New house wiring help

[3th3k]

Good evening, I was hoping someone with more experience than I could help answer a few questions... I just purchased a house that was built in the late 90s and is already wired and has built-in wall speakers throughout the house (12). I set up my Onkyo receiver in the live room and connected the 5 downstairs speakers. They are working great.

My questions are for connecting the upstairs speakers (2 in master, 2 in master bath, 3 in sunroom). There is a four conductor wire downstairs (pic #1) that’s labelled “upstairs speakers.” How do I connect this to the receiver? Do I need some sort of adapter to connect it from the upstairs outlet (pic #2 & #3) to the speaker wall plate? Do I need a separate receiver?

Ideally i’d like to play music downstairs and have it also played on the three speakers in the upstairs sunroom and master bath. Then have a TV set up in the master that plays audio on the master speakers.

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[TLS Guy]

Good evening, I was hoping someone with more experience than I could help answer a few questions... I just purchased a house that was built in the late 90s and is already wired and has built-in wall speakers throughout the house (12). I set up my Onkyo receiver in the live room and connected the 5 downstairs speakers. They are working great.

My questions are for connecting the upstairs speakers (2 in master, 2 in master bath, 3 in sunroom). There is a four conductor wire downstairs (pic #1) that’s labelled “upstairs speakers.” How do I connect this to the receiver? Do I need some sort of adapter to connect it from the upstairs outlet (pic #2 & #3) to the speaker wall plate? Do I need a separate receiver?

Ideally i’d like to play music downstairs and have it also played on the three speakers in the upstairs sunroom and master bath. Then have a TV set up in the master that plays audio on the master speakers.

Any help would be much appreciated! View attachment 38934View attachment 38943

Are there wall controls to the speakers, and if so I they impedance compensated? I suspect that a receiver is not what you should be driving this with, but a distribution amp.

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

As TLS indicated, this is way too many speakers for a common AVR. Indeed, the whole system sounds too complicated for an AVR to handle, which are marginal for whole-house use to begin with.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to sort these things out long-distance. We get these “just bought a new house and have all these wires” questions on a regular basis and I’ve never seen one end with, ”It’s all up and running now, thanks everybody for the help.”

Your best bet is to hire a local professional, or perhaps give Home Theater Direct a call.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[3th3k]

Thanks. There aren’t any wall controls which I thought seemed odd.


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[BMXTRIX]

That setup is so f'n amateur hour it's disgusting. Why the hell are they using TWO single gang plates inside a double (or whatever) ring on the wall? Why is it not two separate single gang old-work rings or one double-gang ring with the wiring installed properly?

You will want to check each single speaker connection and ensure that it goes out to a speaker in your home. If you have an existing AV receiver than you can hook up a single left or right channel one by one by one. You should hear audio playing from a speaker, and you should specifically label each speaker location for what it is.

From there, you will have to decide what exactly you would like to do. Be aware that getting TV audio from your upstairs TV down to the system, and back up to in-room speakers in not a task for the lighthearted and is typically way beyond the typical person who isn't comfortable with whole house audio distribution. But, if you have a cable box up in your room, you would need to use a network or cat-5 point to point extender to get audio out of the TV or out of the cable box back down to your distributed audio head-end.

In reality, most people design the speakers around 'whole house audio' and completely ignore the video portion. In my home, I have not. I integrated both audio and video, but it was planned that way from day one.

If your goal is just to be able to play different music, or the same music, in different rooms, and control the source and volume in that room independently, using your phone, then you will need a whole-house audio system, like those sold by Home Theater Direct. They offer fairly inexpensive, phone controlled, units that will give you independent amplification for up to six separate rooms and allow you to connect up to six analog audio sources to it.

MCA-66 Set (No Keypads)

Whole-house audio systems you can install yourself and control with smart phones and tablets. All HTD systems include a 30-day guarantee and 5-year warranty.

www.htd.com

If you keep asking questions, you will get answers here. It is not straightforward for everyone, but at least you went so far as to pull things off the wall and take a look at things.