I have a client that had an OLD Niles system go belly up. He wants super basic as a replacement, so the plan is to go with a Speakercraft MZC66 with basic MKP keypads. He mentioned that one feature he had that he wants to still be able to do with the new system is turn on all the zones from a single location AND control volume throughout (all zones up, all zones down. Not individual zone volume levels). To my knowledge, with a MZC, the party mode only allows you to turn on the zones to a single source, but volume control throughout the all the zones is still separate. Can we program it to control volume up and down across all zones as well?

I've now officially replaced every MZC I sold at least 2x due to failure.

I like Speakercraft but the MZC is a failure-prone crap box.

Since I lugged yet another one off site today, I felt the need to vent on this idea.

As far as your question goes, I don't know of a standard command for party volume. Party on/off is easy, just hold down the power button.

Are you having failures with the units with fans built in? I had lots of failures with the old units without the fans, but haven't had any with. I know it is easy to set the system in party mode and do a full shutoff, its the system wide volume control I am unsure of. One thought is to give him a KP900/MRF350 and program a systemwide volume up, down, and mute, but it would be limited to one location.

The other issue in the house which eliminates certain systems is the keypads are wired with a 4 conductor wire. Speakercraft works fine with this, you just lost the ability to use an IR remote in each zone pointed at the keypad, which is no big deal.

If only you could program zone volume controls into different zones. I would have been able to just create a all volume button that switches to tier 2 with volume control for all zones. Unfortunately, I cannot do this. I think the KP900 would be the only option here.

would any of the failures be to humming in the zones when they were off? I got called to service one because the company that installed it had worn out their welcome and it had 2 zones just emitting a really loud buzz when the unit was on. Luckily for him he was only utilizing 4 of the 6 zones so swapping the 2 faulty zones to the 2 unused ones fixed the problem.

But in researching the possibility of adding an ipod dock to the system for him I saw there is an iphone ap if that would be any use.

I did hear about issue with the amp cards in the early units that created the buzzing like you mentioned. Depending on how old it is, Speakercraft would just send you the amp cards to swap out on site.

The iPhone app works through an external web server connected to the system via serial connection. I have had a lot of issues with that piece, and there is no app directly from Speakercraft. You just use the web address through Safari on the iDevice. It is very slow. There is a third part app on the app store that is much faster. I have found the best and fastest option is to use the iLED driver with Bitwise. The downside to that option is that I believe party mode does not work with it, although you do have access to each zone separately. Either way, the client is not interested in a mobile control solution. He just wants really simply.

Yep on the humming...

Speakercraft has a refurb exchange program on those.