Jay,
You have a lot of possibilities, but you get better audio performance by using a centralized preamp to and amp combo. There are many available including this one from Sonance which gives you 4 sources/6 zones.
Now, that is very good, but still requires each person in the house to understand how to use things and to know what is going on.
Another option is to go with a Crestron conroller, Crestron Pad-8, and amplifier with 12-button keypads. Logic behind the scenes manages power, starting sources, ensuring that default levels are set... And it can handle up to 8 sources with 8 rooms of audio, which can be expanded to 32+ rooms as you need. A lot of Crestron stuff is available on eBay and almost never has failure the way some components do. I have bought about $5,000.00 worth of Crestron product off of eBay with not a single problem with any product... ever.
The golden rule would have to be: Pull your speaker wire to a volume control location, then split it out to the speakers in the room. Then pull a piece of CAT-5 to the volume control location. Do NOT put more than a 1-gang box in place for a volume control/keypad. If you need a double gang box later it is easy to cut out the box, but it is a lot more difficult to shrink a double gang to a single gang box and keep things looking good.
I have heard great things about Speakercraft and I own and have installed Sonance speakers which I think are about the best available for your money across any budget you have. Likewise Sonance amps are phenomenal for distributed audio.
Where do you live? Are there any good A/V stores in your area that might have equipment to demo for you?
