Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Posted on
Wed Sep 08, 2021 12:03 pm
mundmc offline
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Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

I haven’t posted too much lately, mainly because this:
Image
The upshot is the insurance is paying for my 1920s house to be repaired from water damage and modernized. There is no way I would not take this opportunity to put in-ceiling or in-wall speakers.

Talk to me, Goose: What would you do in this situation?

The easier to use and more flexible it is, the better. I’m a fan of the RSL C34 speakers, which I use as my 4 in-ceiling Atmos speakers, And they are pretty darn affordable, but what do you all recommend to send signals to them. Multichannel amps are easy, it’s the interface and distribution I would like thoughts on.

Posted on
Wed Sep 08, 2021 5:09 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Wow -- so sorry to hear that you have to go through that. But since you HAVE to go through it, at least you can take advantage of the huge opportunity of having the walls open. I can't really recommend anything per se, but I can tell you that we use a dedicated amp for home theater and Sonos for distributed audio. And we're perfectly happy with both. To be honest, we don't listen to distributed audio too often, but our home theater amp is a Denon which sounds great to us and has a good bit of IP control.

We're (hopefully) going to be building a new house soon and before the drywall goes up, I plan to put enough copper in the walls to hold up the whole house. If it's within your skill set (or budget), I'd also suggest swapping electrical boxes for the extra-deep variety. Our (current) house was built in the mid 90's and I'm constantly struggling with trying to squeeze Z-Wave switches into their boxes. Forget about something like an Aeon Nano. :D

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Posted on
Wed Sep 08, 2021 6:32 pm
Korey offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

I'd put speakers in every room, hardwired back to a 6 zone mono price amp. perhaps you need 2 amps for 12 zones.

You would then have keypad control in every room and the capability of 4 sources per zone.

There is a plugin for indigo.

I have 9 zones of audio using airport express and airfoil, if I was to do it over I'd have everything hardwired using the mono price amps. they have Preamp outputs as well to drive bigger amplifiers or show up as an input on your Home Theater processor.

Speakers depend on your budget, I get some nice sounding ones that can be painted the same as the ceiling 6.5" - 8" woofers.

--
Korey

Posted on
Wed Sep 08, 2021 10:42 pm
berkinet offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

DaveL17 wrote:
… If it's within your skill set (or budget), I'd also suggest swapping electrical boxes for the extra-deep variety. …

++

Posted on
Wed Sep 08, 2021 11:00 pm
mundmc offline
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Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Thanks for the advice, boys!

Good thought on extra deep boxes. I’ve grown fond of the Caseta Pro switches, which are quite shallow, but still a good point nonetheless.

Re: the Monoprice amp
I just took a quick look, and had NO IDEA there was a plugin!

I am quite fond of Sonos’s ability to send select sources (typically Spotify or Pandora for me) to different combinations of rooms. However, the cost of several Sonos amps and their possibility of obsolescence are both not appealing.

Edit: I just realize this is a matrix switcher, and this price point is pretty freaking amazing especially considering that it includes preamp outputs AND some gentle amplification. I think the wall controls even allow for auxiliary sources?

The DIY part is totally up my alley; my theater (on avsforums, and the only room spared from the water damage) is 13 channels + 2 monoprice subs, two infinite baffle subs, and 6 12” woofers under each seat. The subs are all calibrated on a mini-DSP. TL; DR- i like cheap Behringer amps and DIY solutions.

I presently have a few thousand feet of cat sex run through my old house, and it is kind of comical to see all of the wires drooping now that the house is gutted. This approach seems like I do one or a combination of the following:
1) run cat six to a wall controller to the matrix switcher/ amp so I can control it, and I think it allows IR repeating as well
2) run appropriate gaged speaker wires from the mono price to each speaker
3) if more watts are needed, place an amplifier in series between the monoprice switcher preamp outputs and the speakers

Am i getting this right? If so, this is an amazing price point. Because I am me, I also plan to run 24V low-voltage wires to the same boxes as the controllers so I can step them down to 5V and nicely wall mount and power some cheapo Fire 5 Tablets, because Domopad is the truth :)

I’ll throw some ideas up here to see what the brain-trust approves!

Edit: My speech recognition use of “cat sex” and not “cat6” will intentionally be left unedited, because it is a comical concept visual.

