You might want to cross post this in the Building forum. When we were building our house, our builder asked us if we wanted to have this. We decided it wasn't necessary to have the intercom. We do have our kitchen, family room, and porch wired with built in speakers that connect to a receiver that plays music from whatever you choose I-phones, the TV, etc...

I have to believe you can do this wirelessly now (we had the system she describes - wired and built in in our previous home. We used it, but infrequently - mostly just yelled up or down the stairs).

IMO the best music system would not double as an intercom system. Wireless Sonos systems are the best---they create a "mesh network" using your existing home wireless and pull music from a variety of sources, including commercial services like pandora and spotify, but also from multiple NAS drives and iTunes accounts. The speakers do have to plug in, but they communicate wirelessly with each other and any iPhone, iPad, android device or computer with their app. You can have different music playing in every room, or the same (party mode!) with no time lag from room to room. Best of all, you can move the speakers where you want them anytime.

Intercom......cellphones?

Seems kind of unnecessary nowadays. My dtr's 4-story house has what I think you're asking about, and it goes virtually unused. They answer the door from their phones. She and the kids each use their own phones and tiny, boom-able, wireless speakers when in their own rooms, and also to communicate with each other while in the house, when they aren't yelling up and down the stairs like in sjh's home!. Only time they use the whole house system is when sil uses it when guests are around.

FWIW, Sonos isn't the only game in town anymore!

My landline phone system, Panasonic, has an intercom feature using the handset. I have an intercom/bell on the front door that rings on the phone system, too. Music is on a completely different speaker system.

Our house is 35 years old and does have an interco system. The main unit in kitchen does play radio and that was the only feature used. Two years lightning struck a tree in the yard and took this system out. The concept is obsolete and I could not even find a replacement for it. Insurance company didn't know either what to do. I would have thought they should have at least offered to close the eight speaker openings in the house?

Sjhockey, we have a couple of Bose soundlinks for outside and I much prefer Sonos. Last few gatherings we moved two Sonos Play 5's outside on the patio and deck as the sound is better.... Heresy, I know!

I know they were still selling the intersom systems when we took one out during our kitchen reno. I saw them at our local lighting store. I just went to their website and a search go no results.

We had one; it was unsightly, and I couldn't wait to pull it out. It also played music, and was hooked into our doorbell. But, it never worked well. As others have said, I would never put permanent wiring and boxes in. Technology is moving too quickly.

kswl, I know Sonos is the top dog, just noting that there are competitors now.

Again, I would recommend using an off-the-shelf telephone system with a handset intercom feature. Only the base unit needs to be attached to the landline twisted pair. The other units just require power. Most of the systems come with four handsets, but check the specs because you can usually add more handsets purchased separately. Some of these systems even have video screens. The speakers on these are standard phone speakers so I would really recommend using a separate system for music.

Yes, there is plenty of choice, and I would certainly recommend ANY of the wireless music systems over speakers in the walls.