Occasionally, I'll do a restaurant or bar and there is always ZonePRO. It makes a huge difference and I can sleep at night knowing that the cleanup crew cannot blow up the system.

Zone Pro is a fine tool, as are the newer QSC Premium Business Music products. Both brands are audio matrix devices, but the QSC offers some nifty update control options (iPad, color lcd keypads). Each has appropriate applications...

I was thinking Dante from the beginning of this thread as well

Hey all. Someone had asked what i wound up doing. So here’s what I did.

This system is a combination of his own equipment, and newer items.

We did a 5.1 system in his main room with a new Yamaha receiver. The Zone two pre-out from that receiver goes to this distribution amp from Rolls:

[Link: rolls.com]

The pass through goes to the CD input of another Yamaha receiver that he had. It powers four speakers in the kitchen/ dining area next to his main room with the 5.1 system.

The variable outputs on the Rolls go to:

1. Audio balun over Cat6 to his office audio system.

2. Audio balun over cat 6 to his garage into another Yamaha receiver.

3. shielded/twisted pair stereo cables to office floor below (about 15ft) into the aux in on a pair of computer speakers.

4. Shielded / twisted pair stereo cables to bedroom floor below (about 25ft) to aux in on a Bose Wave Radio.

I controlled everything with a Harmony Pro-2400 with activities that work for either the main room, the main room/kitchen/, and an everywhere party activity. He can control the volumes on the three receivers all from within the app or using the remote.

I included an all zone mute so he can quickly kill the music everywhere to answer the door or whatever.

Everything works well. The Harmony 2400 does a great job of making everything easy to control. No noise or ground loops thankfully.

The client uses mostly the main room and kitchen. He is super happy.

His processor for his DJ/computer music set up has a line level audio out so that we ran into the receiver. It works fine. He has been warned that at some point someone could quite possibly damage his system with this set up connected to it. I advised him to do some research on the best practice for using a compressor or something. But that it’s a work around and that he is inviting disaster.

Craig

This is excellent.


Well, 4.1 perhaps? Or, if no sub, just a 4.0?



The people who don't have this soon learn that they want it. It's easier to build in than to retrofit, so kudos!


For reference you should check to see if there's infinite resistance between all conductors on the input of the baluns and all conductors on the output. That means the balun is a ground isolator, which is the most straightforward way to have no noise from ground loops.


This will always be subject to instant ruination by someone who turns things up too loudly, so a compressor would be a good idea. But then you have to be sure that the guy who would turn things up too far cannot get to the compression control.

A good unit would be the Behringer Q802USB Xenyx 8-Input 2-Bus Mixer with USB/Audio. It's got two channels of compression. Most available compressors are rack mount units, which could be a problem. This, though, is a small version of a PA board, so it's also not built to fit into an A/V system. But it would work for him!

If you decide to add that unit, be careful to get that exact model. Behringer uses the same panel layout for at least one other product, which doesn't have the compression.

The main room receiver is the 5.1 system. The second receiver for the kitchen is set up with no centre and no sub.

The baluns do include a ground loop isolator according to the manufacturer.

I will look into the Behringer product you mentioned. He still has some kitchen construction to do and at some point this system will be moved into a cabinet mounted roll out rack to rack mountable is fine.

Thanks for the tip.

Craig

Wireless sub TX/RX is easy and it works, as long as it doesn't have to go too fat or pass through a SubZero fridge or in a quasi-Faraday Cage like the house I did a few years ago.



Right- some baluns don't de-couple the input from the output and while is does convert from one cable type to another, it still allows ground loops to make like a living hell.



A good way around that is to mount it with a cover that's held in place with security screws and don't even tell the user it's there or what's behind the cover.



Some companies make rack mounts for small mixers, whether flat or wedge-shaped. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to adapt a flat one to make the angle variable, with hinges than can be locked in place or with a lid support that has a lock screw.

ART has at least two models of rack-mountable compressor/limiters that sell for $179, so those would be a good option.

[Link: musiciansfriend.com]

[Link: musiciansfriend.com]

I specifically looked for baluns with ground isolation as I knew I was inviting them by tapping into systems plugged in all over the house. Normally I home run all tbt power for subs, displays, etc to the rack to inlets so they can all be in the same circuit and share the same surge protection, but in a case like this it would have been too much. The kitchen and main room are all in their own dedicated circuit, but not the other areas.

Thanks for the tips. The kitchen won’t ever get a sub. All of the ceiling mounted speakers are actually large book shelf speakers with 6” woofers. Haha. This guy loves music and already had the speakers. The whole main floor sounds amazing. Certainly the best sounding ceiling set up I’ve ever done.

In this picture you can see most of the main room. The speaker directly to the left is one of the 4 in the kitchen.

[img][/img]

I’ll check out the ART pieces as well.

Maybe. I recently encountered an ancient, monster system in a house that consists of multiple B&O Master Link systems, TV's, CD players, and a wall of VCR's on modulators -- all interconnected. There was a vicious ground loop in one room and lessor loops in other rooms. In the vicious room someone had installed a ground loop isolator (that's what it said on the small utility box case). Their idea of "isolator" was series capacitors. This would satisfy the "infinite resistance" test, but it was not very effective as a ground isolator in this situation. We replaced this thing with a Jensen transformer isolator. While this did not eliminate the minor loops in other rooms, the customer could live with the result. If I attempted to cure all of the loops, I'd probably still be crawling the house, looking for units built into hidden cavities and installing a dozen or more isolators.

This guy loves 'complicated'. That wall of VCR's is a tangled mess of VCR's receivers, modulators, switch boxes and who knows what else. I refused to touch that wall.

At some point he may come to his senses and modernize. Money was never an issue. However, I'm not sure if a modern system will be 'complicated' enough to operate.

Awesome. Reminds me of the set up for the “video wall” we had back when i worked at future shop. Actually... wayyy back. Time flies.

See Post 19, even though some things still seem to be up in the air.


What is "tbt"?


It will be. I don't see DJ software as having been designed in such a way that consumer audio, especially speakers, are protected. And if that DJ software is fed a signal from a microphone, it's too too easy to blow up the whole thing by dropping a mic.

eidt: added the first two lines.

Will do.