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kelleg69

What are you doing for audio?

16 years ago

We plan to have speakers in our house with keypads in the wall. If you are doing this/have done it, what brand did you get? Does anyone know anything about Crestron, RTI, Speakercraft, B & W Speakers? These are some brand names I have found out about. What type of keypad did you get? Anyone get anything fancy? LCD screens, etc.? We plan to run iPods, CD player, XM, etc. My DH knows a lot about this, but I am interested in any real life experience from anyone.

Thanks for any info.

Comments (25)

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    You need to speak with my husband. It is ridiculous how much of what we have squirrelled away for the house is earmarked for audio. And this after spending way into the five figures last year on stereo stuff including a touch screen that runs it all! At least the bankers won't know what the money is committed to.
    I'm looking at a keypad here in our 9 yo old house in my studio that I've never used. (See, if he does it for me then it's okay for him to spend the money.) We need to get them together. (Or maye not!) E-mail me privately and we can exchange numbers if you like.

    Jodie in Georgia

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am installing a A-BUS 4 source system manufactured by Channel Vision. An A-BUS System uses Cat-5 cable to distribute power, audio and IR control signals to a keypad in the room. The keypad contains an amplifier which distributes the signal (over speaker wire) to speakers in the room. I just passed our electrical rough in inspection (whew!) so all the low voltage wiring is in. Initially, the system will have 8 zones (office, dining room, great room, kitchen, deck, master bedroom, master bathroom and dock), but it is expandable when we finish our lower level. The system allows for any of the four sources (e.g. XM Radio, MP3, etc) to be chosen at any location, or for the input to be "overridden" locally. I'm pretty excited to see the whole thing come together. Hope I remember what all those wires are for. ;)

    That is the "whole house audio". Other rooms (such as the media room) have their own mini wiring for surround sound and possible future plasma TVs.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Breatheaudio Elevate system. 6 source, 6 zone, plus an expander that doubles those. Comes with IR faceplates and uses cat 5e to link the keypads to the unit.

    Should be an easy install, teaching a remote all the codes should take 3 years.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Look into Sonos.

    We'll have 6 zones, each of which can play anything from our iTunes library, anything from Rhapsody, Sirius Satellite Radio, Pandora, etc.

    You can use one wifi enabled controller (or several if you wish) to control your entire setup. Each zone can play different music, or you can join them if you like.

    Definitely worth looking into. I have it in my NYC apartment, and will certainly be installing it in my house upstate.

    Good luck.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We are planning the same type of things as all of you. We are meeting with a couple of people for bids, etc. and I was wondering if one brand is better than the other. What kind of speakers will you get? Of course, we said "we don't need fabulous speakers," but the audio people think a high-end speaker is important. Any ballpark figures on how much speakers should run?

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Our house is fully wired for music EVERYWHERE. :) My dh wired the house himself. He bought his wire, keypads, hookups, outdoor speakers and a whole bunch of other stuff online from a company called Home Theater Dirct.

    The quality of the speaker wire was far superior to anything we could get locally and was a lot less expensive. The keypads are great and again were less expensive than elsewhere.

    He's an electronics fanatic and has been very pleased with it all so far.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Using high end "in wall" speakers is very wasteful. Look around on some audiophile sites and you'll find agreement from audiophiles (ones that don't sell speakers) that you can't get good sound from them. For distributed audio, go with the least expensive that can handle a decent wattage and a reasonable Hz range.

    And if you can use a soldering iron, wire stripper and cut a hole in drywall, I'd install them myself. I spent $13 per speaker on our last house, and they sounded fine for music while cooking and entertaining.

    If you're doing a home theatre, pony up some money and don't use "in wall" speakers. You'll notice more depth of sound for movies, and "in wall" won't convey it well.

    Our last house didn't use a "Whole House Receiver", just in wall wiring to a volume control and then to the speakers. I was amazed at the prices for volume controls. $50+ for most. I found some online around $20. One out of 8 was defective, but I still saved money.

