Am I going to blow up my house?

[tripletmama]

Hi everyone!

Wow--what a great site!

I hope you don't mind a complete audioignoramus posting here. We built a new house last year and had it wired throughout the first floor (LR, DR, FR, Kitchen and porch). The electrician put in speakers in the ceilings, but we ran out of money and all we've had until now is a bunch of semi-organized wires coming out of the wall. We listen to our iPod music through our trusty Bose speaker!

SO...it's black Friday and all, and I got all excited to buy a receiver. I explained our set up to the Best Buy guy Randy, and he said all we needed was this:

Pioneer - 550W 5.1-Ch. 3D Pass Through A/V Home Theater Receiver and some some "banana" plugs.

So--my husband and I attempted to get some sound--and we had some success! With no plugs, I may add. In any event, I researched some more and discovered that this may in fact be a really bad idea, to start hooking up more rooms on the outlets in the back of the receiver.

Will this solve our problem to connect multiple rooms to one receiver:

Pyle PSS6 Six-Zone High Power Stereo Speaker Selector? I found a link online, but this site won't let me link to it since I have no other posts!

Any advice is much appreciated! If we need a different receiver, please let me know! We do have an iMac and iPhones, if that would change a configuration. Thanks so much.

Low tech but trying!

Jill
Audioholic Wannabe!

 

[TLS Guy]

Hi everyone!

Wow--what a great site!

I hope you don't mind a complete audioignoramus posting here. We built a new house last year and had it wired throughout the first floor (LR, DR, FR, Kitchen and porch). The electrician put in speakers in the ceilings, but we ran out of money and all we've had until now is a bunch of semi-organized wires coming out of the wall. We listen to our iPod music through our trusty Bose speaker!

SO...it's black Friday and all, and I got all excited to buy a receiver. I explained our set up to the Best Buy guy Randy, and he said all we needed was this:

Pioneer - 550W 5.1-Ch. 3D Pass Through A/V Home Theater Receiver and some some "banana" plugs.

So--my husband and I attempted to get some sound--and we had some success! With no plugs, I may add. In any event, I researched some more and discovered that this may in fact be a really bad idea, to start hooking up more rooms on the outlets in the back of the receiver.

Will this solve our problem to connect multiple rooms to one receiver:

Pyle PSS6 Six-Zone High Power Stereo Speaker Selector? I found a link online, but this site won't let me link to it since I have no other posts!

Any advice is much appreciated! If we need a different receiver, please let me know! We do have an iMac and iPhones, if that would change a configuration. Thanks so much.

Low tech but trying!

Jill
Audioholic Wannabe!

No you can't hook up multiple rooms to the back of your receiver. You will drop the bottom out of the impedance and blow the receiver and void your warranty.

You need either impedance matching volume controls in the rooms, or an impedance matching speaker selector.

Ceiling speakers are really only any good for background music. If you want to graduate, you need some serious speakers and they don't rhyme with nose.

 

[highfigh]

Your house may not blow up but with that selector, your receiver will. I'm not a fan of using a receiver to power a house full of speakers because that's not what a receiver is made for. I would use this:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=300-815&ctab=5

If the receiver has a Zone 2 output, connect that to the bus 1 input. If the electrician had the presence of mind to run the cables to a keypad location for each speaker pair, install a volume control at each, so you can control the volume separately for maximum flexibility. If not (electricians rarely know how to correctly wire for low voltage applications), you'll need to install volume control for each pair of speakers in the area where the amp is located. If that's far from the speakers, it will be a PITA to make constant adjustments but if you can find a happy medium for the volume, it will be fine.

 

[tripletmama]

Thank you!

Thank you for the advice! Yes, the electrician did install wires for volume control at each site (a yellow wire).

Is an amplifier the same as a receiver, then? (In other words, since the sound comes from another source anyway?) Or do we also need a receiver?

Thank you!

Jill

 

[tripletmama]

p.s.

Is getting a "speaker selection system" to hook up to the receiver we already bought a bad idea? Is it a cleaner/better way to get the 12 channel amplifier?

Thank you!

 

[highfigh]

Thank you for the advice! Yes, the electrician did install wires for volume control at each site (a yellow wire).

Is an amplifier the same as a receiver, then? (In other words, since the sound comes from another source anyway?) Or do we also need a receiver?

Thank you!

Jill

Check the yellow wire- if it's Cat5e, it was intended to connect a keypad, but as long as the speaker wire comes to and goes out of the junction box (if they installed one) or where the wires were stubbed out, you can install a volume control using an Arlington LV-1 trim ring or the equivalent.

A receiver has a tuner, pre-amp and power amp. It's made to receive the signal from the source units (CD/DVD/Phono/Cable/Satellite, etc) and amplify the signal. These are made to power speakers in a specific area, not all around the house and some receivers have a Zone 2 function that can be used to send signal to another amplifier that connects to the speakers. You can't just connect an unlimited number of speakers to an amplifier channel because it doesn't work, electrically.

If you use volume controls for each pair (or maybe two pairs) and the 12 channel amplifier I linked, one control per pair of amplifier channels will let you have a lot of flexibility. This is preferable to using a two channel amplifier and a group of volume controls because all of them would share each channels' output (take the maximum W/channel and divide it by the number of speakers connected to it). With the 12 channel amp, each pair (or two pairs) gets up to 40 Watts. I like to use muting volume controls and it seems that Niles is about the only company selling them now. The model number is MVC100 or MVC100IR (this has an IR sensor in it). They're not cheap but they allow you to turn the system on and not have all of the speakers come on when you don't want them to. If you want some to come on automatically, the control can be set to allow this (the procedure is in the instructions). They need a 12V DC source and if that yellow wire is Cat5e, you can use it to carry 12V DC from the receiver area. This would serve to activate the muting circuit.

 

[highfigh]

Is getting a "speaker selection system" to hook up to the receiver we already bought a bad idea? Is it a cleaner/better way to get the 12 channel amplifier?

Thank you!

The instructions for that speaker selector indicates that it's not going to maintain constant impedance- this is a problem for all receivers. It requires that you go to one location to turn speakers on and off but doesn't allow any way to set or adjust the volume of one pair of speakers, or another. This means you can be sure that at least one pair of speakers will be too loud or too quiet and the location of the switcher will be in the most inconvenient place (based on Murphy's Law).

Receiver's Zone 2 output->> 12 channel amplifier ->> each channel to one volume control ->> each volume control to one or two pairs of speakers.

If the receiver has a Record Output that's active all of the time, you can use this to send signal to the 12 channel amplifier and you don't want to vary the level going to that amp- if one person decreases the volume, the next person won't know about it and they'll increase the setting at the volume controls without being able to make it as loud as they want.

If you use this scheme, you won't need to do more than turn the system on and use it, changing the volume only in the room/area where you need to instead of going back to a central place all the time.