Home Audio Guys Help! (1 Viewer)

[T Love]

So I need a little help with home audio and see if the collective FBG wisdom can help. Our speakers are super old, though everything pretty much works. As a quick overview, we have 4 sets of pairs of speakers in various rooms and outside, that are all controlled via a receiver in our bedroom. There is an old controller where I can turn on/off each set of speakers. In the family room, I also have a pair of ceiling mounted speakers and a pair of super old Bose cubes. Those don't work that well so I have connected a pair of floor standing speakers and center channel. All of these are controlled from a receiver in our family room (both music and tv is played through these speakers). However I can't play the same music in the family room that I play throughout the rest of the house as those are essentially separate systems.

Ideally what I would like to do is to be able to control everything together so that I can play music throughout the house (including the family room) when we want it, and then be able to watch tv in the family room and use those same speakers. I have gotten a couple of quotes and they are both around $10K which is crazy expensive to me to upgrade a system that pretty much works. A couple of questions. Is there a way that I can play the same music simultaneously from two receivers, from say my iPhone? Both of my receivers have Bluetooth as they are considerably newer (one is a Sony & the other an Onkyo), but only one will connect to my iPhone at a time to play music. 

The quotes are recommending Klipsch speakers for the family room and then lower-end in the rest of the house as we rarely listen to music, an amp for each paid of speakers throughout the house, etc. How can I do this for significantly less? Are there receivers where if I have two of them, I can connect them simultaneously to my iPhone? I'm just trying to see what I can do about my system without paying through the nose. Again everything mostly works and is already wired so I expected the job to be less than half that amount...or am I way off?

 

[jwb]

You are right - 10k is insane for this.

You may be able to bluetooth one receiver to the other. Do you have a tape output on one of them? Look on amazon for a bluetooth transmitter for one receiver, and then get a bluetooth receiver for the other receiver and put it in one of the free inputs. Probably cost you less than $200. 

 

[Hawks64]

So I need a little help with home audio and see if the collective FBG wisdom can help. Our speakers are super old, though everything pretty much works. As a quick overview, we have 4 sets of pairs of speakers in various rooms and outside, that are all controlled via a receiver in our bedroom. There is an old controller where I can turn on/off each set of speakers. In the family room, I also have a pair of ceiling mounted speakers and a pair of super old Bose cubes. Those don't work that well so I have connected a pair of floor standing speakers and center channel. All of these are controlled from a receiver in our family room (both music and tv is played through these speakers). However I can't play the same music in the family room that I play throughout the rest of the house as those are essentially separate systems.

Ideally what I would like to do is to be able to control everything together so that I can play music throughout the house (including the family room) when we want it, and then be able to watch tv in the family room and use those same speakers. I have gotten a couple of quotes and they are both around $10K which is crazy expensive to me to upgrade a system that pretty much works. A couple of questions. Is there a way that I can play the same music simultaneously from two receivers, from say my iPhone? Both of my receivers have Bluetooth as they are considerably newer (one is a Sony & the other an Onkyo), but only one will connect to my iPhone at a time to play music. 

The quotes are recommending Klipsch speakers for the family room and then lower-end in the rest of the house as we rarely listen to music, an amp for each paid of speakers throughout the house, etc. How can I do this for significantly less? Are there receivers where if I have two of them, I can connect them simultaneously to my iPhone? I'm just trying to see what I can do about my system without paying through the nose. Again everything mostly works and is already wired so I expected the job to be less than half that amount...or am I way off?

So what is your goal? Typically a whole house system is just for that, listening to music, which you say you rarely do. And whole house audio isn't cheap or easy, which is why a company like Sonos came to be.

They do make bluetooth splitters, essentially your phone connects to that and then the end points connect to the splitter. That may be an option.

 

[DocHolliday]

So what is your goal? Typically a whole house system is just for that, listening to music, which you say you rarely do. And whole house audio isn't cheap or easy, which is why a company like Sonos came to be.

They do make bluetooth splitters, essentially your phone connects to that and then the end points connect to the splitter. That may be an option.

Why not just go with Sonos throughout the house?  You control that by your phone by room.   Even set up is easy.  

 

[Wooderson]

I have a Sonos Amp arriving today. Hope to control my whole house in ceiling speakers with it.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

 

[James Daulton]

Does a whole house Sonos setup, with sub, cost around $5k?  It seems from browsing the Sonos site.

 

[Hawks64]

Why not just go with Sonos throughout the house?  You control that by your phone by room.   Even set up is easy.  

He asked for cheap. For me I'd personally go Sonos for the whole house and keep the TV setup. I like easy.

 

[glvsav37]

Another vote for Sonos. Our whole house is set up with them. I can play different things in every room—or not. In areas I dont have a speaker like in the back yard (next summer's project) I just unplug a tabletop one and bring it outside.

Yes, they are expensive, but we just added a speaker or 2 every year. Plus most of it is plug and play so there is no labor involved. 

for the ease of use (iphone app) and limited labor (no running wires back to a central receiver) you cannot beat Sonos. 

 

[T Love]

Thanks for the responses thus far! I’m not looking to go cheap, I just hoped that it would be around $4K-$5K rather than $10K. With Sonos do I need an amp with each pair of speakers? Is there a special receiver I need or is there one that you all would recommend? Would I be able to use the speakers for the TV setup as well or would they strictly be for playing music?

 

[Fat Nick]

So I have recently had luck using a combination of Amazon Echo Links, an external amp, and speakers.  I have no clue if this works with your wiring set-up, but the way I have it is that for each pair of speakers, I have 1 Link, 1 Amp (Russound 100 x 2), and 1 pair of speakers.  I name the speakers aligned with the room they are in.  I can then set up groups in the Alexa app to say "Play XXX on my deck" or "Play XXX everywhere" or "Play XXX downstairs," and it'll play that speaker or group.  The Amp is signal sensing, so it cuts off when not in use.  I have everything in my AV rack in the basement.  "Control" is via the Alexa app or just voice commands to an echo Dot.  Total cost is probably less than Sonos as you can leverage your existing speakers. 

Re. how to handle the TV - the Echo Link  and the Amp both have RCA and Toslink (fiber optic) inputs that you can plug in that will just pass-through and amplify and send to the same speakers.

Again, not sure if it will work, but I think it might.

 

[FBG26]

Another Sonos vote here. I just got a Sonos beam for the living room and am using that for TV and music. Eventually I'll hook up some Sonos Ones in the same room for 5.1 (ok, 5.0 since I won't have an amp), but the beam has 3 channels and sounds great. Super easy and sounds good; I couldn't be happier. 

ETA: Been a long time since I've done a big home theater set up (my setup now is super simple), but I wonder if he could replace his existing receivers with two Sonos Amps and drive the existing speakers that way. The two Sonos Amps would likely be able to push the same music to all of his existing speakers at the same time. 

Check out this article on using a Sonos Amp.