Yamaha WXA-50 for Multizone Use

[Halon451]

Greetings all! I've come out of "forum retirement" to try and solve a little dilemma of mine that's come up here recently and hoping to gain some insight. Since my last post, I've moved into a new house, gained a couple additional subwoofers, beefed up my front sound stage with some tower speakers and am generally enjoying my system. I've hopped on here from time to time just to peruse the discussions but haven't posted anything in a few years now. Glad to see some of the old dogs here are still on and active, hope all has been well with you guys.

Anyway, here's my situation: the house I moved into conveniently had in-ceiling speakers already installed for the living room area, and two separate zones elsewhere in the house. Awesome! Well, I proceeded to ignore the ceiling speakers in the living room and set up my usual surround sound system, figuring I might utilize a few of those ceiling speakers for atmos, which I did in fact end up doing.

However, running everything off my Yamaha RX-2060, I could only feasibly run the front presence/atmos speakers, leaving me in a 5.2.2 configuration, with the rear presence connections being assigned to the separate zone so I could run the other speakers in the house. This leaves me with either option a.) abandon the idea of having multi-room audio entirely and connect the rear in-ceiling speakers in the living room for a 5.2.4 thereby giving me the full atmos effect, or b.) leave it as it's connected now and have the ability to pipe music throughout the rest of the house in conjunction with the main system (good for parties, or just my wife and I hanging out around the house). Unfortunately my AVR only couples the extra zone outputs to its presence channels, so I have to make a sacrifice one way or the other. I wish they'd couple one of the zone outputs to the surround back channel as I don't use that one due to my room dimensions. But, I want my cake and want to eat it too - so hoping for a solution that will allow me to regain the front and rear atmos channels without sacrificing my multi-room music. Hopefully all that makes sense.

THEN, I remembered one feature in my Yammie that I've never really played around with. MusicCast. So I pulled up the WXA-50, and I'm curious if I would be able to use this in conjunction with my AVR, and basically wifi that multizone output through this device and connect those zone speakers (there are two separate pairs, all impedance matched for 8 ohm as seen by the amp), and then be able to simply connect my rear ceiling speakers for full atmos. Do these things work that way? It looks to me as if the WXA-50 basically controls the audio itself, but I want to be able to play what I already have connected to my AVR (we play a lot of iTunes through my AppleTV 4K unit for example), and have it stream to the WXA-50 which then itself drives the other zone speakers. It seems like this would work but I'm not as familiar with the MusicCast feature (yet).

My only other option is to upgrade my receiver, which for me would be a straight-line right to the newer Yamaha RX-A8A which seems to have enough powered outputs that I could keep both of these things. But the WXA-50 is a $550 solution vs. a $3000 solution.

Sidebar: Oh and as a funny note, I discovered that pretty much all the speakers in the house were wired incorrectly upon moving in. I had to spend 2 days basically re-wiring everything and getting some new hardware to ensure they were correctly impedance matched before hooking it all up to my receiver. It was a catastrophe, and clearly an example of a previous homeowner doing the DIY thing but not knowing what in the h*** he was doing lol. I have to wonder if he managed to make the magic smoke come out of his equipment before giving up on the idea. Anyway, I digress.

Appreciate any feedback on this question and cheers to you fine folks!

 

[highfigh]

Greetings all! I've come out of "forum retirement" to try and solve a little dilemma of mine that's come up here recently and hoping to gain some insight. Since my last post, I've moved into a new house, gained a couple additional subwoofers, beefed up my front sound stage with some tower speakers and am generally enjoying my system. I've hopped on here from time to time just to peruse the discussions but haven't posted anything in a few years now. Glad to see some of the old dogs here are still on and active, hope all has been well with you guys.

Anyway, here's my situation: the house I moved into conveniently had in-ceiling speakers already installed for the living room area, and two separate zones elsewhere in the house. Awesome! Well, I proceeded to ignore the ceiling speakers in the living room and set up my usual surround sound system, figuring I might utilize a few of those ceiling speakers for atmos, which I did in fact end up doing.

However, running everything off my Yamaha RX-2060, I could only feasibly run the front presence/atmos speakers, leaving me in a 5.2.2 configuration, with the rear presence connections being assigned to the separate zone so I could run the other speakers in the house. This leaves me with either option a.) abandon the idea of having multi-room audio entirely and connect the rear in-ceiling speakers in the living room for a 5.2.4 thereby giving me the full atmos effect, or b.) leave it as it's connected now and have the ability to pipe music throughout the rest of the house in conjunction with the main system (good for parties, or just my wife and I hanging out around the house). Unfortunately my AVR only couples the extra zone outputs to its presence channels, so I have to make a sacrifice one way or the other. I wish they'd couple one of the zone outputs to the surround back channel as I don't use that one due to my room dimensions. But, I want my cake and want to eat it too - so hoping for a solution that will allow me to regain the front and rear atmos channels without sacrificing my multi-room music. Hopefully all that makes sense.

THEN, I remembered one feature in my Yammie that I've never really played around with. MusicCast. So I pulled up the WXA-50, and I'm curious if I would be able to use this in conjunction with my AVR, and basically wifi that multizone output through this device and connect those zone speakers (there are two separate pairs, all impedance matched for 8 ohm as seen by the amp), and then be able to simply connect my rear ceiling speakers for full atmos. Do these things work that way? It looks to me as if the WXA-50 basically controls the audio itself, but I want to be able to play what I already have connected to my AVR (we play a lot of iTunes through my AppleTV 4K unit for example), and have it stream to the WXA-50 which then itself drives the other zone speakers. It seems like this would work but I'm not as familiar with the MusicCast feature (yet).

