Multi-room installations with in-wall speakers- question

[Jason1131]

Thanks in advance for the help. I am attempting to set up a multi-room installation with in-wall home speakers. The home we purchased has speakers in every room and I am finally getting around to this. The amp I am picking up is an EPISODE DYNAMIC SERIES CLASS-D AMPLIFIER | 12 CHANNELS EA-DYN-12D-100. Picture below of the back. I want to be able to control the sound on each zone or group as many as possible. Playing different music in each zone is not as important as the volume in each of the zones. From what I understand, I need something like a SONOS port or Wiim (mini, pro plus) to control the streaming from a device. If I get 1 device and set up on the digital input, it sounds like it would play on all of the 6 zones and I would only be able to control all of them as one? If I need multiple streamers then it looks like they could all connect via RCA and then I could group and have more control. Do I have this correct? Any advice here on what hardware to purchase would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[staticV3]

From the User Manual:

 

[Jason1131]

OK, thanks for sharing. The Amp will be in the basement so I am assuming I would need to go there to control the volume in each zone. Or could the sonos port or Wiim control from my phone/device?

 

[staticV3]

OK, thanks for sharing. The Amp will be in the basement so I am assuming I would need to go there to control the volume in each zone. Or could the sonos port or Wiim control from my phone/device?

The Sonos/WiiM only has a single stereo output.
You can change the volume of all zones simultaneously from the Sonos/WiiM App, or you can change the volume of each individual zone from the Amp.

If you want to control each zone from the App, then you need to buy a separate streamer for each zone. Or a different Amp with App control.

 

[Jason1131]

Awesome, thank you. Last question. If i go with separate streamers is there any loss in audio quality if I use, for example, multiple WiiM mini's. Or is the right move to go with multiple Sonos Ports or at least WiiM pros or plus? Thanks so much.

 

[BarryTone]

From the Episode description:
Global Inputs
From single source with volume controls to independent sources at each room – or any combination in between – this amplifier has the flexibility you need. Global A/B provides two independent global sources that can be mapped to desired channel pairs – perfect for creating two different zones that each play a different kind of music.

So, you could buy 1 or 2 streamers (SONOS or Wiim) as your input sources, OR have a different streamer for each zone.

Other solutions could be - buy a Wiim Amplifier for each zone (on Crutchfield for $300) and have independent zone control, or synch them together with the Wiim app. So 6 zones * $300 would be $1800. You could do the same thing with SONOS but those amps are $700 each.

Yet another solution which I have used in a second home is a SONOS amp and a speaker selector with volume control: Monoprice SSVC-6.1 Single Input 6-Channel Speaker Selector with Volume Control if you want to listen to a single source in all zones - the selector does add attenuation but this is the cheapest solution. The SONOS solution allows you to add other SONOS speakers in the future as separate zones.

 

[DVDdoug]

In the old days, we'd put a speaker volume control in each room/zone.

Now, I'd probably put a separate little system in each room. Maybe TVs too.