Total noob needs basic help with home audio setup

  • Thread starter matthewthorsen7
  • Start date
M

matthewthorsen7

Audiophyte
Hey everyone!

So I am moving into a new home - this new home comes with a 5.1 audio package in the living room, 2 built-in speakers at the covered patio, and 2 at the loft upstairs.

it comes with this wall plate and will have volume control at the switches for each room that has speakers.
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Like I said, I'm a total noob about all this stuff.
So, I will need an audio receiver to basically run all the audio I have coming from tv, gaming consoles, etc. right? And if I want to play music from my phone over these various speakers there are some receivers with bluetooth and/or wifi connectivity?

Can I control what is played in which room? or am I locked into playing all sound in all rooms and then just controlling the volume in the rooms independently.

Lastly, what would be a good receiver for something like this? Do I need one with multiple room support?
Something like HEOS...? does that work with built-in speakers?


Any and all advice, critiques, etc. is greatly appreciated.



These are the speakers in the living room:
  • (3) Origin D83A In-Ceiling Speakers (Product#: SCD80500)
    • Woofer: 8″ (203mm) Pre-Angled Graphite
    • Tweeter: 1” (25mm) Aluminum
    • Frequency Response: 38 Hz – 20 kHz
    • Impedance: 6 ohm
    • Grille Dimensions: 10” (254mm)
    • Mounting Depth: 4.15″ (105mm)
  • (2) Origin D63 In-Ceiling Speakers
    • Woofer: 6.5″ (165mm) Graphite
    • Tweeter: 1” (25mm) Aluminum
    • Frequency Response: 48 Hz – 20 kHz
    • Impedance: 6 ohm
    • Grille Dimensions: 8.75” (222mm)
    • Mounting Depth: 3.75″ (94mm)
And these are the speakers in the patio and loft areas:
  • (2) Origin D63 In-Ceiling Speakers terminated in Great Room per plan with an audio port
  • Volume control at room light switch location
    • Woofer: 6.5″ (165mm) Graphite
    • Tweeter: 1” (25mm) Aluminum
    • Frequency Response: 48 Hz – 20 kHz
    • Impedance: 6 ohm
    • Grille Dimensions: 8.75” (222mm)
    • Mounting Depth: 3.75″ (94mm)
 
-Jim-

-Jim-

Audioholic Field Marshall
Hi Mathew,

Welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, it looks like whoever put in the 5.1 speakers was a total noob. You aren't one as you came here for advice before doing something stupid like putting all the ear (often called bed) level speakers overhead.

(I'm assuming there's a Sub connection point(s) on the panel? The photo is so small I can't really make out any details. Can you post something larger or a link to it?)

The first thing to discuss is do you want good sound for Home Theater (HT), or use the in ceiling speakers as installed? I know of no way, especially with the Front Speakers - LCR - in the ceiling, to get a good HT experience. Are you interested in a Dolby Atmos setup?

Can you give us an idea of main seating and TV or Projector Screen placement via a room diagram with dimensions => doors and windows too. Is the ceiling vaulted or flat? How high is it? Where are the 5 existing speakers placed?

What budget are you working with?

The reason I'm the first member to respond after 10 hours since you posted, is we've been down this road many times in recent memory, and it's often a struggle for newbies to move on from an existing all in ceiling speaker set-up.

Please advise how you envision the system working.

I hope this is helpful.
 
BMXTRIX

BMXTRIX

Audioholic Warlord
I'm not quite as much the critic as the rest of these guys are. While I agree that in-ceiling speakers are far less than ideal, they also are much better than using the speakers built into your TV or a speaker bar piece of crap. So, kudos for having something MUCH better than that. If placement is good in the family room for the five speakers, the use of a angled speaker up front will help with imaging of audio in the room. I've used angled in-ceiling speakers in several locations in my home, and it helps immensely to ensure sound comes from the front of the room instead of just coming from the 'ceiling', which can sound very weird.

You asked a couple of questions about whether things can be played differently in different rooms, and the answer to that is... It depends on what you buy.
An area of playback audio is called a 'zone'. So, you have three zones. Family room, patio, loft. You can combine those zones into a single space, and that would mean everything would play the same everywhere. That would suck. Many AV receivers have two zones of output. The surround zone, plus one additional zone that can be completely independent. This would allow the family room to play one thing, and the loft/patio to mirror each other, but play something else.

There are also three zones receivers which would allow the family room to play one thing, the loft something else, and the patio something completely different. The obvious plus is that you get control over each area independently.

Keep in mind a AV receiver will only have ONE FM tuner in it. It can typically only handle ONE streaming audio station. It can typically only handle ONE Bluetooth connection. So, while you can play FM in one zone, and Bluetooth in another, while watching cable TV in the family room, you cannot play Mom's Bluetooth in the loft, while Johnny plays Bluetooth on the patio, while you play Bluetooth in the family room. That would require multiple built in Bluetooth receivers. To get around this, you can use streaming devices like a Sonos Port, or similar and buy one for each family member and hook it up to the receiver to play them back independently. This is where things get tricky because you end up with a LOT of different options and functionality that is at your disposal and it can vary greatly and cost a fair bit depending on how far you want to take it.

I am NOT happy that the speakers used are 6 ohm. It's pretty (very?) standard to use 8 ohm speakers in a distributed system to ensure you don't have overheating and shutdown issues with an amplifier to multiple speakers. This may limit the volume you play some things at, but shouldn't be a big deal.

To get a full 3-zones of power, sources, etc., then an AV receiver like this would do the job nicely:

It has 9 channels of amplification built in (you have 9 speakers!), so it will cover all your speakers. It's the type of product I would lean towards personally for your specific setup. Denon has similar models as well.

If you wanted to save some cash, you could get something like this:
And the patio and loft would be combined into a single zone, and would play the same thing when zone 2 was powered on on the receiver.
You would need a speaker selector with it to ensure that the amp section didn't blow out on the receiver. Something like this:

PLEASE: Post a larger photo of the wall interface, but that interface looks like it just takes speaker cables into it, so you will need the previously linked AV receivers with power amplifiers built in to run all those speakers.
 
mono-bloc

mono-bloc

Full Audioholic
I have a simple idea which may help to work it all out Contact the Real Estate agent that sold you the home and ask if he can provide the name of the installer of the speakers. You could then get him to advise you on what's required to get it going again.
I would say contact the original home owner, but you say your the first owner.. It seems strange that the builder has installed everything on spec.
 

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