Bought a house thats pre-wired...need help!!!!

Any in-room volume controls?

By surround sound wallplate I assume you mean the connection for five speakers with locations in the room? That one is easy - just put an AVR there and you're done.

Assuming the rest of the speakers go to the basement, the choices will depend on your budget, desired functionality and the number of rooms. Simplest solution would be a Sonos Connect:Amp unit and an impedance-matching speaker selector. That would give you an all-or-none approach - dividing those rooms into their own zones would be the next step up - which could be individual Sonos units, or an RF-controlled speaker selector like the Aton DLA series.

Jeff

+2 Jeff on Sonos. Make it easy on yourself.

A few more investments:
1. Labeler
2. Put together some leads with banana clips on both ends
3. Cheap current meter

Spend a few hours mapping and tidying your wires. I like the idea of faceplates or patch paels even in the wiring closet, but in any case, you should use your banana clip leads to connect the red and black in each room then test which wire is shorted out. Label it for that room and move on.

(Connect:Amp is the one you'd want). Yes, and if there's more than two pairs, you'll need an impedance-matching speaker selector.

If you'd like something better than the all on/off (that doesn't require you to go to the basement to make the selections - which make the system almost unusable), look at the Aton DLA speaker selectors which have an RF remote control option. They come in 2/4/6 room models. (If you only need two pairs, I have one of those sitting here new I can sell you)

http://www.atonhome.com/DLA_SpeakerRouters.html

Jeff

Yes. Couple things... you'll need multiple Sonos Connect Amps. One Connect Amp can power up to two pairs of speakers. If you have more than that, you'll need more Connect Amps. Also, the more Sonos devices you have, the more indvidual control you get; that is, independent volume control for each Sonos unit and individual source selection for each Sonos unit. Though you can always have them playing the same music (and still change the volume for each zone).

And for your surround sound zones (master bedroom and LR), you can get the Sonos Connect and plug it into your AVRs. That will then connect those rooms to the rest of your WHA system.

To connect three pairs of speakers to any amplifier (an AVR or a Sonos Connect:Amp), you will need an "impedance-matching" device, otherwise you'll damage the amplifier and it will break. for your situation, the cheapest impedance-matching device will be a speaker selector with that function built-in, such as:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2462600

And yes, you would place the Sonos "Connect:Amp" in the basement, run its output to the speaker selector, and the three pairs of speakers attach to it. You can choose to turn on/off any of the rooms (zones) at the selector, as long as you're willing to go to the basement to do that.

The Aton unit has an optional RF remote control, so you can make those selections from anywhere in the house instead of going to the basement.

The difference between an AVR and the Sonos unit is a matter of music sources. The Sonos unit has digital library support, Pandora, Internet radio, etc. and is intended to be controlled from a mobile device app. While many AVRs also have these capabilities, the ease of use of the Sonos product makes it a better choice for this application. There is also the P100 / P200 product from NuVo that competes with Sonos - it's very new, though.

Jeff

Terminology check - we're not talking about "surround sound" in the 5.1 movie soundtrack definition. We're talking about "whole house audio", aka background / party / ambient music.

Correct, if you get the (optional) RF remote control. But remember the Aton is just a speaker selector - it is not an amplifier. You still need the Sonos with the built-in amp, or something else like it to feed an amplified signal to the speaker selector.

So you can listen to the TV audio in other rooms? You'll need to wire your set-top box, or the TV's analog audio output if it has one, down to the basement to feed into the Sonos line-input. Or you can buy another Sonos for your family room setup, connect to that one, and let the two network together to get the signal to the other rooms. There are some other wireless audio transmitter/receivers that may work for you, too.

Jeff