Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Whole House Audio - in Stereo

Alright, I am in the beginning stages of setting up a single zone, 8 speaker, in house audio project for my wife's parents.

The plan is to have 2 or 4 outdoor speakers and 4 indoor speakers (total 6 or 8 speakers). They will all be running off the same source from a receiver of some sort. Neither volume nor fidelity are of paramount importance. My wife's parents just want sound to fill the space.

Also, I don't really care about different zones. If the outside and the inside both have to play the same source, that is fine. Bonus points for dual zone, but PRICE is of highest concern here.

My question:

How do I run 3 (or 4) sets of stereo speakers without running into a 1 ohm load per speaker (in parallel) or a 64 ohm load and (in series) (and no volume)?

I am looking into 8 channel amps, but they get expensive quite fast, and all appear to be audiophile material.

Any ideas how to achieve this? Any moderately priced amplifier units out there that will fit the bill?

Thanks.

Russound makes solid products that'll do exactly what you want.

http://www.crutchfield.com/p_543PRO6HP/Russound-PRO-6HP.html?tp=9414

Bingo!

Thanks, Peter.

I guess ATI's 12-channel (6 stereo pair) distribution amp is more than you want/need? http://www.ati-amp.com/at6012.html (It sells for about $1650.)

You might be able to get away with a simple 2-channel amp by using impedance-matching volume controls and a little Speaker distribution panel from Parts Express.

I'm using a similar setup with one pair of speakers in the kitchen and one pair on the patio (both with volume knobs) running from a very modest Adcom amp fed the Zone2 signal from my main system. It works great. I'm GLAD I ran all that copper.

Adrien, if you want three sets of stereo speakers in three different locations playing the same material, the simplest and least expensive option probably is to just get one of the 508 Onkyo refurbs from Accessories4less for about $180. Select the all-channel stereo mode, connect the two inside sets to main and side surround terminals and the outside set to the back surround terminals.

Sometimes dyslexia can be interesting like when I first read the title of this thread I swore it said “Whole Body Audio.”

Neon - thanks. Too expensivo.

Tom - I'll need some help figuring out how to wire your solution. Can I run install two speaker distribution panels (running 2 lead wires off of each amp channel) or what that create huge impedence problems. I was already planning on installing 3 impedence volume knobs (1 kitchen, 1 living, 1 outdoor).

John - I had thought about that solution. It certainly is the easiest wiring job. My only concern is that some dope mucks around with the "All Stereo" setting (like activating PLII or something), resulting in some weird sounds coming from various parts of the house. Inevitably, I will be getting calls wondering why the outdoor speakers are only playing echoey sounding background vocals... But it's a viable solution on a budget, for sure. I wonder if I could get a receiver that could I could lock into All stereo mode, or get a receiver with a default mode that always switches to all stereo when the device is turned on.

Hmm

You could probably program that with a harmony remote.

Adrien, for the PE solution, you just run the right/left speaker wires from "the amp" to the distribution panel. Then, you run R/L from the distribution panel to each volume control. I used 16/4 wire even though it's a fairly long run and it worked just fine. Then you run the right and left from the volume knob to each speaker.

It's designed for stereo pairs; I don't think it would work to have two pairs on one volume knob.

The panel I linked to is good for four pairs. I think there might be panels that accommodate more, though.