Whole house stereo ideas. Speakers and Receivers.

I am starting to look into wiring our house for sound using in-wall or ceiling speakers. I am looking for the best equipment for the money. Things I am looking for is the ability for multi-zone capability with at most 4 different zones. I would possibly like to use the same receiver for a home theater in the basement but maybe a designated one is the way to go (i don't know). Which ones should I be considering?? In regards to in-wall speakers, which ones are good ones the $300/pair range. Also, are in-wall speakers sufficient for front speakers in a HT system. My wife is sick of the wires. My center will be placed on top of my bigscreen so that is not that big of a deal. Any opinions will be greatly appreciated.

Hello,

I justthought I would toss a few ideas your way. The Yamaha Music Cast is a completely wireless Home Music server with an upgradeable 80 Gig Hard drive. You could probably run its ouputs into a multizone reciever that would hook into the inwalls you had in your seperate rooms. You just have to find a spot in each of the rooms for the individual servers to grab your music, and the patience to download all your music onto the hard drive. Have fun.

Pete

There are lots of in-wall and in-ceiling speaker choices. Three I'd look at first are Paradigm, Klipsch, and BIC. All are good companies which make quality speakers.

Other that I know make them are AudioSource and Dayton (Parts Express brand). I'm sure there are many many others.

As for the receiver, I'm not much help there, except to suggest NOT using your HT receiver to also run the whole-house system. That's a lot to ask of one piece of equipment.

Is 4 zones really enough? Plan for the future. The only reason I ask is that I have a whole house system with 12 zones (most rooms, and front/back porches, and back patio). And I wish I had more (like my garage).

Good Luck.

JD

Anyone else?? Audiophile wannabe needs education!!

a key factor in whole house audio is the ability to operate the system without having to call the installer everytime you want to use it; in respect to that i'd highly recommend a separate home theater and audio system. If you've got your heart set on a single system then one of the best multi-zone home theater systems available is the Bose Lifestyle 50. Yes i did say Bose, Why? super easy to use, very high WAF, simple yet elegant design, RF control, tiny discreet speakers.A few things to look for in in-wall speakers would be 3-way, adjustable/pivotal tweeter, back enclosure, etc.. Every manufacturer makes in-walls these day but the brands we install with good pricing, sound and reliability are Niles, Triad, Speakercraft, Parasound and my personal fav Jamo D830iw