Back in 2000, when the pandemic first started, my wife and I chose to renovate our whole house, inside and out. It was a massive – and expensive – project, that involved opening our lower level up, removing a wall from between the kitchen and the living room, and reconfiguring some portion of lower level living area, as well as expanding one of the upstairs bedrooms. This level of renovation caused us to rip open many walls and ceilings, creating an opportunity for me to run wiring throughout our house where I might never have considered previously.
In thinking through my options, I decided to pull not only CAT6 (network cabling) just about everywhere I could, but to also pull speaker wire into six different zones, including a pair of wire to each guest bedroom, and two pairs into the master suite (one pair in the bedroom and one pair in the bath). The other zones included the living room/kitchen (now one connected space), the den, and the back patio.
In addition to the speaker wiring and the CAT6, I also pulled HDMI back to my “wiring closet”. I had previously pulled coax with DC power cables to the same closet for analog security cameras. The wiring closet I was using was actually the “ugly” closet that housed our hot water heater (traditional tank). During our remodel, however, I replaced the hot water heater with a tankless model, which freed up alot of space in that closet.
For the whole home audio, I elected to go with a model from Monoprice. I have been a loyal Monoprice customer for years and was quite familiar with their business model. “Loyal” may not be the best word, though, but at least “frequent” (I have no affiliation with Monoprice and have never received anything of value from them outside of a standard customer arrangement). Across my six zones, the system provides six different inputs. I have a small FM radio that plays 24/7 on one input. I have an Android TV that plays music from playlists across my MP3 collection 24/7 on another. I have one input tied into my primary TV streaming box. Another input is fed by my old Google Chromecast Audio dongle (so my wife or I can steam/cast audio from our phones anytime we want), and finally, another input is fed off of my A/V receiver. I still have one spare.
Then I have keypad controls in every zone, which makes for fantastic way to control music in practically any room of my house.
I’ll add more to this post over time, but I wanted to get something up here as a placeholder at least.