My only other option is to upgrade my receiver, which for me would be a straight-line right to the newer Yamaha RX-A8A which seems to have enough powered outputs that I could keep both of these things. But the WXA-50 is a $550 solution vs. a $3000 solution.

Sidebar: Oh and as a funny note, I discovered that pretty much all the speakers in the house were wired incorrectly upon moving in. I had to spend 2 days basically re-wiring everything and getting some new hardware to ensure they were correctly impedance matched before hooking it all up to my receiver. It was a catastrophe, and clearly an example of a previous homeowner doing the DIY thing but not knowing what in the h*** he was doing lol. I have to wonder if he managed to make the magic smoke come out of his equipment before giving up on the idea. Anyway, I digress.

Appreciate any feedback on this question and cheers to you fine folks!

Set up the AVR as you need, then make sure it works as you want. The WXA-50 won't work as part of the surround system AFAIK, but it definitely will allow you to play the audio from the AVR through the other speakers in the house. How you connect it depends on how many speakers you have- it's unfortunate that the WXA-50 doesn't have a variable preamp output because connecting an external amplifier won't work unless you have some way to adjust the level for the speakers, which could be done with a speaker selector that has level controls, as long as all of the speaker wires meet in one place. WRT "Unfortunately my AVR only couples the extra zone outputs to its presence channels"- if you configure it that way, yes.

Hardwire anything with an ethernet port if you want it to connect reliably. If you don't have enough ports on your router, add a network switch. You may see good signal strength, but that doesn't guarantee adequate data throughput.

I don't know if you have used the AVR and WXA-50 for streaming music in two zones at the same time, but if you look on the screen in the app, you'll see an icon on the screen that looks like the link of a chain to the left of the source input- click on that and you'll be able to add other MusicCast devices to the group, but do that in the device that's being used as the source.

 

[Halon451]

Thanks highfigh - no, I'm definitely NOT trying to use the WXA as any part of my main surround system. My main surround system is fine, I mean to regain the use of my rear atmos speakers in that system by moving the external zone duty away from the rear presence connection to something that can push that content out to my other zones. And the WXA "seems" to be a viable way to do that. Right now the only way I can get audio out to my other zone speakers is by using the existing rear presence connection and setting it up in the AVR as "Zone 2". Sorry for any confusion. I don't yet have the WXA, so asking the question before I drop a dime on it.

But your last statement seems to answer my question - as long as I'm linking these two devices together in the app and controlling the source through the AVR, it should theoretically work.. am I understanding correctly?

Note: not looking for pristine audiophile quality in the other zones here, just distributing the music around the house so we can hear it as we walk around the place. So there's no need for crazy amounts of power either. The amps the WXA contain are more than enough. I like to control everything from my main system, as that's where I have the real sound quality investments and everything is hardwired via ethernet cable through my router there.

 

[highfigh]

Thanks highfigh - no, I'm definitely NOT trying to use the WXA as any part of my main surround system. My main surround system is fine, I mean to regain the use of my rear atmos speakers in that system by moving the external zone duty away from the rear presence connection to something that can push that content out to my other zones. And the WXA "seems" to be a viable way to do that. Right now the only way I can get audio out to my other zone speakers is by using the existing rear presence connection and setting it up in the AVR as "Zone 2". Sorry for any confusion. I don't yet have the WXA, so asking the question before I drop a dime on it.

But your last statement seems to answer my question - as long as I'm linking these two devices together in the app and controlling the source through the AVR, it should theoretically work.. am I understanding correctly?

Note: not looking for pristine audiophile quality in the other zones here, just distributing the music around the house so we can hear it as we walk around the place. So there's no need for crazy amounts of power either. The amps the WXA contain are more than enough. I like to control everything from my main system, as that's where I have the real sound quality investments and everything is hardwired via ethernet cable through my router there.

Yes- you can use the main AVR as your source and the WXA-50 as your distributed audio controller. You could use their WXC-50 in the same way if you have more speakers than the amplified version would handle on its own- it can be used as a source device (fixed output) or as a preamp with level control & mute), which would then connect to the power amp of your choice. I'm using a WXC-50 as my preamp and I have no problem with the sound quality, at all- it's connected to a Parasound A23 and it's great. I think I have had it for close to 5 years.

WXC-50 - Overview - Yamaha USA

Connect your existing home theater AV receiver or Hi-Fi system to this compact preamp, then use your Wi-Fi® network to access all of your music from a simple app. Add other MusicCast speakers, sound bars or receivers for wireless multiroom audio playback. In addition to Wi-Fi, this preamp also...

usa.yamaha.com

BTW- this can be set up on the app or with a computer, once it has been successfully connected to the network. For that matter, your AVR can be set up the same way- enter its IP address and add '/setup' at the end (without the apostrophes) and it's easier than using the app.

 

[Halon451]

Awesome thanks man, that pretty much answers it. I figured as much, just from what I've read on it thus far, just making double sure before I spend the money. I thought about the WXC + external amp, but really I'm just trying to keep this as simple as possible and don't need to drive a heavy load with it, so the built in amp section of the WXA should more than cover my needs and keep my overall cost factor down. In the future, if I want to expand the distribution to cover additional rooms, I may just grab a MusicCast speaker or two and connect them to the WXA wirelessly. Then that also gives me a little flexibility and portability (i.e., if I want to take it out to my garage while I'm working in there or something).

Thanks for the input!