    On contractors, I'm having a contractor install the Security, Coax and Cat5e Phone/Data lines. Then I'll run the speaker wire and Cat5e for the audio. The security is just too many cables to run, and they know what they're doing for that and the Coax/Cat5e distribution. But they wanted $125 per room for stereo and a cat5e control, just for rough-in. We're doing 12 rooms, so I'll take the $1,500 and do the wiring myself... and pay for the speakers.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I have A-bus as well. Very inexpensive but very adaquate for whole house audio. My components are Openhouse systems. I believe they are made by ChannelPlus as well. We have two zone, one for the kids rooms and playroom and one for the master bedroom and downstairs/garage. The compontents are located in the basement but the tow source outlets are upstairs and downstairs. I bought inexpensice Radio Shack speakers and they do the job well. Each room has a Russound led pad. If your walls are open then it would be a crime not to run cat5/6 and extra coax to each room ... even if you never use it. It's so damn cheap.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The SONOS system...we have it and LOVE it. We can add and subtract to the system as we need to without any hard wiring. (except for wall/ceiling mounted speakers in the room the unit is in). It didnt require a technician to set it up. It has a color remote that displays the album cover of the artist playing. It didnt cost all that much either...I think about 1500.00 for 3 rooms (not including speakers) and 490.00 for each additional room.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We used a whole house automation system called Control 4. It does audio, video, security system, as well as lighting (and probably other things). We did not research the options thoroughly enough (I left this to DH and he didn't have adequate time to devote to it at the time) and I think we ended up with too expensive of a system and are not now using it to its full potential. We also did not realize that Control 4 is not currently compatible with itunes. We had thousands of files saved to itunes that had to be converted to some other format to work with Control 4 (a big waste of time). So, make sure whatever you choose is compatible with the way you store your music.

    Also, I thought we were having the entire house wired for speakers even though we were not putting speakers in every room initially. However, shortly after moving in we decided it was a bad decision not to have speakers in our master bath and asked the AV contractor to add speakers there. Lo and behold, he had not wired for speakers there (or any other room where we weren't initially putting speakers). I was furious.

    The moral of my story ... do your research at the outset, know the system that you are installing, and make sure your sub does all that you and he/she discuss their doing. We brought in the AV sub ourselves, separate from our builder's contract. This clearly was our fault, not the builder's. Note how nice I'm being to say "our" fault.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Soonermagic, I am also considering Control4 for our home automation system and would like to here more about your system and experience. One of the interesting aspects about Control4 is that the whole house does not have to be wired at the onset. I believe you can add a WiFi speaker point to any additional area which recieves the audio signal and supplies power to a local pair of speakers. It is deffinately more expensive to do it that way, but at least they do not have to punch a lot of holes in your new home. I think the price is around $450 dollars.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    "Using high end "in wall" speakers is very wasteful. Look around on some audiophile sites and you'll find agreement from audiophiles (ones that don't sell speakers) that you can't get good sound from them. For distributed audio, go with the least expensive that can handle a decent wattage and a reasonable Hz range."

    This statement is simply not true. You can definitely get very good in-wall speakers as well as on-wall speakers. Some audiophiles abhor anything that isn't placed to reduce as many resonances/harmonics as feasible (speaker out 8 ft into the room), but that doesn't remove the fact that you can achieve very good sound from high-end in-walls. They may not be cheap - but I guarantee you that there are in-wall setups of theaters that will blow your mind away. Systems that you can not tell whether they were in-wall or standalone until you turn the lights on.

    I don't sell any equipment but I generally know more about this area than most people.

    kelleg - if you're looking at Crestron/BW, etc you're looking at systems probably beyond the league of most people who have commented. B&W are top notch speaker manufacturers, Crestron is considered the pre-eminent control system that everyone else is trying to catch (AMX, Control4, Vantage, etc). Speakercraft are above average speakers in-wall. They can range from $100 to $500 for most of their speaker line (they have some esoteric ones that aren't worth considering though).

    The key thing is generally the integrator. You need/want a good integration. For simpler systems, some people consider doing it themselves and enjoy it, but the real question is whether you want to use it or tinker with it. Too many systems that are put together end up being a constant source of contention as its being "tinkered" with. I believe things should be done and integrated in with the way you live - not as a constant work in progress. The integrator(which can get costly) is unfortunately most important in this equation.

    Anyhow, the real thing you need to consider is whether you want simple audio or whole house automation. Some people automate an area, some people automate parts of things, some people automate the entire house.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    kelleg

    if you are installing speakers in the ceiling make sure you put in speaker enclosures (boxes you can make yourself) to concentrate the sound. it would not make sense to buy a really good speaker and then put it into wide open ceiling cavity (especially if you have webbed trusses). If you make speaker boxes you can get by with a decent speaker and create a nice sound for background music.

    I opted to install lower end speakers for budget reasons. They sound OK but they were cheap (about 70 dollars a pair). I will replace over time if I decide I want better sound. For background music - what I have sounds just fine.

    I made a very simple whole house audio system that can easily be expanded later to a digital system when I am comfortable with the prices and capability. I installed 1 inch conduit tubes from my basement to each of the controller locations - and then ran high quality speaker wire from the contoller locations to the speakers. I used very high grade wire because changing that would be a real pain.

