Re: Multi-Speaker Distribution

["Frank Olson" <Please-use-the-email-links@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"kooch54" <kooch54@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1128298903.355721.321470@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Marc -
>     Thanks for your response.  I obviously don't know alot about HT or
> home audio and seldomly listen to music for long periods of time.  I'm
> really only putting this together for some background music during
> parties, etc....
>     I would agree that the Phoenix website blows.  The ISM6 that I
> bought is the single source model.  It does have what they call
> "Impedance protection"; but I have it turned off with the switch
> because I also have an Impedance Matching Volume control in the
> basement and was under the impression that I don't need both.
>     The speakers in the basement are Onkyo 100 W  and say 8ohm on the
> back which is also what the receiver says.  I thought that as long as I
> had the IM volume controls I would be OK.
>     My original problem was that the volume in the basement was
> extremely low regardless of what I did with the volume control down
> there.  It did change as I turned it up but not that much.  Today while
> I was playing around I found that if I put the receivers volume control
> at about midway then adjusted the volume from the control downstairs
> that it worked well.  Is that how a speaker distribution model with
> independent volume controls work?  The receivers volume is used as a
> starting point and the volume control in the other zones make
> adjustments from there.  I thought the entire reason for the
> distribution and volume control was to completely bypass the receivers
> volume control for the additional zones.
>     Thanks for any help and guidance.
>
> Kooch54...


You're using the speaker "out" terminals of the AMP, so the amp's volume
control acts as a "master" to all the speakers in the system.  This means
that you won't have the kind of control at the room volume control that
you're expecting.  In order to bypass this, you're going to need an amp with
pre-amp outputs you can bridge to another amp in the basement.  This would,
of course mean that your room volume control would be replaced with the
volume on the separate amp.  I've seen some stereo amps with 25VAC speaker
transformer outputs.  You could control the volume of each speaker
independently with this kind of setup as well although the quality of the
sound is greatly reduced.