Ever find yourself wanting to listen to music outside, dragging the speakers to the window and cranking the volume all the way up so you can hear it out there? While you might have popped an eardrum trying to get close enough to change the CD, it was a quick solution. Today there really is a better way. Consider installing a multiroom music system that will let you listen to tunes in every room, or area, of your house, even outside.
What is it?
What does it take to bring music into a room? Well, you'll need an amplifier, tuner, preamp, CD player and speakers. You know you want music in the family room, bedroom, study, dining room and outside. Does that mean you have to shell out big bucks to put all of these components in each area? Not if you install a multiroom music system in the house. One set of components, housed in one place, can bring everyone in the house a great dose of music. And you won't have to crank the volume, unless you really want to.
Most multiroom music systems are only as large as a standard amplifier, and sit with the other audio and video equipment in your main living area. Multiroom music systems work by sending music from the stereo components housed in this living area, through speaker wire, to various speakers positioned throughout the house.
What's available?
One of the cheapest ways to spread music around the house is to add more speakers to your existing stereo setup. While this can be accomplished with a bit of quality speaker wire and some spare time on a Saturday afternoon, amplifiers do have limits on the number of speakers they can power. Iff you need more speakers added to the system than your receiver can handle, add a multichannel amplifier to the mix. Your CD player, digital satellite system receiver and radio tuner can he hooked to the multichannel amplifier and be distrihuted throughout the house. The purchase a multiroom receiver can simplify this greatly.
If building a new home is the plan and you want ceiling and wall-mounted speakers in every room of the house, you'll need to invest in a whole-house audio distribution system. Because these systems run on their own dedicated cabling, they are best installed by an audio specialist before the walls of a home go up.
A single-source audio distribution system is the most economical and easily distributes audio from a single source, like a DSS receiver, to every room with a pair of speakers. The numher of sources and speakers a single-source audio distribution system can handle varies, but four to eight sources is typical.
Changing the source you want to listen to, can be done through wall-mounted keypads. Adjusting the volume is done through wall-mounted volume controls or an infrared distribution system. An infrared distribution system lets you select a source, skip tracks, set the volume and issue other commands as if you were sitting in front of the stereo system. You push the buttons on a remote control and the commands travel over radio frequency airwaves, or through the coaxial cabling already running through your home, to the equipment in another room. If you want to listen to music in the kitchen, simply take the remote into the kitchen, press PLAY on the remote control and the player will send music to that rooms speakers.
Multi-Room Multi-Source Systems
While listening to the same song in every room will work fine for some people, other households will want more variety. If you have a multiroom, multisource music distribution system. You are able to send different music to different areas of the house, at the same time. With multiroom, multisource systems, all of your equipment is still housed in one location, it's just managed by a more sophisticated control system. Control of a multisource, multizone system is usually done by selecting buttons on a keypad mounted to the wall. If you want to skip tracks of the CD, just push the right or left arrow. If you want to switch to the radio, just push the TUNER button. Some systems offer a mute button so you can answer the phone, or they automatically mute the music system when the phone rings.
In addition to automatic muting and paging, many multisource systems can operate other electronic amenities. A professional audio/video installer can program your house-wide music system to dim and brighten lights, draw the motorized drapes and lock the door. Imagine having the CD player signal a favorite tune from Oklahoma whenever someone rings your doorbell.
What does it cost?
If you're planning to put together a system, a multichannel amplifier starts at $300.
- Preamp/switcher begins at $400 and can go up to $10,000.
- Individual volume controls start in the $40 range.
- Prices for whole-house music systems typically starts around $1,000.
- Multisource, multiroom systems can start as low as $2,500 for a four-zone setup and go as high as $15,000 for a 10 source, 24-zone system.
Make sure you investigate all of your options with us before making a decision.
