When building a new home, remodeling, or finishing out a basement, many homeowners consider enhancing their living spaces by adding speakers in multiple areas of their home. Once truly a luxury item that only the wealthy could afford, has in recent years become very cost effective, easy to install, and more importantly very easy to operate. The result of a properly designed system is an experience that brings the house to life similar to the way accent lighting can enhance the mood of the house.
When an audio source is distributed to multiple listening areas, known as audio zones, the system is called whole-house audio. It does not matter if it is 2 zones or 24 zones and it usually isn’t a question of if one wants or doesn’t want wholehouse audio, but based on my budget, how many zones and where do I put speakers? In most homes a designed 4–6 zones of audio is a very good coverage and most systems are configured to accommodate 4 or 6 zones. Typically the zones that are the most popular include the Kitchen and Grilling Area or Deck. These are then followed by the Master Bedroom, then depending on one’s lifestyle, we will see either the Dining Room, Home Office, or a Basement Rec Room. Based on my experiences I find that the Dining Room will be a choice if the homeowner has frequent sit down dinners, entertains regularly, or if the Dining Room is positioned just off of or near the foyer, where it can serve Music while greeting guests. When it comes to speakers in the home office, I find that a person is either the type of person that can work effectively with music going or you are not. Doesn’t seem to be much of a middle of the road with this room. If you are the type that benefits from background music while you work then you may want to consider adding speakers to your office. Remaining areas that often will be considered are the Master Bathroom, Terrace patio, Pool Areas, and believe it or not garages. Garages have really become into their own in recent years with the specialized floors and organized cabinets. The areas have been transformed into a livable extension to the house with many homeowners adding TVs as well as speakers. Audio can be listened to while working in the garage, playing basketball in the driveway, or working in the yard.
Now that you have a better understanding of where to put speakers, how do you control the source equipment feeding the speakers? There are two primary
types of whole house audio systems. There are single-source and multi-source systems. Either way the sound is great, it becomes a choice of how you interface with the source equipment. In a single source system, you can have many sources, typically stacked in the Family Room Cabinet. Whichever source is being played, for our example lets say the CD player is playing, each and any of the zones (rooms) can choose to turn on/off the audio or select a volume setting, giving individual control in that particular zone. If the CD is paused, then the audio is paused in every zone. With a true multi-source system, you have the ability to listen to multiple sources simultaneously throughout the house. For example, Dad can be grilling out while listening to the Braves game out on the back deck, while Mom is listening to a Jazz CD in the Kitchen while preparing the appetizers, while another family member is in the Rec Room listening to an MP3 player all at the same time, all with individual on/off and volume setting controls in each zone. In addition, multi-source systems typically come with the ability to do IR control from any keypad. This gives each zone separate control of the source equipment as well such as pause, stop, next disc, channel up, next song, etc. This really gives the homeowner the ability to control their equipment without having to run up and down the stairs.
With multi-source systems you can have 1-6 different sources available in the system configuration. Typically the input sources incude, a receiver (AM/FM), cable or satellite TV, CD player, and an iPod interface. In addition some homeowners will include the DVD player to have another CD option or
maybe satellite radio. Another good source finding its way into many homes is a media server. A media server is a great source to consider adding to the mix. With a media server you store all of your CDs on the hard drive and then you can access them through the TV display. This solves a problem that most of us have, where is that CD?, and worse, the larger the collection, the harder it is to catalog and keep track of. A media server does that for you and you can select the songs to be played by artist, album, genre, or create playlists. Media servers often allow 2 or 3 outputs (streams) which means that ;eventhough, there is one collection, family members can listen to 2 or 3 differenct cds at the same time with gapless playback between songs. Now you can store the CDs out of the way and have instant access to your music collection.
There are additional whole-home systems that not only distribute audio sources, but there are systems available that will distribute video, control lights, control HVAC, and security into one easy to control interface. The industry leaders for these types of systems are Crestron, Control4, and HAI. In future Blogs you will hear more about these manufacturers and the benefits of their systems.
Whole-house Audio gives you the experience of elegant entertaining with your favorite background music whispering around you as your guests mingle from room to room. Or maybe it’s the big game and you turn your cable/satellite box to the correct channel, mute the volume on all the tvs, and adjust the volume in the different zones to give you the “We are the Champions” stadium affect. You will be able to hear the action as you break to the kitchen for your favorite beverage or to the foyer to sign an autograph for an admiring guest that wanted to personally thank you for the invite. Other experiences allow family members to all listen to their own source or style of music without disturbing others or for one person to do their impersonation of Tom Cruise in “Risky Business”, while air-guitarring to high-impact sounds throughout the house. Entertaining not your bag?, that’s okay, the true beauty of wholehouse audio isn’t having the ability to crank up the music all over the house, but rather the ability to turn audio on in one zone while not disturbing others that are in another zone. Again I will us the lighting as an example. It will allow you to use a reading lamp to bring just enough audio to a room without having runway lights going out a room and down a hallway. Wholehouse Audio allows you to listen to soothing sounds while you grill out, read a book, or maybe listen to the news while you exercise or do your daily chores.
These are all experiences that occur in many homes that I step foot into and I invite you to create your own experiences as you Move Into Music.
Mark Hardy
Vice President
Digital Interiors - West
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