Pre-wired house with entertainment "Hub." Worth it?

[yourbeliefs]

My dad is buying a condo that is still being built. He put me in charge of the electronic stuff, and the builders apparently talked to him about pre-wiring the house with speakers for the multi-room audio function and having all the components (stereo, receivers, dvd player, etc) away in a closet or the basement. Although I am a bit of a techno-geek, I have no experience with a system like this, where all the components are in a separate place and everything is controlled by one controller and speakers are built into the walls. A rough estimate for all this stuff, which includes about 9 indoor speakers, 2 outdoor speakers, Integra DTR 5.9 2 Zone Receiver, universal remotes, and all the labor/wiring costs are about $7k (I'll post the actual estimate form once I edit out some personal information from it.)

The condo itself is very open, with very few or no walls on the first floor and I think some open stuff on the 2nd floor. The speakers will be in the family room (5.1 ch setup), master bedroom, and office (2 ch each.) Again I'll post more specific information when I can get it.

I have a few concerns about this setup. One is that my father was told that apparently, this setup does not work with Satellite (D*) and that we'd have to use U-Verse (which isn't available yet) or Cox Cable. That in itself is a deal breaker right there for me, because I'd rather cut my stomach open with an olive fork and eat my own intestines before I let my dad sign up with Cox Cable. The guy said that he'd check for verification on that, but I honestly can't see why satellite wouldn't be compatible with a system like this.

Another concern I have is with the equipment itself. I've heard some horror stories of these closet rack systems that constantly overheat and malfunction from lack of air. Again I don't know specifically how they'll set it up, but is this a common problem or is it something that a little common sense can easily fix? