Bought a house that is prewired, but I have no idea where to go from here.

[maribadi]

I have never been someone who wanted to invest in a built in audio system at home, but the house we just bought came set up already, so we may as well take advantage of it. We have a total of 8 speakers in the house. 4 in the living room, 2 in the dining room, and 2 upstairs in the Master Bedroom. All of the wires are conveniently coming out of the wall near the TV, so all we need as a receiver to manage all the speakers. So my question is: What kind of receiver do we need? I don't want to spend a lot of money since this really isn't something I would have installed or invested in on my own. What I would like the receiver to do is this:

*When we are watching movies, I only want the living room speakers to work.
*When playing music, I would like the option of choosing 1 room to work at a time (i.e. the dining room when entertaining, the bedroom for soothing music when the baby comes, etc.), or all of the speakers if we have a party or something.

Other than that, I don't know what else I would need it to do. I hope I have given enough information to get some help. Basically I need either recommendations of actual receivers, or maybe keywords I should be looking for in my search. Thank you in advance

 

[ImcLoud]

Can you post some pics of the speakers setup in the living room, r give a little more detail? and a pic or count of the wires coming out near the tv? we will need to know what the speakers were inteded for before we can recommend, the 4 in the parlor could be front l r, and surround l r or they could be rear surround l and r with a stereo pair for the whole house system... and the 2 pairs in the other 2 rooms are most likely just stereo pairs for whole house audio system...

welcome to the forum and if you get us some more info we can help..

 

[Nestor]

I can see you requiring a speaker selector. A receiver won't be able to handle them on its own.

Are there any sort of controls in the other rooms?

 

[maribadi]

The first image are the speakers that are in the living room ceiling, and the same ones are in the bedroom. The wall speakers are the ones in dining room. The third image is what the wires look like coming out of the wall. There are no control panels anywhere.

[/url][/IMG]

[/url][/IMG]

[/url][/IMG]

 

[Nestor]

Something like this will help select among the speakers. Are you intending to use the living room speakers as part of your home theater?

 

[ImcLoud]

are there any volume controls? can you show the location of them ones in the living room?

 

[BMXTRIX]

Since you said there were no controls, I'm assuming that means no volume controls in any of the rooms.

So, you would need a speaker selector with volume control like this one: 4-Channel A/B Speaker Selector w/ Volume Control - Monoprice.com

Note! Read the reviews on that one, it is pretty inexpensive.

Instead, try eBay - something like this is a steal if you get it for under $100.
Niles SSVC 4 Black Four Pair Speaker Selector Volume Control | eBay

Now, you didn't mention how you listen to audio. Is the living room where the TV is? If so, that may change things a bit, as you may want a surround A/V receiver for in there, and then a zone-2 feed for the other 2 speaker pairs. You would also (generally) add a center channel and a subwoofer to this type of setup if it is properly configured for surround sound.

There are a bunch of questions which should be asked, but I'm going to just make some guesses and give some recommendations.

1. The Living room is setup properly for surround sound, but only has 4 of the 6 speakers used for 5.1 surround sound. You will need an A/V receiver to handle these properly.
2. The other two zones are normal stereo zones and will require a speaker selector with volume control and a zone-2 output from the receiver, preferably a powered one.
3. Something like this will do you well: Onkyo TX-NR515 7.2-Channel Network A/V Receiver | Accessories4less
4. Add a center channel and subwoofer later if you want to complete the living room setup.
5. You will need to run analog audio (red/white rca cables) for anything you want in zone 2.
6. The zone 2 output will feed the speaker selector/volume control to allow you to listen to any of your sources in the dining room/bedroom.
7. The dining room/bedroom will play the same source, but the rooms will have individual volume control and can be turned on/off independently.
8. If you want separate source selection for the dining room/bedroom, then it'll cost you a fair bit more.
9. Total for what I have listed here - about $400 including the cabling you will need (www.monoprice.com)