Home Theater & Multizone Setup (Feeling lost & confused)

[lsujroy]

Hello, I am new to the Audio/Video world, and I am learning on the go. The more I do research, the more I'm afraid I have made some big mistakes. I recently built a house and took it upon myself to setup the A/V system. I bought first and thought second, and I am looking to get some help on where to go from here.

Great Room - For Movies(Zone 1)
Receiver: Yamaha RX-V673
Left & Right: Polk Audio TSi100
Center: Polk Audio TSi CS10
Surround Sound: Polk Audio RC80i

Rest of the House - For Music (Zone 2)
3 sets of Polk Audio RC60i
Niles SSVC-4


My goal was to have my great room hooked up in 5.1 surround sound on Zone 1 and the remaining ceiling speakers (RC60i) in my house, hooked up to Zone 2. My other main goal was to buy a receiver that was capable of using Airplay to stream music from my iPhone to the receiver.

From speaking with a Crutchfield adviser he informs me its not a good idea to run multiple speakers on Zone 2. Something to do with 4 ohms and I would fry my receiver. I would rather not fry anything, so my question is where do I go from here with all that I have already bought? Hopefully the diagram below helps you understand my setup. He recommended purchasing another amp to run my music (which I don't want to do). Any help is appreciated!


|-------------|----Zone 1----L,R,C,Surround
|...Receiver....|
|-------------|
|
Zone 2
|
|-------------------|
|..Speaker Selector...|----------RC60i (3)
|-------------------|

 

[ellisr63]

Why not just get a 6 channel amp to power the rest of the channels? With a 6 channel amp you can still have a stereo input and have it go to all your rooms. In each room just put a volume control so you can turn it off when you don't want it on.

The option I did in my last home was to use a Russound CAV-6 for all my audio... By going this route I was able to select a different input for each room if I wanted and I was able to do it from a keypad in each room.

 

[lsujroy]

Thank you, I'll look into that.

Also, I just called Crutchfield support and spoke with a very knowledgeable tech. They informed me I should be able to run the speakers how I currently have setup and that my receiver shouldn't be too effected by the ohms unless I was running all 4 speakers on Zone 2, which I'm not, I usually only run 2 at a time.

They also mentioned if it didnt work to add a amp to the Zone 2 output to handle the load. I will test tonight and go from there. Thanks for the response.

 

[markw]

Considering that you're gonna be running six speakers off of two channels of your Yammie, and that impedance matching speaker selector eats up a few watts, that's not a heckuva lot of power to each one. You only want low level background music, right?

But, running one pair at a time you should be fine.

 

[lsujroy]

Yes, I will only be looking to get low level background music out of those speakers off the speaker selector. I just want to make sure I'm not going to fry my receiver. The Crutchfield tech seemed to think that my receiver would shut itself off before allowing that to happen.

 

[BMXTRIX]

When you have multiple speakers hooked up to one amplifier, you generally need to have an impedance matching volume control or speaker selector inline.

That's exactly what the Niles SS-VC4 is.

Niles Audio Corporation

It has a impedance matching selector on the back of the unit which is shown on page 3 of the manual:
http://www.nilesaudio.com/images/PDF/SSVC_manual.pdf

This should be set for 3/4 pairs of speakers and it will ensure that the ohm load never drops below 4 when any or all speakers are in use. It should be left at that level at all times and you should be able to use your A/V receiver without issue.

Now, with that said, you want to keep in mind that 6 speakers are still being driven off a single stereo output from your A/V receiver. The power has to be shared by all of them, and this can cause the receiver to not be able to handle things if you ever really want to turn things up a bit (ie: party time!). If you do ever experience thermal shutdown of your receiver, then this will probably be the reason why.

At that point, and not before, you can purchase an external amplifier to run the speakers. This amplifier can be a dedicated stereo amplifier. Since you don't have volume controls in each room and the Niles speaker selector/volume controller is designed to only allow a stereo input, I would stick with a stereo amplifier in this type of installation.

eBay offers many decent stereo amplifiers and there are a ton of solutions out there.

Make sure that your equipment is in a well ventilated area. If it is in a cabinet, stacked on top of each other, and/or has doors which close in front of it, then that is not a well ventilated area. Have no doubt, thermal issues are the top reason that equipment fails. But, it is because equipment is jammed into a lousy location, not because the equipment sucks. Several inches between all gear in an open, well ventilated area is a requirement to ensure long life and extremely high reliability.

As for Airplay, some products can be picky about sending them to second zones or working perfectly, you may want to keep in the back of your head that you may want an AppleTV or AirPort Express to reliably get audio into your system. If you go with AppleTV, you will need an inexpensive DAC to get analog audio for zone 2. More on that later if this proves to be necessary.