Re: In-Wall Audio for One Room?

["wkearney99" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 1) I'm adding one room, the rest of the house would be tough to do
> multi-room audio.
> 2) I've got 50+GB of (legal) audio on my home net
> 3) The new room is a kitchen, so small components like a Roku or Slim
> Devices network
> media streamer sounds ideal
> 4) I plan to put in wall or ceiling speakers
>
> So can I use an in-wall amplified volume control and single input
> without a multi-room controller?  Or am I hopelessly naive.  It looks
> like I'd need to get power to it at the very least, but that's not
> insurmountable.

Well, you can't get around needing to amplify the sound in order to drive
the speakers.  That and most of the time it's very tedious to NOT have some
sort of in-room control over it.  Not just for volume control but also for
selecting and controlling the sources.

I put a single 'stereo' speaker in our relatively small kitchen.  It takes
both the left and right signals.  This was better than trying to get two
speakers installed and it avoids the left/right balance hassles.  Flush
right into a single hole in the ceiling.

If all you want is a simple setup then look at a low-end A-Bus system from
Russound.  It'll let you start with something as simple as a single source
and two output zones.  Which you can upgrade later (by replacing the hub) to
support more output zones as well as more input sources.  Go from a
single-source, two zone to a single source, four zone or all the way up to a
four souce, four zone setup.  Each keypad has an amp and an IR sensor that
will feed control signals back to your source(s).

For us, we went with a Russound CAV66 setup.  The keypad controls let you do
more than just simple on/off and volume control.  The A-Bus keypads are
overly simple and require using an IR remote for anything involving
controlling the source tracks.  In the kitchen it's been wonderful to have
the Uno keypads show the source and track info text and allow next/prev
control over them.  It's very much a "no brainer" to operate it.  It's true
this is not an inexpensive solution.  But the convenience factor makes it
worthwhile.

Or you could look at something like a Sonos system.  At least there you're
able to expand piece-meal if you want more zones.  But you will need to put
that amp somewhere.  With most solutions you really can't get around having
an amp living somewhere.  It doesn't have to be in the same room, you can
run wires from somewhere else.  You can apparently get a wall mount cradle
for their remote.  I've never used one so I can't offer anything more about
it.

The proficient system you mentioned is interesting.  It's limited in that it
doesn't have any way to send control signals back to the sources.  No IR
outputs, although their manual does show a remote output that's 'reserved
for future use'.  Don't hold your breath.  That and you'd have to run audio
cables from your source(s) all the way to this unit.

So you'd still be faced with having to use another remote to control the
sources, along with adding some sort of network for IR control.  An RF
remote or an IR repeater could be used but in the kitchen you really don't
want more clutter.  Fishing around for the damned remote when you're cooking
and you want to immediately mute the speakers to answer the phone is not
going to rate very high on the 'wife acceptance factor' scale.  Trust me,
the WAF should never be underestimated.

Honestly, in a place like a kitchen it really works best to have a
wall-mounted control keypad that's not going to suffer WHEN it gets gunked
up.  Things with touchscreens are less than ideal for a kitchen for that
very reason.  Something with durable rubber buttons is a much better idea.

At this point in time I'm not really aware of any low-end systems that have
anything other than very basic wall controls.  And systems like the Roku or
the Squeezebox, nice as they are, really don't seem like they're a good fit
for use in a kitchen.

What you should do is run a CAT5 and a 4 conductor 14ga line from wherever
you'd consider the central point for wiring.  Then you run two 2 conductor
lines from there to the speakers.  Or a single 4-conductor line if you're
using a single-stereo speaker like we've done.  This way you're "future
proof" for any other type of systems you might want later on.

-Bill Kearney