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A Close Look at Whole House Audio/Video Basics

By David Tan
President, Home Automation Systems, Inc.

Whole House Audio/Video (AV) Basics

Whole house audio/video refers to a centralized audio/video system that pipes music and video/cable signals throughout the home. Because the system is centralized, the only components present in each room are speakers and TV screens. Control of the system is made through handheld remotes or wall mounted control panels. Whole House AV is becoming very popular because of the clean, uncluttered look. All the equipment is hidden away in one closet. (Some systems may have additional VCRs & CD players located in various rooms for convenience. If correctly configured, these VCRs & CD players can be viewed or listened to in the room they are located as well as any other room.)

What is Audio/Video Zoning?

Each zone is an area that has exclusive control of one or more components of your AV system. In most cases, you would want exclusive control of the amplifier/receiver that powers that zone. This would allow you to adjust volume, select the source (tuner, CD, Video etc.) that you want for that zone without affecting other zones. Therefore, you would typically have one amplifier/receiver per zone. To save on component costs, it is possible to share CD players, tape decks, VCRs, laser disc players etc. between different zones. However, shared or "common" components will be controllable by any zone. If you are listening to a CD in the living room and someone in the bedroom wants to change tracks, you will be subjected to their desires

More Powerful Amplifiers vs. More Amplifiers

Many people try to power 3 or more rooms from one high power amplifier/ receiver instead of using one lower power receiver per room. Unless the rooms are rarely going to be listening to music simultaneously, doing this may actually cost more and have lower sound quality and functionality. This is because the higher power amplifier together with the equipment needed to properly split the speaker output 4 ways simultaneously can cost more than two or more lower power receivers. Furthermore, because the output is being shared, it is not possible for each room to listen to different music. The recommended configuration is a high quality receiver for the main listening room and a lower cost receiver for each additional 1 or 2 rooms. Most modern receivers have outputs for 2 sets of speakers. The second set is ideal for driving speakers in an auxiliary room (such as room (C) in our example). It is possible to purchase receivers for under $150 that will be quite adequate for building a whole h ouse system.

Tip: When choosing components for whole house A/V, examine the remote carefully. Make sure the remote has all the functions that you want to control. Choose components that have separate buttons for the different functions rather than a toggle. For example: choose components which have remotes with separate ON and OFF buttons. If you choose a system with only one POWER button it will be difficult to tell whether you have turned the system ON or OFF.

How To Do It

Imagine having hi-fi music in every room of your home with nothing more than an elegant wall mounted keypad and virtually invisible in-wall or in-ceiling speakers showing - Very neat and actually easier to operate than a regular system.

Putting together such a system is actually easier and more affordable than you may imagine. Standard stereo components can be used (as long as they have IR remote control capability). The 4 main steps in putting together such a system is as follows:

1) Home run speaker cable from each room back to the stereo system. (The stereo system is usually hidden away in a cabinet.)

2) Run 3 conductor control wire from each room back to the stereo system.

3) Attach each control wire to a connecting block & power supply, plug the mini emitters into the connecting block and stick them to the IR sensor windows of the appropriate audio/video components.

4) Attach the speaker cable to the speakers in each room, then attach the IR control wires to the IR sensors and/or IR control keypads.

In essence all that is being done is to extend the speaker cables so that you can hide away the stereo, and to provide a means of controlling the hidden stereo system through an IR signal transmission system.

Below is an example of a typical 3 Zone System:

Room (A) & Room (B)

Each room has exclusive control over its volume, choice of radio station, and choice of shared components. They have shared control over the "COMMON" components, the CD player, Tape Deck, and VCR, meaning that either room can change the CD track that is being listened to. In room (A), control is possible from a handheld remote as well as from a wall mounted keypad, while in room (B) control is only possible from a handheld remote.

Room (C)

This room only has control over the volume of the music in that room. It will receive whatever music is chosen in room (B). This configuration is useful for inexpensively adding music to a location such as the garage or a bathroom.

You can modify the configuration to your own requirements. For example: you may want to have wall mounted keypads in every room. Or, you may wish to add a CD player that is for the exclusive use of Room (A). Adding additional rooms to the system is just a matter of adding additional amplifier/receivers together with speaker wires and control wires.

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