Re: Basic setup for zoned listening

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> We are starting to have a house built and I have been trying to figure
> out what kind of whole audio system to install.  I think I want to go
> with something that is flexible for future expansion. Since I am
> thinking about running cat6 to lots of places around the house I was
> thinking of a-bus as a possible solution.  How well does this work?
> How is the sound quality? pros/cons/competing ideas???

A-bus keypads generally have about 35 watts max.  That's enough to get
pretty loud in small room.  For a larger room it's more like loud
background.  If you want to crank it up, or if you've got a lot of people
over for entertaining the a-bus amps are a little underpowered.  But this is
VERY subjective and dependent on all sorts of in-room conditions.

> I don't think I will ever need more than 2 possible sound inputs
> (mostly 1).

Why do you say that?  My wife and I routinely listen to two different MP3
stream sources.  In the morning I listen to the radio in the bathroom while
she's got the Tivo going in the bedroom.  We have 6 sources on our Russound
CAV66 but generally find we use no more than 4 of them.  While we /can/
drive it from the multi-disc CD player or the DVD, we really haven't
bothered.  All the music's on MP3s already and we usually don't watch the
DVDs outside of the home theatre.

Fortunately if you start with a-bus you can upgrade to a CAV66 and re-use
the a-bus keypads in secondary rooms.  We drive 6 zones to Uno keypads and
then have 4 a-bus zones piggybacked on a nearby zone.  The deck/sunroom,
living/dining room, exercise/bath, family room/bath.  If you're just
starting you could setup 4 zones somewhere and move those four to new
locations if/when you upgrade.

> But I want the ability for the sound input to be heard
> throughout the house.  I also want to start off pretty cheap with the
> possibility of putting more money in later.  In fact I may initially
> just run lots of cat6 cable all over the place and figure it all out
> later. Thoughts???

Yep, CAT5/6 to each keypad along with 4-conductor 14 gauge in-wall stranded
wire.  Then run 2-conductor from each keypad to the 'most likely' speaker
locations.  This way you can either use a-bus keypads with their amp (and
leave the centrally run 4-conductor unused).  Or you can drive the speakers
from a central amp and simply splice the connection behind the keypad.
This pretty much future-proofs it.  You'd then do well to install a pair of
them to the most likely place for a 'high tech' wall plate, along with *at
least* a pair of coax lines.  There's worthwhile consideration to move coax
since things like satellite tuners tend to need two feeds and you might also
have centralized video being piped around.

But step back and ask how "wired" you really need to be in all rooms.  It's
one thing to have a keypad and speakers in each, but most probably need an
AV wall plate.

Then consider where you'd most likely want a telephone and run suitable wire
for it.  You can, of course, use CAT5/6 to handle it since it's easier to
avoid having too many different kinds of wire.  Sticking with CAT5, coax and
4-conductor 14ga is usually fine.

> Why cat6 some ask?  Well it looks like cat6 will handle 10Gbit fine
> when that comes around

Eh, it's a house and you're using a star topology.  It's not like you're
pushing any great distances.  I wouldn't go out of my way to install GigE.
100mb with most applications in the home is usually fine.  Bear in mind, it
doesn't matter how faster your wire is if your devices can't overload it.  A
usb network dongle won't push faster than (around) 400mbps but that's in
best-case situations.  If the wire's not a lot more then, yeah, go for CAT6.

> and is a whole lot cheaper than fiber (when you
> consider fiber connections and all).  If anyone has opinions on this I
> also have been thinking a lot on this and am open for ideas.

The trouble with fiber is nothing's using it in enough quantity to drive
down the prices.  That and it's pretty fragile when compared to plain old
copper.

-Bill Kearney