Help with in house speakers wires and what receiver / amp.

[cdeeze]

Hi there,

In need of some desperate help. I moved into a house and there are speakers in the ceiling everywhere. All the wires are run into one location and it looks as though they are in parallel as they are all joined together into 2 sets of wires. Each room has a dial to control the sound and there are Cat 5 cables run to each room (unsure if its speaker related or not, they are labeled and brought to the same location as where a receiver would be.

Ultimately I want to run the house speakers through my streaming service (Spotify) through my phone. Would be nice to control the volume and which rooms as well however I can use the individual knobs in each room if needed. Not too sure where to start, any help would be appreciated.

I dont own a receiver yet, waiting to see best option for my setup i.e. Bluetooth receiver..

 

[highfigh]

Hi there,

In need of some desperate help. I moved into a house and there are speakers in the ceiling everywhere. All the wires are run into one location and it looks as though they are in parallel as they are all joined together into 2 sets of wires. Each room has a dial to control the sound and there are Cat 5 cables run to each room (unsure if its speaker related or not, they are labeled and brought to the same location as where a receiver would be.

Ultimately I want to run the house speakers through my streaming service (Spotify) through my phone. Would be nice to control the volume and which rooms as well however I can use the individual knobs in each room if needed. Not too sure where to start, any help would be appreciated.

I dont own a receiver yet, waiting to see best option for my setup i.e. Bluetooth receiver..

First, it looks like all of the speaker wires are marked as to their locations, so that makes life easier. Second, you won't be able to control each speaker's level with your phone unless you remove the volume controls and spend a lot of money on streaming devices (Sonos, Yamaha MusicCast, Denon, Heos, or whatever and each will need to feed an amplifier). If you want to create zones with one streaming device feeding more than one pair of speakers, that simplifies the setup and saves money. If you want to keep the cost lower, you'll want to use a multi-channel amplifier that's similar to the one in the link- you can use any of them and I have installed a few of the Dayton amps, from Parts Express with great results. You'll need to separate the wires that have the wire nuts on them before connecting the amplifier- unless those speakers have a transformer on each, wiring them in this way will kill most amplifiers. If the speakers DO have a transformer, you'll need to bypass them or rotate the selector so it matches the 8 Ohm setting.

https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-MA1240a-Multi-Zone-12-Channel-Amplifier-300-815?quantity=1

You can use this amplifier with one BT receiver- I have used the Miccus 2.0 with great results and now, they have an improved version, which I linked to in the recent thread about an outdoor system.

 

[cdeeze]

That is a great start, thanks... What about the volume control knobs? is there any hook ups required? There are a bunch of CAT 5 cables with each room listed as well, do you know if those would have any bearing on anything? Would multiple speakers per room be dedicated to one channel? Not too sure if it matters however these speaker wires are 4 cable conductors.

Thanks again...

 

[everettT]

That is a great start, thanks... What about the volume control knobs? is there any hook ups required? There are a bunch of CAT 5 cables with each room listed as well, do you know if those would have any bearing on anything? Would multiple speakers per room be dedicated to one channel? Not too sure if it matters however these speaker wires are 4 cable conductors.

Thanks again...

If cat 5 is run to volume control you can get a ir/wifi controller for each VC location, if it's just run into the room in another location there are additional options. As mentioned the price can get up there quickly, especially as the level of if control increases, ie multi source, as you would need a source/zone controller and amplifier, some of which are combined in a single unit. How many zones do you have total?

 

[highfigh]

That is a great start, thanks... What about the volume control knobs? is there any hook ups required? There are a bunch of CAT 5 cables with each room listed as well, do you know if those would have any bearing on anything? Would multiple speakers per room be dedicated to one channel? Not too sure if it matters however these speaker wires are 4 cable conductors.

Thanks again...

You can use the Dayton amp with the volume controls, just make sure the jumpers are set correctly, if the controls have them.

You should look in the rooms for wall plates with a network cable port and coax, for TV. If the rooms don't have those, maybe they have blank wall plates and the cables are covered.

Buy one of these- it will save a lot of time. I have the same one and it works great.

TIP:

If you have a hard time hearing the tone from the speakers, they probably have transformers- remove one and check, disconnecting it if they're used.

