My buddy just bought a new house and wants to wire up 7 different rooms (man-room, workout room, living room, garage, front porch, back porch, kitchen) in his house with audio controlled from a single point. The entire upstairs of his house is unfinished at the moment, so it's a piece of cake to run the wiring throughout the entire house.

He'd be satisfied with only one speaker in each location, as he is not an audiophile, and isn't really trying to rock out. He's just not the type. Just wants a speaker for some background noise. I'm thinking if he decides he needs more than just one speaker, we'll hook up a 2 channel amplifier in that particular room.

Inputs
TV
Computer headphone out/HDMI
Auxilary input (3.5mm headphone jack for ipod, etc.)
An HDMI or three for whatever

What's the most cost-effective way to achieve this? He's not exactly electronically gifted, so the simpler the better.

My initial thought is just a simple 7.1 receiver and placing each of the 7 speakers in the 7 different locations. Then put a switch in-line with each speaker to turn the speaker on/off.


[Edited on September 25, 2011 at 9:24 PM. Reason : .]

9/25/2011 9:09:55 PM

I'm not big on all the technical details...but wouldn't a 7.1 receiver do some processing on the source (even if the source isn't capable of carrying info for 7.1) that could cause it to completely drop parts of the signal on some of the channels?

[Edited on September 25, 2011 at 9:37 PM. Reason : fyi this is more me being curious then actually knowing anything]


[Edited on September 25, 2011 at 9:38 PM. Reason : V ah, I see]

9/25/2011 9:36:15 PM

On my Onkyo 7.1 receiver, I can set it to play the same audio on all channels.

9/25/2011 9:37:11 PM

the only problem with running a normal 7.1 is that it's all or none. can't work out while someone is takin a nap in the other room . just throw in a speaker selector and he should be good.

9/25/2011 10:01:41 PM

I have a receiver that has 2 zones that's 7.1 or 2 I forget which as I haven't hooked it up in a while. I can have it playing in one room and silent in another, never tested if it can play 2 completely different things though. The closest bet is to look for something that has multiple zones, but you run into the issue of it playing in multiple places at once almost regardless of how you do it.

9/25/2011 10:33:20 PM

Yeah, my current 7.1 receiver I have has 2 zones...but obviously he needs 7 zones. And a receiver made to do that would be $texas.

That's why I suggested a normal 7.1 system that's ALWAYS pushing audio to the speakers...and putting a toggle switch on each individual speaker.

Is this bad for a receiver though? Will it damage it if we basically have "zero" load on the channel outputs 99% of the time? Or possibly worse, only one or two speakers on at a time? I'm sure it'll be a very rare occasion he has ALL speakers playing at once.

9/25/2011 11:21:07 PM

most speaker selectors have some type of integrated impedance matching/compensation system. so with a decent selector and a dual zone 7.1 receiver he could actually run 7 speakers off the zone 2 channels and still have a room to watch movies in 5.1 in.

9/27/2011 4:22:20 PM

Can you link an example? I'm not familiar with selectors...

9/29/2011 11:26:09 PM