Audio Distribution Reccomendation

Hello All,

I am planning on having a audio distribution system installed into my house. I have been looking into the vast amount of different systems out there and was hoping some of the installers or people on this forum who have an installed audio distribution or have audio distribution systems could provide me with some candid feedback on which system/s I should be seriously considering. The reviews out there seem to vary.

What i am looking for in the system is:

7 Different Audio zones with local wall mounted controllers in each room, all cabling / equipment will be installed into a 12ru network cabinet in the garage.
I also do not require any video distribution and I am not interested in wireless, I can't stand wireless products they just annoy me.

In terms of the available wiring in my house I have a complete blank slate, I need to do network and wire installation regardless so I am not fussed if the system operates on a cat5e/6 backbone with local audio runs or all audio runs are required to be back to base. I will be installing a cat6 structured cabling system for my data network regardless so running speaker wire is don't be an issue.

1. 1 Study
2. 2 Bedrooms
3. 2 Outside areas which are independent of each other and separated
4. 1 combined kitchen / meals / family
5. 1 TV room

Three of the zones should have local audio input (1 tv room [*this may not be required explanation below], 1 bedroom and 1 office).

Most zones will have x1 pair of speakers, however with the kitchen zone it is quite large and I would like to have x2 pair speakers to cover the area. I noticed on most of the systems that they only recommend / display x1 pair of speakers in their literature which concerns me about the quality of the sound if x2 pair of speakers are installed in serial format within that area (I am looking at installing something like the Polk SC60 8 ohm speakers for the inside areas) so ideally a system which could support that. I have done some reading on the impedance drop and it's effect on power draw hence I would appreciate some guidance on this.

Finally and this is simply a nice to have in the TV room I would like to have 5.1 surround sound what would be the best way to deal with this ? Simply have the surround sound system and speakers to be an independent system or is there something that I know about that can deal with this. I have basically come to the conclusion that in the realms of audio distribution this is extremely difficult or even not possible.

Finally I live in Australia, I am not sure of the relevance of this apart from a power and system availability perspective. I am also prepared to spend money for a decent system so money within reason shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks in advance for any feedback or guidance that can be provided.
Edited by mundz - 9/1/12 at 5:13pm

That's the conclusion that I came to but the lazy man inside me thought to ask the question as I know systems like A-BUS remove back to base speaker run requirement but I was suspicious about the performance of such systems that used this.

Do you know of any specific brands / models that allow this, as this is what I was hoping could be done.
It sounds like you have a system installed in your house, what system do you run ?


I thought this would be the case. To be honest It's not such a big deal for me. I would like and I know many of the systems allow for this, to be able to pickup the audio source for this room to pay in the house. IE sporting events etc. So this isn't such a big issue.

Thank you very much for the reply.