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Finally, the link to the home page, [http://www.a-bus.com/]

You may also want to check out Sonos (http://www.sonos.com). No wires required.

Coreman,

Before I chime in on some options and things to consider, can you give myself and other loyal readers some idea of what your needs/uses/desires are for the system?

For example:
- Is this an audio only system or will you also be pulling coax/RG6 to each of those same spots?
- are you looking to control volume from multiple rooms?
- are you looking to control input/content from multiple rooms?
- what kind of audio are you looking to do whole house? Music (ie. Stereo), Movies (one zone with multi-channel)?
- do you want the ability to have on zone playing one source (ie. betime music for baby is baby room) and another zone playing another (archives of your heyday as a radio DJ in the living room)?
- are you interested in injecting content into the system form multiple rooms (ie., walk into room such as the study, jack in laptop or iPod and prvide audio to house)?
- will you have some sort of home theatre structured wiring that needs to mix in with this system
- what amps/audio gear are you looking at buying or already have to drive this system?

And one last general structured wiring question - for each room, what basic cabling are you currently planning to pull?

Ok, good call Victor. I have all the ideas in my head, and of course you guys aren't doing the MindLink with my brain via this blog facility....

C

Here is what I want to do;

- distribute audio from FM tuner/CD/PC to 6 zones in home

- main source of listening enjoyment is FM tuner, with secondary listening source being CD

- for each room, I want to be able to select the source, so different rooms can listen to different sources

- for each room, there will likely be a keypad, wired via CAT-5 back to the headend control system

- each keypad will do source selection, volume, on/off for zone, and on/off for all zones (at a minimum)

- good question about local sources like iPod. Not a big one on the list, a WBN (would-be-nice) but not required. I will be linking the PC with the headend so I can distribute streamed audio though.

- not too big on 'home theatre' with all the fancy sound, as our video-renting days are over. But, I plan to wire the living room for this while the walls are open.

- Current equipment includes the usual suspects like AM/FM receiver/amp and CD. plus turntable.

Structured wiring:

- I am planning on having dual-coax (RG6), dual phone, and dual-data (CAT5) for data in 5 rooms

- home-run configuration

There are lots of options out there in the market now. I am attracted to a couple of multi-room amplifiers that have remote keypad controllers for 4/6 sources and 4/6 zones (or more).

Conceptually quite easy : amps drive speaks over speaker wire. Controllers link via CAT-5 to controller. Done.

I'm a bit stuck on considering this A-Bus thing, which sends the digital audio signal over CAT-5 for local in-keypad amplification. Haven't seen or heard that kind of setup before and want to check it out a bit more....

C