Bose Invisible System

[jetsan]

I'm helping my daughter who just moved into an older home equiped with a whole-house Bose Invisible system with home theater. Unfortunately, the owner did not leave any receiver/amplifier or any documentation, and I'm having trouble understanding the existing layout.

There are 5 speaker "rooms" with individual volume controls. Each room seems to home on one of two Bose 102EA (3-room, extension amplifiers) in the attic. I'm looking for documentation on this amplifier.

There is also a home theater installation with a similar looking, but different, invisible amplifier (Model Number?) in the attic.

There are also two Bose Acousticmass bass speakers in the attic, I assume one each for the Home Theater and Whole-House system?

In the loft, where the TV and entertainment equipment would connect to this system wiring, there are 8 RCA jacks and one pair of red/black binding posts, which I assume goes to the amplifiers in the attic.

When I connect standard receiver R/L speaker outputs to the jacks, two are for the whole-house speaker rooms. Another two seem to be for the home theater R/L front speakers, but they cut off almost immediately after I connect the standard output to them. I assume that the speaker output I'm using is "too hot", but I'm not sure.

The other 4 RCA jacks and binding posts don't respond to having a speaker output connected to them. Perhaps they are outputs from the Home Theater System in the attic?

Does anyone know of a recommended receiver/inputs that I should be using to feed both systems? Do these system have any remote control cabability? Which remotes do I need.

 

[MatthewB.]

Yes you are overpowering your amp, because with whole house systems, you need to install a whole house amp (it safely drives one channel to multi rooms without decreasing the ohm load on the amp. There are many multichannel amps that you can buy to drive five or more rooms, I actually found one in a pawn shop for around 150.00 that can drive six rooms (stereo). It appears that the previous owners took the multi channel amp and just left the speakers.

 

[jetsan]

Thanks, but the whole-house seems to be working OK. There are two extension amps in the attic, and feeding them from a standard receiver-amp seemed to work. The problem is that using the standard receiver-amp seems to overdrive the home theater amp. What outputs are at lower levels that I can try?

 

[Highbar]

Are you going from pre-amp outs on the receiver or the speaker outs? It sounds to me that just hooking up the pre-outs would work since you don't need to send an amped signal to an amp.

Any chance you can take some pics and post them so we can see what all you are working with? Sometimes that helps more than words.

 

[jetsan]

Thanks, I plan to post pictures in the next week or so.