Posted on
Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:54 am
Dual offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Korey wrote:
hardwired back to a 6 zone mono price amp.

There is a plugin for indigo.


Awesome info Korey! Thanks. This may be the solution I have been looking for! I currently have two old amps with four zones each and no control.


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Posted on
Thu Sep 09, 2021 11:24 am
ELWOOD offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

I second Korey on the 6 zone mono price amp for audio through out the house. Have been using one for a few years with no troubles. There is two different plugin's that work very well with it. I am using the Dayton Audio Controller plugin with all 6 zones on the mono price amp. Have two of the output zones using the preamp out connected to 400 watt booster amps. My outdoor speakers sound better than a live concert. Have the input zones connected to a cable box audio, and old FM radio. the other inputs are connected to 4 separate Audio Cast devices, very inexpensive audio sources. https://www.amazon.com/M5-Audiocast-iHeartRadio-Supporting-Supported/dp/B06WRSXVBR/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3JX2U89SLDDAD&dchild=1&keywords=audio+cast+device+wifi&qid=1631205564&sprefix=audio+cast%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-3 Supports AirPlay/DLNA/UPnP, NAS and Local(on device) music play and a wide range of online music services including Amazon Music,TuneIn Radio,Spotify, DEEZER and more. There ap is not easy to navigate through, would be nice if someone could make a plugin to operate the audio cast with out there ap.

Having a key pad one the wall in each room comes in handy for selecting source and volume comes in real handy, but I user indigo most of the time. Have actions and timers that change the volume and sources automatically. When I leave the house and turn on the alarm the the source changes to talk radio, makes it sound like people are home.

Elwood

Posted on
Thu Sep 09, 2021 6:56 pm
Korey offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

ELWOOD wrote:
My outdoor speakers sound better than a live concert.
Elwood



:D :D :D Love to hear that!!! Put some Wattage in the Cottage!!

--
Korey

Posted on
Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:37 am
mundmc offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Thanks everybody for this great advice. It sounds like that mono price is a great buy for my purposes, and I really like the ability to add an additional multichannel amplifier for things like downgrading to mono and running sets of speakers in parallel or series.

Posted on
Sun Sep 19, 2021 10:53 pm
Dual offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Korey wrote:
I'd put speakers in every room, hardwired back to a 6 zone mono price amp.


Can you control volume independently for each zone using the plugin?


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Posted on
Sun Sep 19, 2021 10:59 pm
Dual offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Looks like I found my answer:

See below for a full list of per zone available actions:

Turn On
Turn Off
Set Volume (directly sets the volume level)
Increase Volume (increases volume by 1)
Decrease Volume (decreases volume by 1)


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Posted on
Sun Sep 19, 2021 11:02 pm
Dual offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Korey wrote:
I'd put speakers in every room, hardwired back to a 6 zone mono price amp[/url].


The monoprice unit must be connected to my Mac mini using a USB to Rs232 converter, correct?


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Posted on
Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:32 am
Korey offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

Dual wrote:

The monoprice unit must be connected to my Mac mini using a USB to Rs232 converter, correct?


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I believe so, I don't have the 6ch amp, Keyspan are the best.

--
Korey

Posted on
Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:52 am
FlyingDiver offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

I'm using this 4 port USB-Serial connector: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ETDC8K/

One for the Monoprice amp, one for my alarm system, one for my pool controller, and a spare.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:25 pm
mundmc offline
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Re: Gutted house = Whole house in-wall speakers

OK, so it looks like the mono price option is great and flexible.

Until something does speech recognition better than Alexa, I am sticking with her for voice recognition and most rooms. At present, if I ask Alexa to play some thing in a given room, she sends the Spotify track to the Sonos in that room.

I am not aware of a workaround to avoid my current dependence on Sonos and Alexa, so I came up with a plan (because Sonos Connects and Sonos Amps are crazy expensive in a way I cannot justify). I can’t find the original article I read that demonstrated it, but an IKEA symphony ask for $99 can give a preamp out signal and let me practice my soldering: https://youtu.be/PRZzOzw6w4I

Yes, it’s mono, but in a whole house audio system, mainly within ceiling speakers, mono is preferable in my opinion.

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