How to wire stereo ceiling speakers in addition to surround system?

 

I am building a new home and am about to the pre-wire stage. When completed, I will have my first surround sound system.

My wife stays at home and likes to listen to music as she moves room to room doing housework. We would like to install stereo ceiling speakers in several rooms to accomodate her movement during the day. Most old stereo receivers had A/B settings that could be used with additional speaker selectors to easily accomplish this. However, the new home theater receivers I have seen have only one set of speaker outputs...the ones for the home theater setup. How can I get the music (even in just stereo format) to the other rooms?

I have been told I could connect my new home theater receiver to my old stereo receiver (tape out to aux in), then use the old receiver to drive the additional speakers. Even if this will work, is there an easier way? One that would not require me to clutter my system with my old receiver?

thanks.
 

installguy
i would not drive a multroom sound system off your surround amp. whenever you are watching a movie, that is what your wife is force to hear throughout the house. also you would need a speaker selector that will match impedance if you have less than 4 rooms you can run the switch in 4x mode. but the 4 rooms would include the theater. in 4x mode the ohms is multipled by 4 so a 100 watt amp (100x2) would be 25 watts (25x8) for the speakers. in 8x mode (12.5x16). to get a desent volume the amp needs to be at about 1/2 volume. this will make the surround speakers too loud compaired to the front. you will have to put the surround amp in stereo mode. but somtimes in stereo mode the sub will still work. so the theater will be booming all the time. you'll need to adust all of your surround speakers to match the new low watt fronts. i gess what i'm trying to say is ,it is possable but it will suck! i would hook up the old amp for multi room only and share the componets in your rack. use the digital audio outs for the theater and the analog outs to the multiroom. if you have to share an analog out use y-cable to split the signal. if you have problems with audio (static) when useing y-cables you may need to get (bufferd) y-cables. remember your amp can only handle one or two pairs of speakers. so use a impedance matching switcher or volume controls. the best, use transformers insted of resistors. resistors get hot and don't take alot of input power. i use Russound brand volume controls. they mount in a regular house switch box(mounted somewhere in that room)they have an amp input and speaker output. you can set it at 1x,2x,4x,or 8x. i would run at least 16awg speaker wire from speakers to volume control.then run 2 runs of 12 awg speaker wire from volume to amp. put volume controls in there own box don't try to combine with ac outlets or switches! you could do the tape out to aux thing if you want to listen to the same as the theater. if you do, the amp can be tucked away out of sight. set the volume at 10:00 and forget it. does this help?
 

Thanks, Installguy. This helped a lot.
 

Unregistered guest
Hi there you two, I was wondering what to do?? I installed the onkyo sr-501 with home theater, and using the "B" set ran wires into a Russound EZB-1 and from there they went to russound LPTX volume controls for two sets of ceiling speaker for background music/tv sound in the kitchen and dining. I thought that the volume controls took what signal they got and amplified them, but they don't, at least not how I thought. ThIf I were to turn on the set "A" it's volume cranks, and then I have to turn it down, and set"B" also turns down.

What do I need to do to alleviate this problem?
WOuld it help if I got a multizone system, such as onkyo sr-701?
Russound says the russound speaker should be wired into set "A" why would that be?

Email me if you could in case you need more details.
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