Re: A-Bus and Futuresmart panel

["wkearney99" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Well, it is a big house and counting patios,

Make sure you have enough amplification out on the patios.  The A-bus keypad
amp IS NOT capable of driving outdoor speakers.  I have one as a slave to a
CAV66 and I use a separate 200W amp to feed the rock speakers.  I take the
line-out from the keypad back into the house, into the amp and then over
12ga outdoor wire to the speakers.  Sounds great.

> there are in fact 16 pairs
> of speakers. What is wrong with that? The ChannelVision panel modules
> handle 4 pairs each and they claim you can use up to 4 of them, while
> the Futuresmart panels handle 6 each and they claim you can use 2 of
> them (not quite enough for my setup).

Stick with units that use multiples of four as most ABus keypads support 4.

Bear in mind that in order to support the 16 zones you're talking about
feeding your audio signals into 4 different hubs and then each to four
keypads.  Daisy-chained from one hub through to another.  That's a fair bit
of messy cabling.  Be sure to leave enough room to effectively mount the
hubs.  And seriously consider getting cabling that's as close to the right
length as possible.  As in, don't get 6 footers and bundle them up.  Get 1
footers and lay them out neatly.  Likewise consider using patch panels for
the keypads.  Bring the wires out of the wall to the patch panel and then
use a short patch cord to connect to the hubs.  Don't just snake the wires
out of the wall and stub then with RJ45s.  It'll look crappy and if/when you
need to replace something you don't want to risk breaking a cable in the
process.  Besides, when you show it off and it's got cleanly laid out cables
people are generally more impressed than a rats nest coming out of a hole
chopped in the drywall.

> I looked into speaker level
> distribution and it is less expensive, but lacks the IR control
> capability of the Abus, plus I am not wild about running this many #16
> wires all over the house.

I have a combination of A-Bus and a CAV6.6.  I greatly prefer having the Uno
keypads over the somewhat 'dumb' A-bus keypads.  The Uno's allow a lot more
and provide text display feedback.  That and the A-bus keypads don't
remember the last used volume level.  You have to turn them on and then ramp
up the volume.  You don't know it annoying until you use an Uno and it
automagically starts up at a configurable volume level.

What I do it take four of the CAV66 zones and slave them each to an A-Bus
keypad supplying a room nearby.  For example, the sunroom has the Uno, while
the deck right next to it has an A-Bus slave.  Likewise, the exercise room
gets the Uno, the guest bedroom next door gets the A-Bus.  You could
mix-and-match futher by daisy chaining the audio through the various source
devices.

But when you're wiring, seriously consider wiring for the future.  Pull both
CAT5 for the keypad but also 4 conductor 14ga for possible future
centralized speaker amplification.  Wire is the CHEAP part during an
open-wall installation.  If you never use the central lines, well not much
of a loss as wire's inexpensive.  But if you even need to expand it'll cost
triple to fish new wires.

-Bill Kearney