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Wiring up my 12 zone house

Brin

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Dec 15, 2024
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Hello, im currently building a house, and am getting it insulated next month. Id like to have each of my rooms (12 zones total) hooked up to a single source before they roll in and cover the walls.

From my research, it seems like if i were to hook each zone up to an impedance matching wall mount attenuator, and set them all to 64 ohms, i could have all 12 zones powered by one amp (mcintosh mc500). To my math the draw would be 6ish ohms, and 20w per speaker.

Does this math make sense, and would that be enough volume for most small to medium sized rooms?

Thanks for your help in advance
 
With a $5K amp in the budget, I'd highly recommend wiring for true multizone amplification and possibly automation/control at each zone. There will come a day when you want different audio in different rooms, and you won't care less that a $5k stereo amp going through an impedance-compensated L-Pad isn't driving them (A multichannel/multizone amp with 1-channel-per-speaker is a way better option) :) ...

Save the esoteric 2-channel audio gear for your "money system", and use proven distributed/multizone audio for just that: whole-home-audio-distribution.
 
For now wiring is the most important part. I'd recommend running speaker wire and Cat5 (Ethernet) to each wall location where you expect to put a volume control, then speaker wire from there to where you expect the speakers to go. Many of the 'matrix' type multi-zone amplifiers use Cat5 to the control pads these days, which then communicate back to the amp for remote control IR signal, input / volume selection, etc.

Once you get to the point of choosing an amplifier, if you don't wind up needing the Cat5 then no harm, but it's there if you need it. I have a whole home audio system and I chose the Monoprice 10761 6 zone matrix amplifier, you can combine two of them for 12 zones if needed.

I am a McIntosh fan for HiFi but for my whole home system (ceiling mounted speakers at low to moderate volume) the much less expensive Monoprice amp is more than adequate. There are other multizone amplifiers available if you need more oomph, or you can rack up multiple two-channel amps. If you are distributing the same audio source to all the zones it is reasonably straightforward. It gets a little trickier if you want a matrix type system where you can choose among multiple sources for each zone.
 
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