multi-room setup questions

I am building a new house and have prewired it with 14/4 oxygen free wire. I have purchased the Onyko 701 receiver and plan to run 6.1 surround in the living room and 6 other zones. I keep getting conflicting information about how to setup the rest of the system. What is the best way to config the speaker in the rest of the house. I plan to put in impedence matching volume control in each room, 40-60 watt speakers in each room and I am looking to buy an amp., a connecting block or speaker selector.
1. I have an old sony receiver and am considering running the two receivers in series. Would this eliminate the need for an amp?
2. Which will fit my setup better (with the I M volume controls) a connecting block or a speaker selector?
3.How big of an amp and how many channels should I buy?
4. Please make suggestions on brands of amps, watts required to push multi rooms all together, web sites that have good information on install of systems. I have another ~$800 to spend on multi room speakers and amp

I have tried to pick up as much info on line as possible but now I am beginning to feel overwhelmed. Thanks for any help received.

Cjflet0,

Hopefully I'm not too late to assist somehow. Try this link for a previous post of mine, http://forums.audioreview.com/general-audio/whole-house-audio-lots-questions-1507.html. If that doesn't work, search on my user name.

1. Try one receiver and see if you need more umph. It will depend on what you want to do. For background classical music, I run 6 sets of speakers from one quality receiver. For a 6 room disco, you will need more than one receiver can offer.

2. Do you really want 6 "zones" or 6 sets of speakers playing the same thing (or 6 sets of speakers with the option of 2 sources). See the link.

3. Again, what do you really want? see 2. And what is your budget? You can do a 6 room whole house stereo set up with in-wall volume controls for less than $1000 by using on-line vendors and ebay for new and/or used components or you can spend a real wad of cash. Last month's PartsExpress.com catalog had a deal on a whole house set-ups with free in-wall speakers.

4. I've installed two set-ups in the last three years, one in my old home and one in my new home. I used a quality denon receiver to push the 6 speaker set up in both homes. This was enough for full time background music and the occasional opportunity to turn it up and listen to rock for the spring cleaning or for extended yard work sessions. Busting my eardrums was very low on the priority list. AFAIK, there are no good web sites on multiroom setups other than the Cruthfield site and this site is pretty basic.

I don't check in very frequently here, but will try to do so to see if you have any questions.

Good luck,

Chris

Yes, opinions vary widely on how to do it for a house system.

One thing, if you do multi-channel amplificaiton or a switching/divider box - I suggest 250w to power it.

I took the remote amp aproach and use a 4 chanel Adcom GFA-2535 amplifier for my house system. It drives 8 pairs of speakers located throughout the house and shop. Each channel drives a ~2 ohm load for a total power output of 400+w.

Works very well.

Here's an example of a 200w 6 ch distribution/switching box:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=300-608

There is no "Best" way. There are many solutions and the that's best is what works for you. Example, if you want to yse a receiver you alreeady have to power it - then a switch box is probably your best choice.