have read about balanced, unbalanced, shielded cables, XLRs and then I kind of get overwhelmed and confused.

I'm operating a restaurant, and we just expanded. Room C is our expansion room and as of right now, we cannot put the same music on throughout the place.

So...what are your guys' suggestions on this?

Thanks in advance. This forum has been a major help for me as most of this expansion has been a DIY project and the A/V stuff is where i'm definitely the least knowledgable.

Dave

 

[BMXTRIX]

Generally, you will take all your amplifiers (receivers) and put them in ONE location, then pull the speaker wire to that single location. This way your equpment is in one location that can be protected, and put under lock and key if necessary. The speaker wire runs then go into the rooms, often with some ceiling mounted speakers.

This way your audio sources are split locally. Generally you would use a distrubtion amplifier for best results on this.

 

[djenks]

So...if I put everything into Room C, here are some questions:

1. So are you saying the length of running speaker wire is inconsequential?
2. A TV in room A is on a selector switch, as is a TV in room B. that way, I hit the selector switches when we want to do game sound for different games in each room. With everything in room C, would would be the best way to integrate the TVs in each zone?

Thanks a lot of the quick response. I do have a perfect place in room C to have everything put behind a locked door, so if it's not too difficult to do the TVs, this is the route I'll go.