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re: Whole home audio - new construction

Posted on 1/16/18 at 7:38 am to
Posted by TheHarahanian
Actually not Harahan as of 6/2023
Member since May 2017
19522 posts
Posted on 1/16/18 at 7:38 am to
I wouldn't have a new house wired for audio.

Wireless tech is terrific now, and you won't have to pay more to have the house wired, and you can put your speakers anywhere you want without worrying about where the jacks are.
Posted by TigerWise
Front Seat of an Uber
Member since Sep 2010
35113 posts
Posted on 1/16/18 at 8:14 am to
quote:

you can put your speakers anywhere you want



If you use magic to power them
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/16/18 at 9:24 am to
quote:

If you use magic to power them


just acknowledge that sonos allows you to move speakers around until you've dialed in the sound and that plugging them in is no more difficult than plugging in a lamp.

Its far easier to find an outlet than it is to constantly re-fish speaker wire under the carpet or pull it through the attic or crawlspace.

CAD sonos speakers powered by magic

This post was edited on 1/16/18 at 9:50 am
Posted by TigerWise
Front Seat of an Uber
Member since Sep 2010
35113 posts
Posted on 1/16/18 at 10:23 am to
You buy these fancy one of a kind speakers that offer extreme flexibility for installation and that is where you put them ?

That looks like shite brah


quote:

constantly re-fish speaker wire under the carpet or pull it through the attic or crawlspace.


Nothing sucks more than having your home completely wired during the construction phase only to be constanly re-fishing the wires. Excellent point. Wired systems biggest down fall is the fact that you have to constanly re-fish wires. Nothing sucks more when you are ready to Netflix and chill than having to re-fish those wires again. Having a Super Bowl party ? Better re-fish those wires on Saturday.
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/16/18 at 10:45 am to
quote:

Nothing sucks more than having your home completely wired during the construction phase only to be constanly re-fishing the wires. Excellent point. Wired systems biggest down fall is the fact that you have to constanly re-fish wires. Nothing sucks more when you are ready to Netflix and chill than having to re-fish those wires again. Having a Super Bowl party ? Better re-fish those wires on Saturday.


brah do you even wife?

i ran wires in the crawlspace in my old house thinking i had the ideal living room setup including drilling holes in the damn hardwood floors to come up behind where I had the AVR.

she came in and rearranged the room and the wiring wasn't remotely in the right place afterward.

even just moving the whole TV setup slightly can frick things up unless you string EXCESS speaker cable under the house.

and dont give me the argument that putting wallfish outlets in the wall helps because you're still going to have to string & cut new speaker wire if you move your TV to a different wall.

for a dedicated home theater room? yes. that makes sense but i wouldn't dream of using sonos if i'm setting up a theater. just doesn't fit my lifestyle these days. i'm not that much of a tv-bug.

quote:

That looks like shite brah


but it sounds fricking off-the-chain. since i have nothing but acres and acres of woods behind my house i can turn these up to 8 or 9 (including sub) and you don't even hear them inside the house.
Posted by tilco
Spanish Fort, AL
Member since Nov 2013
13480 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 6:58 am to
quote:


Cuz Sonos is so cheap. $1400 for a sound bar and sub.


Cheaper than multizone big clunky receivers, speakers, installation costs, and a bunch of wires. And all you have to do is plug that shite into the wall and you’re done.

Plus like cad said. Play1s are $130 and you can fill your house with them. Much more practical than complicated whole home audio and in ceiling speakers.
This post was edited on 1/17/18 at 7:22 am
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 8:42 am to
quote:

Cheaper than multizone big clunky receivers, speakers, installation costs, and a bunch of wires.


You do know tigerwise puts food on his plate as a high end HA, AV and security installer right?

In his world if you don't let the professionals handle your door sensor programming with a $5,000 iPad only they are allowed to work on then you're a ghetto Walmart HA peon. HDMI and zwave is complicated stuff!

Who wants to manage the complicated nature of changing when a lightbulb turns on without calling in the experts!
This post was edited on 1/17/18 at 8:45 am
Posted by TigerWise
Front Seat of an Uber
Member since Sep 2010
35113 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 9:00 am to
I sell Sonos too. It's apples and oranges, people have different wants/needs. Sonos isn't the end all be all but it does make for a quick easy sale.
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 9:46 am to
sonos definitely has its limitations (cad has a great bitchfest on here somewhere just like i do about everything i own)

but i slowly came around when NOTICING businesses and home that had sonos in them, how great they sounded and realizing a few things:

1. even in CAD's most geekiness (including drilling a hole through my brick wall to run power & hdmi to an outdoor tv) i never had more than 2 outdoor speakers connected to my zone2 AVR. i've never had a house built and so fishing speaker wire to multiple rooms was not something i wanted to do. just had no interest in running wires between floors to 'hard-wire' a speaker in the room that i may never actually send audio to.

2. sonos changed EVERYTHING. toss a play:1 in ANY room of your house no matter how big your house is and you can, within 1 or 2 clicks play music in that room. Wife completely redoes the room? no problem. let the dust settle & plug in the sonos in its new location & re-run the trueplay calibration.

3. my house is literally filled with music now. just about every room i want to enjoy music in is now part of the system. because i ethernetted my playbar, sonosNET ensures even the speakers at the far ends of the house have no problem playing music.

