My 2 cents.

First, wireless scares me. What's the name of the Canadian company that sends control down speaker wire? (matrix?) How about one of their systems?

Second, go to an IR based head end. The CAV is not going to allow your protocal to work. Consider the PR4Z from Russound, the venerable ZPR68-10 from Xantech. Use either an IR based system like the mx800, with each zone having an assigned port on the receiving base. Those systems are buss assigned, as opposed to code assigned, so routing at the base is critical,

If you want an LCD touch panel, consider Viewsonic's Airpanel bundled with the M plus software and the global cache. Add one of the On-Q wireless access points and range issues should be addressed.

Note you will lose status information from the system; you won't get the onscreen indication of radio or track from this like you would would with the CAV system.

I'd suggest that it might be worth while to run keypad wires; the flexibility and reliability will make up for inconvenience.