    I also have conduit tubes running to the family room built in where I have my TV, satellite receiver, and other audio equipment. Once you have the conduit tubes in place, you can pull whatever wire you want - and can replace down the road if you want to.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Running conduit is a smart idea. I would recommend 2" conduit (plastic flex orange stuff) and at a minimum 1.5" conduit. Main reason being is that 1" is a real tight fit for some cables - especially if you need to run more than one. Some HDMI heads won't fit through a 1" conduit either - so unless you're going to use protocol converters(expensive) that convert hdmi over cat 5e/6 or mm fiber - I would suggest larger conduit. Also, you don't need to run conduit from wherever to your media closet - you need to run conduit to an access area and from there you can consolidate to your media closet. For instance, if you have crawl space/attic - you would run conduit to the crawl space/attic. It would be easy to get from crawl space/attic elsewhere.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We went with a simple setup. Home automation isn't in the budget right now but we were able to do a six-zone [12 speaker] whole house audio into two 6 channel Elan amplifiers [60 watt per channel]. Each stereo zone has two 80 watt 8" speakers with 1" liquid cooled tweeters. Each pair comes down to a volume control in a wall near it's location. Home runs are run from the wall to the media center in our family room. Each zone has the potential for different sources [mp3, receiver, cd player] but mostly what we want it for is entertaining and saturday morning cleaning. Nothing fancy. We won't have the ability to change music from remote locations but we can control volume. I did the work myself and put the cost for materials right around $1200.00.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Who suggested putting speakers 8ft from a wall? Go look up THX Surround Sound Requirements. Everything is against the wall. Talk to Home Theatre installers, if the speakers are in a wall, they build an enclosure (as sniffdog noted) and then put a regular speaker inside. But most will mount them on the wall, not in.

    My point was not to dissuade using "in wall" speakers, just realize that open, odd sized, cavities will diminish sound quality, and the average person will not be able to tell the difference between $200 Klipsch speakers and $20 Pyle speakers for those installations.

    IMO, the important item is power handling. Can the speakers you install produce loud enough sound for the space without distortion.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    You need to define what you are trying to do. True audiophiles will have speakers that are well spaced from the room walls so that the wall is not contributing anything sonically to the spatial stage that the speakers are trying to reproduce. You will find very few 2-channel guys who will want anything to do with Dolby anything. Most true audiophiles remove as many things from the signal path to reduce/remove any possible sound signatures that they may impart. This means any sort of DSP processing (like any Dolby Surround/Digital, etc).

    For the larger portion of the world that is not in the esoteric world of high-end audiophiles - this isn't really a reality that we'll live with. So its a compromise of sound fidelity and reality. Dolby (nor thx) have any speaker requirements that require speakers to be "on the wall". And honestly - thx certified is really a joke certification (sort of like energy star) - its the /minimum/ specifications with which consumers can live with. There are more high-end systems without THX certification that will blow away your "THX certified" system components.

    Your statement isn't correct that you can't get good sound from in-walls. I will point out that high-end in wall speakers all have their own backboxes and are highly tuned to impart the soundstage with the knowledge that they are to be placed in the wall. If you want high-end - go listen to a setup of triads, Revel inwalls, or Meridian in-walls. I guarantee you that you can tell the difference between them and a $20 Pyle (which I've never heard of).

    Also, just for your benefit - power plays a very little part of the entire equation. Power is a logarithmic function - it takes 10x the power for double the sound. So, sending more power isn't the solution for enveloping sound. What is primary into the equation for sound is speaker efficiency. E.G if you have an 87 db speaker vs a 90db speaker (3db difference). The 87db speaker will take DOUBLE the power of the 90db speaker to output the same volume. . Taking an even larger extreme - a 94db speaker at 4 watts is the same volume as a 87db speaker at 16 watts. Speaker efficiency is key here.

    Some manufacturers will lower impedance to drive efficiency but that just means that a higher quality amplifier that can drive a 4ohm (or even 2ohm) load is necessary.

    The next thing to consider is that full range speakers sound fuller and are better able to give a better (and louder) sounding experience than cheaper limited range speakers. There is a reason why some speakers are balanced toward the higher side and get "lost" when other sounds are present and other speakers don't. Believe it not, Bose is an expert at filling sound which is why some people believe their speakers are good. In no way am I going to say Bose is a great speaker - but I will give credit that they know how to fill sound and market it like crazy. People may not like Bose, but people also realize that Bose made a clock radio that sounded better than everybody else (and more expensive). Why is it that Bose made a radio that sounded better than everybody else ? Well, they made a system that reproduced sound as people wanted to hear (richer, deeper, fuller). You want your in-wall/ceiling speakers to be the same way - otherwise you end up with cheap clock radio sounding speakers.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I have a Crestron system which I described when I posted the thread below. I think it includes some useful observations that may be of benefit to you.

