Two sources to same speakers?

[ivoimg]

I am remodeling a hourse and will have in-wall speakers in everyroom. In some of the rooms they will be connected into a home theater amp that in the same room as the speakers. I am also installing a whole-house audio system where the amp is in a central control room. I'd like to use the same speakers for both, switching between them automatically or with IR.

Anybody know of anything out there that will work. I know there are manual switches I could buy, but I'd prefer something more automated.

[Snap]

The short answer is yes. I have seen an electrician try and install distributed audio into a house and he did the exact thing that you are talking about. You would need a speaker selector box, to run every thing too. (It ended up not working out to well and the home owners were not happy)

HOWEVER......I do not feel that what you are wanting to do is the right way to do it. You need more of a multi zone multi sorce AV reciever. I highly recomend that you do not wire your system the way that you are planning on doing it now.

What equipment do you have now, and are planning to get? This will help out greatly in answering your question better.

[dortiz]

You can have the speakers all tied back to the main system. Then in certain rooms you can install an in line device. There are two kinds. One is line level the other is speaker wire. If its line level you have things like your Tv hooked up to it. Now imagine you have the whole house audio on and decide to watch tv. As soon as you turn on the Tv the signal over rides the whole house audio and now you get TV sound out of the same speakers. The same device exist for speaker level. Same scenario. You have whole house audio and when you turn on the local source it overides and kicks in.
If you want to do it right do Crestron. You can have a local source like a CD player and still have Cat5e back to the main gear.
A good custom installer should be able to show you 5 ways to make this work.

[Snap]

Crestron! Dang Doritz go to the cream of the crop! Crestron is nice sure, but way over kill for this project wouldn't you think? I agree with Doritz talk to your local custom installer and he will be able to help you out.

There is some good new products out there that will acomplish this for you. Grey Fox, Niles, Xantech, Chanel Vision....just to name a few.

[Clive]

This may be lame, but, in the past I have used two receivers (1 dvd player and 1 cd player rspectively) to accomplish this task. First Rec. was the main used in the common room for HT/TV purposes I then tied in that Rec. to the second Rec. (audio monitor out to cd input) There were speakers installed in bedrooms, kitchen and out doors with separate Imped. matching volume controls. Kept the second Rec. in "All speaker Stereo" to drive all speakers. This way they could have music everywhere else while some-one is watching a movie or tie both receivers for whole house music and so on.

The person had an older pro-logic rec. so I just utelized it.

May also work for you :scratchhead:

[ivoimg]

Thanks for the Help

I found what I needed - Xantech SR21 Remote Speaker Relay Module. I have IR wired to each room so I can swich sources using a keypad. Thanks for the help.

[Snap]

Xantech Rocks. Love that company :yesnod:

[MarcoV]

Niles sells a small switcher that can be applied to the application you're asking about.