4. the best thing ever is enjoying a cigar on the back porch and having the LSU game audio fill the room. no longer do i have to glance in through the window and wonder WTF is going on in the game?

5. i schedule music using the sonos alarm feature at specific times throughout the day; NO SPEAKER IS WASTED. i repeat NO SPEAKER IS WASTED. i wake up to the coffee being made and soft jazz playing in the main living room. its bliss.

6. if i want to bring the TV audio to the living room or anywhere, i dont even need a phone. i can literally just hold the power button down for 3 seconds on the speaker and its suddenly playing the tv audio (or whatever source is playing elsewhere..each time you hold it down it toggles through all the actively playing sources)

7. every room is now playing the same music. it makes my house feel more alive all the time in these instances. at the same time i can kiss the little one goodnight & play some white noise just on his speaker.

8. if i ever move, everything..EVERYTHING..comes with me. no perma-mounted ceiling speakers or expensive monster speaker cable left behind.

9. if you ever want to get out of sonos, you can pretty much sell it for the same price you bought it for. i'm sure that will eventually change but craigslist is still full of people selling play:1s for $150 even though you can buy it new on amazon for $139. stuff really holds its value.

10. because i 'reset the clock' by deciding to have a new baby, i just don't need a knock-you-out-of-the-house AVR theater surround setup anytime soon. maybe one day i'll start down that path again (when we have HDMI-5 and 16K tv lol) but for now, the AVR setup is relegated to the dustbin of 1990s technology for me.


tl;dr sonos brings 'whole home audio' to your house and makes avr 'zone 2' look like 1990s technology as far as normal people actually using and enjoying it.
This post was edited on 1/17/18 at 10:00 am
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 11:33 am to
2 downvotes after a detailed post explaining how sonos works

good talk. great rebuttal.
This post was edited on 1/17/18 at 11:34 am
Posted by Scooby
Member since Aug 2006
1881 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 11:57 am to
Long story short, I know and fully acknowledge that I can get a comparable/better setup for cheaper than my Sonos system. But again, ease of use and interface for my wife is what sold me. I also originally bought a single Play:1 several years ago, so I just added to that.

Example: we were at a neighbors house for NYE. They just recently finished a patio expansion. They had several people over, and we were enjoying some music. There came a point when the music suddenly stopped, and for like 5 minutes, they were occupied trying to figure out how to get the music playing again. On Sonos, my wife could have fixed it in 30 seconds tops.
Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 2:55 pm to
quote:

There came a point when the music suddenly stopped, and for like 5 minutes, they were occupied trying to figure out how to get the music playing again. On Sonos, my wife could have fixed it in 30 seconds tops.


In a forum with a bunch of alpha male techies this is what they will never admit. Sonos beats zone 2 with a baseball bat. Not even in the same universe.

Posted by BigPapiDoesItAgain
Amérique du Nord
Member since Nov 2009
2771 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 5:07 pm to
I love SONOS for its simplicity, and the fact that as long as you have a working internet connection, it works - it is pretty darn close to idiot proof, but with the SONOS speakers, the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired.

I mix wired speakers/SONOS speakers in my setup - the rooms where quality is important (my den and my media room) utilize two Connect(s) - one attached to a dual zone home theater receiver that drives some nice speakers in my den and on my deck (there is also another amp in that chain). The other Connect (courtesy of SONOS from a Beta test) is attached to an integrated amp in my media room and outputs to a quality pair of HiFi speakers as part of my two channel audio system. I also have SONOS players (P:3's I had before P:1's came out and P:1's) sprinkled throughout the house - kids' rooms, master bath, etc.

A configuration like this can get fairly expensive fairly quickly, but my feeling is that if you have new construction, and quality is important to you, I would make a wired component at least part of the system. The other thing I would encourage you to do is wire the heck out of the place with Cat6 - if you have a decent size house, having sonos components in different parts of the house that are plugged-in help spread the signal around nicely.
Posted by Marco Esquandolas
Member since Jul 2013
11426 posts
Posted on 1/17/18 at 8:50 pm to
I'm gonna stay outta this thread...


Posted by CAD703X
Liberty Island
Member since Jul 2008
78086 posts
Posted on 1/18/18 at 10:39 am to


"professionals not allowed"
Posted by flyAU
Scottsdale
Member since Dec 2010
24849 posts
Posted on 1/18/18 at 12:29 pm to
Meridian everywhere.
Posted by VABuckeye
Naples, FL
Member since Dec 2007
35549 posts
Posted on 1/19/18 at 7:38 am to
quote:

Meridian everywhere.


Well, that's certainly an inexpensive solution...not.

Not a huge fan of Meridian. It's just too sterile of a sound for me.
Posted by flyAU
Scottsdale
Member since Dec 2010
24849 posts
Posted on 1/19/18 at 8:17 am to
Love them.
Posted by VABuckeye
Naples, FL
Member since Dec 2007
35549 posts
Posted on 1/19/18 at 8:22 am to
I understand that. Their sound just doesn't fit my ear. That doesn't mean that they aren't great speakers. I'm more of a Dynaudio guy.
Posted by flyAU
Scottsdale
Member since Dec 2010
24849 posts
Posted on 1/19/18 at 9:06 am to
It helps that I got mine for 70% off. Friends with a dealer and got a pair that were being discontinued. Dynaudio is nice as well.
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