    Bob

    Here is a link that might be useful: Is a 'smart house' a dumb idea? Some impressions...

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thanks for the link, Bob, and all the info from everyone else. I will make sure my husband reads it all. Bob, I think the second place we visited convinced us that Crestron is more than we need. We don't want lighting, etc. on the system.

    I think we are going with Speakercraft and a few high-end pairs of speakers and lower end ones in other rooms. My DH visited the audio place yesterday and was really excited about what they decided--I am sure it is obvious, I don't really know what that is! We will have COAX throughout the house, but I will make a note to make sure that it is 2 inches.

    Again, thanks for all the input. I love this forum!! Every time we aren't sure of something, I say, "let me post on Gardenweb and see what they think."

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'm not doing whole house audio: it was just too overwhelming. I designed the entire house myself w/o aid of an architect or draftsman, so I was sweating far too many details as it was.

    The two main living areas are wired for surround sound, but that's it.

    Currently looking for a deal on some sort of iPod dock and moisture resistant speakers for the sauna, so if anyone has any leads...

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My in-ceiling speaker manufacturer indicates that my speakers need to be at least 2' off any adjoining wall. Direction has a HUGE effect on speaker placement. Sound coming from a ceiling speaker with an adjoining wall 2' away is much more likely to pick up unwanted wall reflection then a wall speaker centered on 16' wall two feet away. Directionally, that speaker will actually pick up more direct reflection from the facing walls 14' away then the wall behind it. It's impossible to do with in-wall or in ceiling systems but truly the best way to place speakers is by ear. Any live sound recording technician worth a salt will always place their microphones by ear. The same goes for speakers. Acoustics are such a fickle science that all the "rules of thumb" in the world do not compare with actual listening/manipulating ideal speaker placement.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    If you are concerned about high-end audio, the best investment, in my own personal experience, is to ask your PCP to flush your ears. I am serious. This is cheap and the difference in one's own ears' frequency response can be incredible.

    For me it was like exchanging a $100 boombox with a $10000 stereo. Even better, the improvement is there for every audio source, not just from your speakers.

    I am wondering how many audiophiles there are who spend a fortune on virgin, oxygen free cables attached to unobtainium coil speakers but forget to clean their own built-in microphones....

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I would add one other caveat. Be careful of aesthetic principles when choosing a system. We ended up with 8" round in-ceiling speakers which I feel will sound outstanding once they're installed but it seems like their size is a little overpowering for some of the spaces. It works fine in the two-story spaces but seems a little too large in the 9' ceilings. We don't have them installed yet....just holes in the drywall so maybe once we get the trims up it will blend a little better. They'll end up being a little larger than our light cans.

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    People seem to have very strong opinions on this subject!

    We used Zon controllers for our whole house audio. They're pretty cool, although a little pricey. (DH and I had an agreement that we both got one big splurge on the new house. He picked the Zon and I chose granite countertops!) We used a combination of speakers we already owned (Bose and B&W's), and purchased two sets of Bose in ceiling speakers for the great room/kitchen area. We also have a couple sets of outdoor speakers on our deck and screened porch. That was really important to us, being able to access music/adjust volume without running back and forth to the receiver inside.

    This was a pretty easy DIY. We ran all of our structured wiring, although we don't have a security system. Run speaker wire everywhere, if you don't end up using it, you didn't end up wasting that much money. (I regret not adding speakers to my laundry room.) We are finishing our walkout now and are running extra speaker wire and RG6 coax, as I want lots of options in the future. You can get some great deals on online on cable and wire. I think we are going to use less expensive in ceiling speakers downstairs though.

    Good luck!

  • 16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    dadr - You asked for more info on Control 4 but didn't pose specific questions, so I don't really know what to say. It's fairly user friendly. I don't know about the wireless speaker option that you suggest. I understood we needed to have them wired in, but this really was DH's project, not mine. I know most of my issues with the system stem from having an installer that wasn't as familiar with Control 4 as he led us to believe. For example, he insisted that we get a high end security system and pay the security folks extra for it to connect to Control 4, but we don't operate it through Control 4. He never showed us how and I can't find how to access it through Control 4 on my own. We need to have the A/V guy out for a day of tweaking, but wanted to use the system for a couple of months so that we could identify all of our issues.