Basement -> Whole house

[BBigJ]

I'm getting ready to move from from a coastal urban area to a small town in the midwest. With the new house my old strategy of putting the audio system in the living room and cranking it up will be drastically insufficient to fill the house with music. I'm currently mulling over my options to fix this. The current system is:

HK 630 receiver
Acoustech center/fronts/surrounds
Cadence Xsub 12"

The receiver is a behind the curve on HDMI, networking, etc. but sounds good enough that I'm not in a rush to replace it. The sub is probably the weak link, but more on that in a minute.

The home theater system will go in the basement family room, and I think it will be sufficient to have a single pair of speakers in the main floor living room. The two places I want to solicit opinions are 1) how to get full frequency reproduction in the second zone, and 2) how to get the sound up there.

Let's take #2 first. Given the receiver placement I can see three routes to get the signal upstairs:

a) wireless

b) I can run wires from the receiver, past a doorway, into the unfinished space, and up to the living room. Total distance is probably 20-25 feet, but since the basement is a concrete slab getting the wires past the doorway is tricky.

c) If I drill through the wall behind the receiver I can get into the basement bedroom, run the wires around the bedroom baseboards (30-40 feet), into the bedroom closet, and then up to the living room (~50 feet total). This is the route I'll probably take with the ethernet cable, but ethernet plus 4 strands of 12 or 14 gauge is a lot to cram under the baseboards.

I have a big bias against wireless, so option b) seems the best to me. I could use flat cable to run the wires under the carpet to get past the doorway then go back to 14ga round cable to run the rest of the distance. But with either wired option I don't see how to get a coaxial sub cable upstairs. Which brings me to the other question:

In a perfect world I'd move my Cadence sub upstairs and get a Hsu/SVS/eD to go in the theater room. This clearly won't happen right away for budgetary reasons, and given the wiring complications I'm not sure how to make it work in the long run either. It would seem the simplest thing to do would be to get a pair of speakers that do well at the low end and just drive them off my existing zone 2 amps.

So the two questions are:
1) What is the best way to get sound upstairs? Am I overlooking any options? Is there a way to carry the signal with a single wire (cat5 or coax) and then set up a second amp upstairs?
2) If I go with a single speaker pair upstairs, what are my best options? Lets call the budget $500ish. I listen to a lot of digital music, so my source quality probably isn't high enough to spend much more. This is for pure music so I don't need crazy LFE, but I do want good low end.

This is a case where getting sound upstairs is a priority, but I want to leave my options open to do it "right" later (we've got enough new house repairs that the budget is going to be tight at first). I'm definitely thinking of grabbing whatever I can get off Craigslist to buy me time until I can spring some real bucks. So, whatever direction I go, I want there to be an upgrade path.

Ideas? Thanks.

 

[bikemig]

My music is all digital as well and the quality is excellent since I rip CDs to apple lossless. I understand your hesitation about wireless but you might want to rethink this since this would make it incredibly easy to get music into another room. I love the audioengine A-5 speakers (around $325) and that will leave plenty of money left over in your $500 budget for a streaming solution. The Squeezebox touch sounds great from the analog outputs but that would put you a bit over your budget (it runs around $300). Another possibility is the Apple airport express (around $100) which is a pretty good router and it and streamer. The audio out is a minijack/minitosklink combo. So you can run it via the minijack (the A-5s have an outlet on the back which makes hooking up the express really easy) and then when you have more money, add a dac which will improve the sound quality of the Airport express. Itunes will recognize the AE express as an external speaker so you can use itunes to operate the speakers. In any case, you will not be disappointed with the SQ from the Audioengine A-5 speakers; if you google the speakers, you will find a lot of really great reviews.

 

[highfigh]

I'm getting ready to move from from a coastal urban area to a small town in the midwest. With the new house my old strategy of putting the audio system in the living room and cranking it up will be drastically insufficient to fill the house with music. I'm currently mulling over my options to fix this. The current system is:

HK 630 receiver
Acoustech center/fronts/surrounds
Cadence Xsub 12"

The receiver is a behind the curve on HDMI, networking, etc. but sounds good enough that I'm not in a rush to replace it. The sub is probably the weak link, but more on that in a minute.

The home theater system will go in the basement family room, and I think it will be sufficient to have a single pair of speakers in the main floor living room. The two places I want to solicit opinions are 1) how to get full frequency reproduction in the second zone, and 2) how to get the sound up there.

Let's take #2 first. Given the receiver placement I can see three routes to get the signal upstairs:

a) wireless

b) I can run wires from the receiver, past a doorway, into the unfinished space, and up to the living room. Total distance is probably 20-25 feet, but since the basement is a concrete slab getting the wires past the doorway is tricky.

c) If I drill through the wall behind the receiver I can get into the basement bedroom, run the wires around the bedroom baseboards (30-40 feet), into the bedroom closet, and then up to the living room (~50 feet total). This is the route I'll probably take with the ethernet cable, but ethernet plus 4 strands of 12 or 14 gauge is a lot to cram under the baseboards.