If the speakers don't have a transformer and you can't clearly hear the signal (it's a warble tone), disconnect one of the clips, then connect that to a piece of metal or the metal of something that's grounded to the electric service. DO NOT connect it to an electrical wire!

https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Generator-Continuity-Automotive-Telephone/dp/B093JQJTP3/ref=sr_1_17?crid=3BYNGN7R7KX4R&keywords=speaker+cable+toner&qid=1669139428&sprefix=speaker+cable+toner%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-17

The four wires go to the volume control, then any other wires go from the control to the speakers- could be four conductor with one pair pulled out of the jacket or they could have two conductor cables to each speaker from the control (it doesn't matter).

 

[highfigh]

BTW- the volume controls look like they have the Russound logo- if that's the case, the system controllers, which would have been in the junction boxes, would have used the Cat5e to communicate with the main unit for the system. If you see something like this in the walls, it was definitely a whole home audio system-

 

[cdeeze]

Found all this stuff in my basement. Each wire has 4 separate wires inside. not too sure how to hook up to test it out.

Tone Generator, good idea. Its going to be a process...

I have 12 rooms with speakers in them by the way.

 

[TLS Guy]

Found all this stuff in my basement. Each wire has 4 separate wires inside. not too sure how to hook up to test it out.

Tone Generator, good idea. Its going to be a process...

I have 12 rooms with speakers in them by the way.

That is a Niles distribution amp. They make pretty good gear.

That is a lot of rooms to cover and honestly an obsolete way of going about it now. I assume there are volume controls in each room. I hope they are impedance matching controls. If not it will be a big problem. So you will need to feed that distribution amp from zone 2 out on your receiver. The problem is that every room gets the same program and only the volume can be controlled in each room. So the whole system becomes more of a frustration than pleasure. Since the cables are four wire, I suspect the ceiling speakers have been wired in stereo, and they are stereo controls.

These systems have been superseded by systems like Sonance, which are more convenient and user friendly.

This may well get very complicated and you may well need the assistance of a knowledgeable professional installer. I say this as the impedances all have to be properly balanced, or you will start blowing amps. A job like this is really hard to direct at long range. Actually this is now very complicated and already at that point.

 

[Eppie]

I found the manual for the Niles ZR-4630 here. Enter the reCaptcha code and then click the "Download Manual" button.

This is not a trivial installation and I would consider calling a professional that deals in whole home audio. Looking at the volume control photo, they appear to be running stereo output to the control (4 wires going in) and then the other 2-wire pairs run to the speakers. It seems odd that so many wires were bundled together at the amp location and simply in parallel. Not necessarily incorrect as high impedance distribution amps can be wired that way, but if you have twelve rooms and a 6-channel amp, you would expect to have 2 rooms connected to each channel, not the four that are pictured, but 4 could work with the correct speaker type and volume control. If the speakers have transformers on them then they should be of the type used in multi-speaker setups.

You would need to pull one speaker down and see what make and model it is. If they used the correct speaker and volume control, then those two bundles of five cables could be correct and the fifth cable connects to the stereo output of one of the channels on the Niles. You would need to determine which of the 4 wires make up each stereo pair. The other rooms would be wired similarly but you want to have similar loads on each amp. Maybe the plan was to have 4 rooms on each of 3 channels?

According to the manual, the ZR-4630 is multi-zone / multi-source, so it should be possible to play different material in different zones. The telephone-jack shaped jacks on the rear of the unit are keypad connections. Were there any keypads installed or included? That may have been why the CAT-4 cables were installed; for connections to the keypads. If you don't have the keypads then this may be a futile exercise.

 

[BMXTRIX]

There are a ton of options you have available to you. The 12-channel amp provides stereo audio for up to 12 speakers. You can use two-speakers per channel, so really you can power up to 24 speakers from a single amplifier. Then, just plug a single source into the amplifier and you can play audio anywhere in your home.

With a setup like that, it isn't that smart. Individual zones are ALL on at the same time. Volume controls are the only way to adjust sound in each room, and everything plays the same thing. If you hook up a single streaming source, then that will be what plays back to your home.

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My home setup is 24+ zones of audio and lots of sources.