I received an e-mail from David saying “I think that it is fabulous that we have a local online paper that includes this kind of article” and he went on to ask about “the best approach to setting up a stereo system so that you can have speakers in multiple rooms and even outside, and still be able to control the stereo from whatever room you are in.”
He wanted to know about costs and whether it involved making a lot of holes.
The best approach to multi-room stereo is the one that suits your budget and your needs. A small system can be installed for a few hundred dollars that uses your stereo as a source and splits the signal with a “speaker selector” so that a single pair of wires can connect to cables that run to speakers in several rooms.
The cost of the speakers, of course, depends on their quality and so there is a trade-off between how good you want them to sound and how much you want to pay. An important concern is “impedance matching” so that the current draw doesn’t burn out your amp.
Speaker selectors can include impedance matching and volume control, all done at the source. Another, slightly more costly, approach is to install an impedance matching volume control in each room that will have speakers, with cables connecting it to your stereo and to the speakers. If the volume controls include infrared receivers you can set up a system (for another hundred dollars or so) that allows you to carry your remote from room to room and aim it at the volume control to control your centrally located sources.
An exterior space can be treated just like another room. You can put an outside volume control in a weather-proof box and use all-weather speakers mounted on an outside wall or speakers disguised as rocks sitting in your garden.
The drawback of this type of distribution is that using one amp for every zone is going to reduce the volume and sound quality. This will be especially noticeable outside where there are no walls for the sound to bounce off. You will get much better results if you can amplify the speaker pairs separately.
This can be done with a multi-channel amplifier at the source (now the cost is starting to grow substantially) or you can use a system that feeds the unamplified sound via data cable to a volume control with a built-in amplifier, boosting the sound just before it is sent to a speaker pair.
As you’ve probably noticed, all of these solutions require running cables from the source to the speakers. In a finished house that could be a challenge. How many holes you have to make depends on the structure of your home. Cables can usually be run with ease through attics, crawl spaces or unfinished basements. With special tools, they can be fished through walls and ceilings. Sometimes you can avoid making holes altogether.
The problem usually arises when you run into steel beams or framing that blocks access. If you use recessed speakers and volume controls, you can cut the holes first to ease the fishing of cables. If there is just no way to get behind the walls there are wire channels that can be surface mounted and painted to match the wall.
Now there is an alternative available in a system that sends the line level stereo signal through electrical wires to an amplified keypad in the room, saving the long home runs to the source.
If price is no object you can install a hard drive media storage that holds all of your CD’s and allows different music simultaneously in different rooms with illuminated touch-panels that display the cover art and allow you to browse through your entire music catalogue by album, song, artist or genre. You can also install an Ipod dock that you drop your Ipod into so that it feeds the system.
If music is important to you or if you like to have it always in the background a multi-room system becomes something that gives you pleasure every day.
Bill Monahan is the owner of Homebuttons Electronic Systems in Meaford. If you have questions about audio, video, security, lighting control, computer networks, or anything else that’s low voltage, send them to
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