Multi Zone - What you would do?

[jtw372]

Hi Everyone,

I know this topic has been answered so many times but I still find myself confused. Based on my current setup, I wanted to know what many of you would do in my situation. The goal is a five zone audio system where I can listed to a different sources. You will see the components I have below and the first time I hooked it up, the Niles SS-6 speaker selector I have really got hot. I then had the brilliant idea of not hooking a older Techniques A/V Receiver I have to the "Zone 2" Out jack of the Onkyo and the hooked the Speaker Selector to that. The problem with that configuration is that I cannot get much juice out to my Rock Speakers and a couple of the other zones. When I turn the volume up on either the Onkyo or the Techniques, the Techniques shuts itself off.

Here are the components I have:

Receiver Onkyo 805
VMS-300 Impedance Matching Volume Control - five of them, one for each zone
. Power rating: 300 watts peak 20Hz-20kHz, 8 ohms,
. 100 watts RMS per channel
. Impedance matching 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x positions
Each of these impedance controls has a set of speakers connected to it and then from the controllers back to the speaker selector.

Niles ss-6 Speaker Selector Max 100W
HT603R In ceiling speakers x 3 pair. These are not that great but handles 100W per speaker at "8 ohms nominal"
1 Pair of rock speakers that are supposed to be up to 200 Watts per speaker
1 Pair of Proficient Audio Outdoor speakers at 150 Watts per speaker.

I used 14AWG wire in almost all locations. In the Onkyo I have my DVD player, Comcast, Apple TV, and Sirius so I would like to continue using the Onkyo so I can listen to these sources in the other zones.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jtw

 

[jcPanny]

Multizone wiring

JTW,
I have a similar whole house audio system.
First, make sure that the jumper on each of the VCs is set to the 4x or 8x setting. This feature on the Volume controls allows the amp to see an 8 ohm load even though you have 5 pairs of speakers connected. The speaker selector should not get hot and the receiver should not shut down. Also, in this configuration, the speaker selector is optional.

With this connection scheme, the power is devided amoung all the speakers so if you Techniques or Onkyo is delivering about 50 watts, then you get 10 watts per speaker. This may not sound very loud in a large room or outdoors on the rock speakers. I'd would recommend getting 1 or 2 stereo amps to provide adequate power to your speakers. A single behringer A500 amp ($180) can deliver 200 Watts into 4 ohms and should be plenty. Alternately, you could get two 100 Watt/ch amps and use one for outdoors and one for the rest of the speakers.

For reference I am using 2 channels of my Emotiva LPA-1 amp to power 5 pairs of speakers in my distributed audio system. The speakers are loud with the VCs at 25% so I am getting plenty of power.

 

[jtw372]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I went through and made sure I switched the toggle so the controllers would deliver 8 ohms. So, if I got an amp, like the one you recommended, would I go from Zone 2 on the ONKYO into the amp, then from the AMP to the speaker selector? Would that be enough to give me the watts I would need?

Regarding the overheating, the Niles only overheated when I connected it directly to ZONE2 and set the ONKYO to "active" in ZONE2. In that scenario it was overheating. WHen I connected the Technique to the ONKYO (Setting ZONE2 to passive or no power), the Technique powered the speaker selector it has not overheated at all at that point.

Thanks again.

 

[chadnliz]

Its cool to do multi zone but when would you ever need 5 different zones with 5 different sources? This is not an attack or a slap but I am really curious who would ever need so many things at once? I have used 3 zones before but its like having a fireplace, its cool to have but mostly sits except for a couple times a year if that.....but 5? Unless they all have volume and source selection in each room along with ability to access a music library it makes more sense to have independent systems in multiple rooms, but I suppose it has a "cool" factor that I just dont get.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Its cool to do multi zone but when would you ever need 5 different zones with 5 different sources? This is not an attack or a slap but I am really curious who would ever need so many things at once? I have used 3 zones before but its like having a fireplace, its cool to have but mostly sits except for a couple times a year if that.....but 5? Unless they all have volume and source selection in each room along with ability to access a music library it makes more sense to have independent systems in multiple rooms, but I suppose it has a "cool" factor that I just dont get.

