I've recently moved into a new home that has in-ceiling speakers in a few spots, and I'm looking for the most cost-effective way of sourcing them.
My setup:
- 2 speakers in the living room, 2 speakers in the kitchen, 4 speakers outside split into zones of 2 speakers each
- Each pair of speakers is connected to a volume control knob, so there are 4 volume control knobs total
- Each volume control knob is wired to the media closet where they meet up in a single wall plate of 4 banana plug jacks
To summarize:
What I'd like to be able to do:
- Play music in these 4 zones via Spotify and Pandora at a minimum, but additional services would be a nice bonus
- Control what's played through an iOS app
- Ideally, I would be able to play different things in different zones simultaneously
My nice-to-haves:
- I'd like to be able to trigger music via Echo commands (e.g. "Alexa, play ____ on Spotify in the kitchen)
- There is a TV in the living room and a TV in the outdoor area between the 2 outdoor zones. I'd love to have the option of playing the audio of whatever is on those TVs over the speakers as well. The indoor TV has an eARC port, and there's a chase pipe to the media closet where the audio components will be, so that one seems simple in theory. The outdoor TV will be connected to a Fire TV Stick with no chase pipe available, so I imagine that one would be trickier.
A family member highly recommended the Sonos Amp, but it seems to be mostly unavailable unless you're willing to pay the absurd asking price on the used market. I've heard there's a new version coming out sometime in July, so that could potentially be an option, although I'd like to not wait that long to be honest.
I spoke to someone at Crutchfield who recommended 4 Denon Heos Links paired with a 4-zone amplifier such as
this one. That solution comes in around $2,000 which seems steep, but this is my first time putting something together like this, so maybe that's typical. It sounded like this setup would cover my first list of requests, and the product description of the Heos Link says it works with Alexa commands, so that's just about everything I'm looking for I guess. Would that be a good setup? Is there something that would be better bang for my buck?
Thanks in advance!
