Home Audio Question (Newbie w/ Minimal Expertise)

[idm2215]

First off, I appreciate any help and insight - thank you.

My wife and I purchased a new home 4 months ago and the house has been wired with a home audio system. There are about 12 speakers throughout the house - I have no idea how they are wired behind the drywall. 6 rooms have two speakers and each room has an individual dial volume control. The speakers feed into a single panel four banana plug set in an under counter kitchen cabinet. From there four wires also leave the banana plugs and are to be hooked up to a receiver.

I purchased a RX-V367 5 Channel 500 Watt Yamaha receiver and wired the system similar to the way the builders receiver was hooked up. The only use I have and will ever have for this receiver is to run an AUX cable from our PC/Ipod into the input to play music through the house - that's it. The music does play, however in particularly larger rooms I would like to increase the volume on the receiver. When I do so, it cuts out. It also is incredibly hot to the touch (there is a fan blowing out from the cabinet).

Does anyone have any recommendations for us? I am very inexperienced with audio, so I apologize if I cannot be specific. I have thought about selling the receiver and buying a higher wattage receiver (2,000 watts). I have also thought about buying a 3000 watt preamplifer w/ an AUX input and banana plug outputs - would this work?

I appreciate any assistance. Thank you

 

[3db]

First off, I appreciate any help and insight - thank you.

My wife and I purchased a new home 4 months ago and the house has been wired with a home audio system. There are about 12 speakers throughout the house - I have no idea how they are wired behind the drywall. 6 rooms have two speakers and each room has an individual dial volume control. The speakers feed into a single panel four banana plug set in an under counter kitchen cabinet. From there four wires also leave the banana plugs and are to be hooked up to a receiver.

I purchased a RX-V367 5 Channel 500 Watt Yamaha receiver and wired the system similar to the way the builders receiver was hooked up. The only use I have and will ever have for this receiver is to run an AUX cable from our PC/Ipod into the input to play music through the house - that's it. The music does play, however in particularly larger rooms I would like to increase the volume on the receiver. When I do so, it cuts out. It also is incredibly hot to the touch (there is a fan blowing out from the cabinet).

Does anyone have any recommendations for us? I am very inexperienced with audio, so I apologize if I cannot be specific. I have thought about selling the receiver and buying a higher wattage receiver (2,000 watts). I have also thought about buying a 3000 watt preamplifer w/ an AUX input and banana plug outputs - would this work?

I appreciate any assistance. Thank you

Unless I'm missing the jist of your post, you are looking for a receveir/amplfier that will do whole house audio; ie more than three seperate rooms at the same time. The Yamaha you purchased is their bottom of the line receiver which is only good for home theater or two channel listening in a smallish room with efficient speakers. Home theater receivers aren't designed for whole hosue audio although many of them have three to 4 zone capabilities which will give you 3 to 4 room audio.

We need more information like the brand name and model number of the speakers, the amount of rooms with speakers, etc.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I don't think that is it.

It sounds like there are multiple rooms of audio wired in parallel going back to a single head end location with a single set of stereo connectors.

So, with 12 speakers (assuming 6 rooms), that does NOT mean 6 zones, but it is ONE zone with 6 volume controls and a total of 12 speakers.

To run this, you should not use an A/V receiver, but should use a amplifier.

Like this: http://emotiva.com/upa2.shtm or this: http://cgi.ebay.com/Sonance-2120T-Amplifier-PARASOUND-CLASSE-KRELL-LEXICON-/150566042212?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item230e6f7a64

You don't want a surround receiver to run your distributed audio stereo setup. It's not designed for that and that is why what you have isn't doing it.

I've seen, more than once, home builders not properly use impedence matching product as well, so if you continue to have issues, you may need to pull out every volume control in every room and ensure that it is an impedence matching volume control.

It's worth saying, that this is about the worst way possible to do distributed audio and will provide the lowest quality.

The next step up would be to pull those binding posts off the wall and see what is wired up behind it. If ALL the speakers are run to the back of it...

Like this:
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-542

Then, you can put in a few of these:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10425&cs_id=1042503&p_id=3326&seq=1&format=2

Then run it to a 12-channel amplifier designed for home A/V distribution like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NILES-SI-1230-12-CHANNEL-AMPLIFIER-/200577211306?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb3555baa

From there you get into the possibility of multiple source selection options, multi-zone preamps, and RF controlled solutions.

All of this should not be sitting under a 'counter' but should have been run to a dedicated head-end location which was accessible and properly vented. But, you take what you've got and make the most of it.

 

[idm2215]

Thanks for both the replies.

You are correct BMXTRIX - I believe all of the speakers are considered one zone. Whatever is playing in one is playing through them all and all speakers run to the back of that panel.

I was thinking of buying the Pyle 3000 watt pre-amplifier (it's on ebay however I cannot post a link) and selling the AV receiver. Do you think this would solve our problem? I understand it is a basic setup - we aren't looking for high quality audio, just to be able to play music above minimal volume.

 

[idm2215]

And yes, that first link is exactly what is on my wall (four plugs). Four wires run into it from the receiver and four leave the plugs and feed into the wall. From there I believe they split off to the 12 speakers.

 

[BMXTRIX]

You will need to check the brand/make/model of the volume controls. They likely can only handle 60-100 watts of power, so you don't want to overdrive them.

A 300 watt amplifier would be about as big as you can probably go without damaging the hardware.