Need Advice For Home Audio

[rph123]

Hey

I am currently building a house and I want to have built in audio in a few rooms. I know very little about home audio, just what I have read the last few days. The main room is the great room. I am considering a center channel speaker over my fireplace and 2 wall speakers on either side. I would like to do all ceiling speakers but I have read that isn't a good idea. Then I am considering a ceiling mount speaker to the left and right of the main sitting area. I am also considering putting one or 2 speakers directly behind the main sitting area (5.1 vs 6.1 vs 7.1). Would adding all of these speakers be overkill? I guess I probably will need a sub also. Where should it go? Then I am going to put a pair of speakers on the back porch and single speaker in the kitchen and master bath. In the master bedroom I am considering putting 4 speakers kind of in the corners. My reasoning for no center channel is so I will be able to move my bed to a different wall and the speaker locations still be ok. How does all this look? Again I am a newbie and all of this may be wrong. The speakers I am considering are Polk Audio,
Center Channel: 255c-RT
Wall Speaker: MC85
great room ceiling mount MC80
porch RC60i or RC80i (do I need to 80s or would 60s be plenty)
bedroom MC60
kitchen and bathroom: not sure?
I haven't even looked are receivers yet. Any good suggestions on those? I am thinking 2 receivers. 1 for bath/bedroom and 1 for everything else. How does this sound?
Sorry about all the questions.
Here is a pic of my floorplan.

Thanks

 

[3zones]

As someone who is adding whole house audio to my current house, I will say to at least wire every room in the house you may ever need including any hallways for future needs. Don't skimp on the future wiring and rough in Cat wiring. Accomplishing this in an 'old' construction has to be easily a hundred times more difficult. I would have at minimum two speakers in the kitchen/nook, the dining room, the study, stereo (dual voice coil) in the hallway and two speakers in the master bathroom as well. I would wire in the garage as too. It is so fantastically difficult to accomplish this in an old construction, If we ever build again, I will rough in every room in the house I think. As for speakers, I am doing my whole house with substantially less costly Monoprice speakers both 2 and 3 way versions all 8" and round ceiling and rectangular inwall while the main seating area I did on-wall Energy speakers and a sub. You really have so many open ended questions. With a properly set up whole house system, you wouldn't really need more than one receiver. There are multiple ways to distribute whole house audio and it comes down to control and money. You can do the cheap way that is now possible because of the fact that AVR's now have WIFI apps that can control a lot of functionality anywhere you have a tablet or phone or ipod/android device of the more expensive way with key pads in each room or zone and the more costly components involved.

 

[rph123]

Thanks for the comment. I really had not considered wiring the whole house. That is a thought. Can it cause any problems to wire a room now, and then don't install speakers? What about using the speakers in the master bath and kitchen with the dual tweeters that sound like 2 speakers instead of putting 2 separate speakers, to save money and space (I have lots of recessed lighting/fixtures already). I think that is a great idea to put speakers in the garage. I hadn't even thought of that. It is a 25x25 garage. Would you just add 2 speakers kind of in the middle similar to where my 2 fluorescent lights will be? In my great room with the TV over my fireplace, will the center channel and left/right front speakers be to high off the ground to get good sound? Someone else suggested using a soundbar instead.

 

[Hellcommute]

There are generally 2 uses for structured whole house audio. Room ambience (background music) in large areas is one. Specific use areas being the other (in wall/ceiling stereo/HT setup.)

I would recommend not using a HT Receiver for whole house audio. A system designed for the job with multiple zone control would be better. I recently installed an 8 zone HAI hi-fi 2 system in a large home during the electrical roughin. Typically, each zone consists of some sort of controller, speakers and an input device. In this case, a single cat-5 to a controller or input module respectively and a speaker pair per zone (16 gauge jacketed speaker cable.) Zones can be grouped or controlled by one location or each on its own.

The amplifier unit sits in the basement typically near your data panel. All speaker feeds and zone controller/input modules are pulled back to this location. Once completed, zones can be controlled via Iphones or Android devices as well. They can be set up to pull media directly off of a storage drive or in some cases store the files locally.

There are many brands and types to choose from. A Structured whole house system is the better choice because each zone can be discretely controlled by the users in that area. Ie. Garage listening to Ipod, kitchen to cd etc. at the same time and at different volumes.

Sound daunting? You can always resort to just setting up your HT with in wall stuff ran off a receiver and get a Sonos system for around the rest of the home. This will be expandable, flexible, and you can take it with you when you move. It will also be inexpensive in terms of time of install and initial cost.