Theater and Whole House Planning

Theater and Whole House Planning

Jeff, The best way to approach a system like that is to split into at least two zones: the theater area and the rest of the house. That way,  you won't have to impose the TV sound onto the rest of the house. So you use two receivers: one a surround model the other just a stereo model. Sometimes folks will have an old receiver lying around out of service that would be fine for the whole house side of things. The TV area gets hooked up to the individual speakers in the TV room and the other receiver goes to a speaker selector and then onto the rest of the speakers in the remote areas of the house. You can use volume controls if you want in those areas to adjust for differences between rooms or turn down the music when the phone rings, but they are not a requirement. A 16-gauge 4-conductor wire is the easiest to use when wiring a house because it carries both your left right + and - wires in the same jacket. You can also use it for your short runs of left and right if you want and just use only 2 conductors inside and save yourself buying a second roll of just 2 conductor wire.
Name : Jeff Message : I am recently remodeling a house and wired it for an in wall surround sound for the living room and 8 ceiling speakers throughout the house. What kind of receiver do I need to be able to run all of these speakers at once, or be able to break them up into zones so I can determine which speakers I want to play? Also I am running 16 gauge 4 conductor wire as my speaker wire, a friend told me this was better to use than just regular 16 gauge wire, is this a smart move?

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