BIG HELP NEEDED - help me wire/cable/hardware up the entire house!!

Hi all,

I'm in the fortunate position of currently building our next home and as the roof goes on next week the electricals/wiring will be starting soon after.

There will be one dedicated home cinema room in which I'm pretty sure I've sorted all the set-up and cabling requirements.

But, I'm hoping to be able to wire a set of speakers into the ceiling/floor of almost every room and run all the cabling back to a central point.

I also know of someone who has small remote control panels in each of their rooms that they are able to control all their music/tv/dvds/lighting and just about everything for every room and the whole house from each remote panel as it all feeds back to central amplifiers all run from a processor.

So the help I REALLY need is:-

1. Any suggestions on suitable & affordable (there are a lot of rooms!) ceiling or wall moutable speakers?Preferably flush mounting but would consider smallish speakers not flush mounted.

2. Does anyone know where I can find information/prices on possible Multi-Room 'remote' panel set-ups and the processing technology required?

3. Any ideas on the kind of wiring I would need to cable to these remote panels - will Cat 6 cabling suffice or am I likely to have to send power to these points also.

4. Any other threads in this forum that would help (had a quick look and not found any as yet)

All help MUCH appreciated.

[hornydragon]

http://www.qed.co.uk/acc/roomlink.html
Cheap but good control for IR to multiple rooms can use cat5 and is based on S4.4 MR system! some cheap learning remotes and a an Audio matrix switch is all you really need (sources and amps as well though!) Wiring is is simple enough, get lots of cat5 in and speaker cable, how many rooms and be sensible as cost is £4-600ish per room. This is my rule of thumb for hardware as a minimum!!!!!
Normal house we go for Masterbed + ensuite (subzone), Kitchen. Dining, Livingroom (normally has Hifi etc in it), outdoors, + what you want other beds, family bathroom and extras, games room, garage, where ever you spend time.Also try and spec TV in ensuite shower room and TV in bedroom on central system!

cheers horny - think a 'pad' system rather than an IR system may be favourite at the moment - its hard enough to get the mrs to work out the tv remote control! Like your other suggestions in speaker thread on MR system - looking into them - cheers.

Anyone know of any good independent dealers to speak to that really know their stuff?

[hornydragon]

contact QED and ask for local dealers for systemline and for living control try CSE http://www.csesolutions.co.uk/ for local dealers.

[suzywong]

Speakers: I don't know what they sound like but there's a lot of Linn Sweetspots up on ebay at the moment. you might be able to do something woth them.

Computer network. you must runn CAT5 to every room. We had the opportunity to do so when we moved to our present home eight years ago, because the whole house needed rebuilding & redecoration. I didn't think we'd ever need it, despite my IT-director-wife telling me we would.........

she was right...(and she's quite happy to remind me)....

......the LAN now has 4 fixed PCs and a couple of ports for notebooks.....but nothing into the lounge for streaming audio/video to the HC system...and the cabling is a mess!

[hornydragon]

Thats why you need a structured wiring cabinet and patch panels!

[suzywong]

Originally Posted by hornydragon

Thats why you need a structured wiring cabinet and patch panels!

That's what she-who-must-be-obeyed keeps telling me!