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Wiring Question, unclear on some points.

357 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by joe277, Feb 24, 2014

BoughtAHouse

Discussion Starter · Feb 19, 2014

Forgive me if any of this seems silly. I just recently bought a new house and I am trying to get all the wiring done at once.

So I have a computer that is set up to run three virtual machines via VMWare. Each of the virtual machines has its own physical screen and inputs, a TV, a monitor in my dance room, and a touchscreen in the kitchen. This works sitting down and fiddling with it, I haven't installed any wiring in the house to make it run. I am going to wire the house for Cat6 and HDMI. The touchscreen requires a USB connection which I think will require an extender of some kind. The basic idea being I have a monitor+sound in the dance room for playing music and reviewing videos of lessons, a touchscreen in the kitchen for storing and accessing recipes, to-do lists, etc., and one connection to a TV so that the system is also acting as an HTPC. There is a separate NAS box, as well, but that isn't an issue.

My primary question concerns sound. I am not sure if I can continue to use the one computer running virtual machines to create a multi-zone sound system. I've never done this before and it is daunting. I am not sure if I need to, or should, run speaker wires or from where to where. Small speakers that I could drop through the ceiling and then seal the holes seem very easy to do for my current arrangement (I had to have all the insulation vacuumed out of my attic, so I currently have a clean workspace up there to do all this wiring before I get it re-insulated). I'm kind of rambling because I have all these ideas but I want a clear plan before I do any actual work or buy anything.

If anyone has any feedback, suggestions, or personal experience with this idea of using a single computer running virtual machines to output to multiple terminals, I'd love to hear about it.

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tadr

· #2 · Feb 19, 2014

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoughtAHouse /t/1518625/wiring-question-unclear-on-some-points#post_24377436

Forgive me if any of this seems silly. I just recently bought a new house and I am trying to get all the wiring done at once.

So I have a computer that is set up to run three virtual machines via VMWare. Each of the virtual machines has its own physical screen and inputs, a TV, a monitor in my dance room, and a touchscreen in the kitchen. This works sitting down and fiddling with it, I haven't installed any wiring in the house to make it run. I am going to wire the house for Cat6 and HDMI. The touchscreen requires a USB connection which I think will require an extender of some kind. The basic idea being I have a monitor+sound in the dance room for playing music and reviewing videos of lessons, a touchscreen in the kitchen for storing and accessing recipes, to-do lists, etc., and one connection to a TV so that the system is also acting as an HTPC. There is a separate NAS box, as well, but that isn't an issue.

My primary question concerns sound. I am not sure if I can continue to use the one computer running virtual machines to create a multi-zone sound system. I've never done this before and it is daunting. I am not sure if I need to, or should, run speaker wires or from where to where. Small speakers that I could drop through the ceiling and then seal the holes seem very easy to do for my current arrangement (I had to have all the insulation vacuumed out of my attic, so I currently have a clean workspace up there to do all this wiring before I get it re-insulated). I'm kind of rambling because I have all these ideas but I want a clear plan before I do any actual work or buy anything.

If anyone has any feedback, suggestions, or personal experience with this idea of using a single computer running virtual machines to output to multiple terminals, I'd love to hear about it.

Presumably you would need multiple physical sound cards, with one tied to each virtual machine. Then you would install speakers in each room with speaker wire running from the speaker back to the PC location. Install a multi-channel amplifier at the PC location, connected to the outputs from your soundcards and the speakers for the respective rooms. Monoprice has USB over cat5 extenders (not USB 2 compatible).

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joe277

· #3 · Feb 24, 2014

If you want to use the computer for multiple zones (i wouldn't recommend this normally, but it is possible) you can actually purchase software that will allow you to use each output of a 5.1 or 7.1 soudcard in a computer to run a pair of speakers. You would need to add a multizone amplifier, but the software would do the matrix switching for you. Autonomic Controls has software for that. Less expensive is Squeezebox software. There's a bunch of companies out there that are all ready using the squeezebox software. It works really well.

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