[bricksalt]

This may not be the right place for this question, but here goes.  I moved into a house that is pre-wired by previous owner for sets of speakers in the dining room, family room, kitchen, back deck, and four speakers in the basement ceiling.  All of the wires feed to one location in the study.  Nice problem to have, but I am not sure of the best way to amplify them all and have flexibility to switch between different combinations at different times.  I would like to use a music server/ internet radio combination as my source.  SOmething like the sonos or logitech duet.  I am familiar with the wireless solutions these provide, but it seems a shame to waste all of the prewiring by going with a fully wireless system.  ANy thoughts about the best way to configure the amplification?  Thanks for the help.

[electricbear]

The biggest problem with multiple rooms wires with speakers is control.
How do you change the volume or the source in a particular room without effecting all the others. Sonos is probably one of the most affordable and flexible solutions. Use a ZP120 on each pair of speakers and either put a network connection on one of them or put a Zone Bridge at your router. Use a CR200 or Iphone or both for control. You will be able to control each pair individually or group them together for party mode.

[Phil A]

There are products out there such as Channel Vision, Niles or http://multizoneamplifier.com/knoll-systems-gsz44-4-source-4-zones-amplifier/

[ctviggen]

There are no level controls in each room?  That's how I wired my house.  I split a signal four ways (outside deck, garage, kitchen and bedroom), but the speaker wire runs for each of the four paths run to an impedance matching level control.  This way, I put on the Squeezebox and have whole house audio.

[Phil A]

I went the cheap way when I did mine.  I ran speaker wire to locations from the bedroom and from two other locations from the main system.  I currently don't use what I ran from the main system.  From the bedroom system I have outdoor speakers, garage speakers (on a Niles volume control), dining room in-walls (on a Niles volume control) and office speakers (on a Niles volume control).  It wasn't important for me to change sources from the remote location (although I do have a couple of those plug in pyramid repeaters if I wanted to - the main system and bedroom system back to each other so I have them ready to control components in the next room).

[bricksalt]

Hi all.  Thanks for the input.  I appreciate all of the suggestions.  The previous owner wired for the speakers and installed the in wall speakers, but there are no separate volume controls.  Perhaps that was in plan but never got there.  Would a multichannel amp with a speaker switching box be a less expensive answer?  I know it is less convenient than sonos, but at this point I am trying to keep the price down.  Thanks again for the ideas.  Dave