I have a big bias against wireless, so option b) seems the best to me. I could use flat cable to run the wires under the carpet to get past the doorway then go back to 14ga round cable to run the rest of the distance. But with either wired option I don't see how to get a coaxial sub cable upstairs. Which brings me to the other question:

In a perfect world I'd move my Cadence sub upstairs and get a Hsu/SVS/eD to go in the theater room. This clearly won't happen right away for budgetary reasons, and given the wiring complications I'm not sure how to make it work in the long run either. It would seem the simplest thing to do would be to get a pair of speakers that do well at the low end and just drive them off my existing zone 2 amps.

So the two questions are:
1) What is the best way to get sound upstairs? Am I overlooking any options? Is there a way to carry the signal with a single wire (cat5 or coax) and then set up a second amp upstairs?
2) If I go with a single speaker pair upstairs, what are my best options? Lets call the budget $500ish. I listen to a lot of digital music, so my source quality probably isn't high enough to spend much more. This is for pure music so I don't need crazy LFE, but I do want good low end.

This is a case where getting sound upstairs is a priority, but I want to leave my options open to do it "right" later (we've got enough new house repairs that the budget is going to be tight at first). I'm definitely thinking of grabbing whatever I can get off Craigslist to buy me time until I can spring some real bucks. So, whatever direction I go, I want there to be an upgrade path.

Ideas? Thanks.

If you want to be able to "do it right later", install some kind of conduit from one location to the other. That way, you're not stuck with "one Cat5e cable" when you may need something else, or more of them. You can definitely use Cat5e to send the audio from one area to another and this can either be done with keystone inserts or baluns. Whether you use MP3 or .wav files, the cables will be ready for any upgrades. You should also run at least one coax. That way, if you want to send digital audio one way or another, you can install RCA connectors or use an optical to coax converter.

 

[BBigJ]

The idea of a conduit sounds great, but that is exactly what I can't figure out how to do. The only thing I can think of would be to run the conduit up and around the doorway, but I cant imagine that not being an eyesore (and the 90* turns would make it hard to add wires later).

I want the brains of the system to reside in the receiver (so I can control it throughout the house with my Harmony), not my computer (eventually I'll get a networking receiver and I'll get to have both). I guess the ideal solution would be some kind of doohicky that would take the 2 channel output from my zone 2 outputs, pass it through coax or cat5, and terminate in a 2.1 channel amp in the living room. Now that I spell it out, I'd bet that I'm actually looking for two things: the amp and something to pass the signal. I'm sure there are hundreds of options in each category. Any particular brands I should look at?

 

[highfigh]

The idea of a conduit sounds great, but that is exactly what I can't figure out how to do. The only thing I can think of would be to run the conduit up and around the doorway, but I cant imagine that not being an eyesore (and the 90* turns would make it hard to add wires later).

I want the brains of the system to reside in the receiver (so I can control it throughout the house with my Harmony), not my computer (eventually I'll get a networking receiver and I'll get to have both). I guess the ideal solution would be some kind of doohicky that would take the 2 channel output from my zone 2 outputs, pass it through coax or cat5, and terminate in a 2.1 channel amp in the living room. Now that I spell it out, I'd bet that I'm actually looking for two things: the amp and something to pass the signal. I'm sure there are hundreds of options in each category. Any particular brands I should look at?

You want to minimize bends in any conduit that you use for passing cables from one level to another. If you need to bend more than twice, use a larger size. If the basement isn't finished, it's really no big deal- figure out where the main floor's equipment will live and find that spot in the wall behind the equipment, so you can drill up and into the stud cavity. Mount a box in the wall if it's an outside wall or use a trim ring that lets you mount a wall plate to it if it's an interior wall.

The doohicky is the balun I referred to, or you can run three pieces of coax, marking them as to their purpose. Terminate with RCA ends and plug them into the 2.1 amp.

 

[BBigJ]

This could be easier than I thought. Just a couple of these baluns
http://www.avovercat5.com/products/avoa2.htm
which connect my primary receiver to something like this
Yamaha A-S500
Since I don't need any signal processing (just stereo amplification) I could probably find a serviceable unit used for even cheaper. Then I am set to upgrade my speakers or add a sub at any point.

Am I on the right track, or are there better options?

 

[BBigJ]

You want to minimize bends in any conduit that you use for passing cables from one level to another. If you need to bend more than twice, use a larger size. If the basement isn't finished, it's really no big deal- figure out where the main floor's equipment will live and find that spot in the wall behind the equipment, so you can drill up and into the stud cavity. Mount a box in the wall if it's an outside wall or use a trim ring that lets you mount a wall plate to it if it's an interior wall.

The doohicky is the balun I referred to, or you can run three pieces of coax, marking them as to their purpose. Terminate with RCA ends and plug them into the 2.1 amp.

The basement is about half finished. Unfortunately, all the wiring needs are on the finished half, so I don't have a lot of flexibility. Are there any brands of balun that are better than the one I linked above (and is it worth the money to spend more or is it just cabling snake oil)?