Whole House Distribution Systems

[Rollnfast]

I'm new to the website, but I'm excited about being here. I've done a quick comb of the various forums and didn't see any topics addressing the subject. I am really interested in purchasing a whole house distro system, but wanted to talk to people who may have experience installing them. I'm very much capable of installing anything, but have never done anything like this. I've been looking at the attributes for Elan, Crestron, NuVo and Russound and have a few questions. Have I over stepped a forum (like is there some existing discussion I can get in on, or have I congured up a new topic?) Please advise.

 

[jcPanny]

Whole house audio

Rolln,
This forum is a good resource and there are several members that are pro installers with experience on these systems.

The wiring is the hardes part of installing one of these systems and it is not that difficult if you have attic access to each of the rooms and know how to use a drill. Read some the the articles on this site about low voltage wiring. Basically you will have 14/4 (14 awg, 4 conductor) speaker wire from the am to the VC/keypad box in each room and 14/2 (x2) speaker wire to each of the speakers. You will also need cat5 wiring from the amp to each keypad. Even if you work will a custom installer, you will save a lot of money by doing the wiring.

There are two aproaches to the whole house system.
1. You can create a higher end system with a distribution amp from one of the manufactures you list. Each amp will cost $1-2k and you may need more than 1 amp depending on the number of rooms. Keypads in each room ($100 each) will allow you to select any source in any room. My parents have a 10 zone russound system w/ keypads in their large house.

2. The low tech version is implemented with 1 or more stereo amplifiers and impedance matching volume controls in each room. All of the speakers connected to an amplifier are on the same "zone" and cannont independently control the source. You can connect the amplifier(s) to the zone 2 (and zone 3) line outputs on your receiver. I use one of these low tech systems to distribute audio to 5 rooms in my house.

 

[Haoleb]

I like Xantech the best. They are easy to use, they have good support and the systems are reliable.

I have not had good luck with Elan, I used to have to service about 30 houses with Elan systems in them and the majority of them had problems. The keypads, Touchscreens, amplifiers... etc. Personally, stay away.

Here is a review I wrote of the Xantech system I reccomend.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44233

 

[bandphan]

discussion of your goal(level of control) and budget should be a good place to start

 

[Phil Taylor]

You may want to check out the Channel Plus MDS-6A. It'll do 6 zones and 6 sources for just over $1300 at Amazon. That includes the room keypads. It is a Cat5 based system so you will need speaker wire and Cat5 to each room.