I just finished a nice install for a client and he's thrown me a curve ball...

He has 3 seperate systems, a 5.1 HT in his FAMILY ROOM (high end), a 5.1 HT in his STUDY (htib), and a WHOLE HOME distributed system which is located in his study but the speakers are located throughout the house.

He always asked for the systems to be seperate so they could all be used independantly but now he want the WHOLE HOME audio to feed the FAMILY ROOM and STUDY as well.

The WHOLE HOME has 3 sources an IPOD DOCK, a RUSSOUND SMS3 MUSIC SERVER, and an APPLE AIRPORT EXPPRESS (sounds redundant I know but it does work for his family) and feeds a ROTEL RC 1070 PREAMP which goes to a stereo power amp and a RUSSOUND 6 PAIR SPEAKER SELECTOR BOX (of which we are only using 4 pairs of speakers).

So it sounds like I have 4 possible soultions:

1) Feed the extra 2 SPEAKER SELECTOR outputs to the 2 rooms on NEW SPEAKERS (which would be a real problem because the speakers are all hidden and adding more is impractical)

2) Feed the extra 2 SPEAKER SELECTOR outputs to the 2 rooms on the CURRENT L/R SPEAKERS. (that would be really bad if someone tried to use the 2 systems talking to those speakers at once though)

3) Install (3) 1x3 AUDIO DISTRIBUTION AMPLIFIERS, one on each source and then feed each PREAMP/PROCESSOR line level from those. (I do have 1 spare cat 5e cable going to each system from the whole home closet)

4) Take the 2nd line level output from the ROTEL RC 1070 (it has 2) and feed it to a 1x2 AUDIO DISTRIBUTION AMPLIFIER and send those to the PREAMP/PROCESSORS on the HT systems. (that would create 2 gain stages though by sending the preamp out of the WHOLE HOME system to the line-ins of the HT's)

Anyone have any other ideas or advice on this?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

How about taking a fixed tape output off of the Rotel, splitting it with a simple "Y" and sending the feeds to aux inputs on the HT preamps?

AHEM,

WOW great answer!! Thanks so much. The Rotel has 2 (presumably fixed) tape outs. I need to check if they are always active. Would splitting one of them attenuate the signal too much? I could use a small 1x2 da or I could use both of them and feed one to each.

In any case thanks for the great suggestion,

Steve

Sonance AS-1 automatic A/B speaker selector. Feed unused speaker outs from speaker select box and take to the amps in the other two rooms. One output of AS-1 goes to the speakers. The default input for the AS-1 is house music from the Russound box. The sensing speaker level input is from the local system. So, house music plays until they turn on the local system; then when you turn off the local system, the sound kicks back to house music (time delay adjustable).

Recently used a couple of these and they are excellent. One room was a two channel room; routine; the surround sound room we just ran house music to the front two speakers alone.

HTH.

Niles has a similar A/B switch, and we've used them before. They work well. Now we run line level when possible...

I vote for the Sonance/Niles auto a/b switch solution... I have used them many times.

Those auto a/b switches sound like the way to go. I think I am going to go that route unless the client balks at the price, in which case I'll tell him about the tape out solution.

Thanks again. This is a great forum.

Steve