I have 8 sources currently available in about 12 different rooms with room to expand to 17. It may sound crazy, but there's a lot of convenience factor in being able to walk into any room in my home and turn on XM radio, or the FM tuner, while my wife can listen to one of the cable boxes, my son can listen to the other one, and we can then switch to different sources wherever/whenever we want. Yes, mostly it is just XM or one of the cable boxes, but we do often run audio into the kitchen in stereo while watching a TV show in the family room so we can go from room to room without having to 'crank' the volume. Likewise, when I'm in the garage, it's super convenient to just hit a button and turn on the XM radio in there. I mean, why would I want 8 different XM radio subscriptions? Or to have to pay for that many digital cable box/DVR units? We have one XM radio, and two HD/DVR cable boxes - it's enough for us. But, we have audio everywhere we want it for now, and room to add it for the future. It's incredibly convenient and my four year old has known how to turn it on for a couple of years now.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Hi Everyone,

I know this topic has been answered so many times but I still find myself confused. Based on my current setup, I wanted to know what many of you would do in my situation. The goal is a five zone audio system where I can listed to a different sources. You will see the components I have below and the first time I hooked it up, the Niles SS-6 speaker selector I have really got hot. I then had the brilliant idea of not hooking a older Techniques A/V Receiver I have to the "Zone 2" Out jack of the Onkyo and the hooked the Speaker Selector to that. The problem with that configuration is that I cannot get much juice out to my Rock Speakers and a couple of the other zones. When I turn the volume up on either the Onkyo or the Techniques, the Techniques shuts itself off.

Here are the components I have:

Receiver Onkyo 805
VMS-300 Impedance Matching Volume Control - five of them, one for each zone
. Power rating: 300 watts peak 20Hz-20kHz, 8 ohms,
. 100 watts RMS per channel
. Impedance matching 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x positions
Each of these impedance controls has a set of speakers connected to it and then from the controllers back to the speaker selector.

Niles ss-6 Speaker Selector Max 100W
HT603R In ceiling speakers x 3 pair. These are not that great but handles 100W per speaker at "8 ohms nominal"
1 Pair of rock speakers that are supposed to be up to 200 Watts per speaker
1 Pair of Proficient Audio Outdoor speakers at 150 Watts per speaker.

I used 14AWG wire in almost all locations. In the Onkyo I have my DVD player, Comcast, Apple TV, and Sirius so I would like to continue using the Onkyo so I can listen to these sources in the other zones.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jtw

Five zones is going to be pushing it for any receiver by itself. The bottom line is that you are just asking to much from a basic A/V receiver in this type of scenario. Instead, you really want an amplifier that is dedicated for audio distribution, preferably one with multi channel design.

I've personally picked up a few of these off eBay for myself and some installations and simply search for '12 channel amplifier' on eBay and get some hits back. They aren't really 'cheap', but then again, they aren't really cheap. I use two RMB-1048, 8-channel amplifiers from Rotel, as well as a Sonance 1250 amplifier to handle all the speakers in my home. While I have other means of sending audio to them, in your case you would want to connect to zone 2 or zone 3 of the receiver and then power the speakers from a separate amplifier that has solid power on two channels at the very least (through the selector) or directly to the speakers.

IMPORTANT - You can only have impedence matching occur at one location! I would personally NOT do impedence matching at the volume control if you have an impedence matching speaker selector. On the other hand, if you have impedence matching volume controls, you don't need a speaker selector at all, just wire-tie everything together.

In my opinion, getting something like this, and running the audio out of zone two from the receiver into it, should give you solid power to the rooms you need it in, and for the outdoor zone you can jumper a couple of zones together for more power. Make sure to set the volume controls to have NO impedence matching at all.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Speakercraft-12-Channel-Amplifier-BB1235_W0QQitemZ230267429285QQihZ013QQcategoryZ14983QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

If you just want to start with a single amplifier to get audio out, then I would go with the Audiosource AMP200 which you can find on ebay (search: 'audiosource amplifier') and you can get it for under 200 bucks.

Once again - set the volume controls to NOT have any impedence matching, then use the speaker selector to handle the impedence matching.

If you don't find that you have enough audio in one room, you can jumper out of the Audiosource amp to a second amplifier that is dedicated to a specific zone, or you can use the zone 3 out of the receiver to a third zone. Better yet, if you have a 5.1 setup, you can use the extra two channels of the Onkyo and use it to power the 'extra' zone and then use zone 3 for everything else.

There's no 'perfect' way to do things, but you have lots of options. In my opinion, amplifying everything separately gives you the greatest reliability and the most control overall, and I certainly wouldn't use the impedence matching built into the volume controls unless I absolutely had to.

 

[jtw372]

Everyone,

Thanks for the help. To clarify, I don't want the ability to play 5 sources at once in different zones. I just want the ability to watch TV, for example on the main zone, and then listen to Apple TV in the other ZONES through ZONE 2.

Do any of you have the VMS-300, made by OSD Audio? If so, how do I set it NOT to match impendance?

 

[jcPanny]

VC settings

The VC jumpers will have settings labeled 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x or similar. The 1x setting makes it a regular VC without any impedance matching.

 

[chadnliz]

OK so you want 2 zones with access to 5 sources, right? If so thats why I questioned how you wrote the post thinking that if needed 5 differnt things playing at same times thats pretty complex and overkill.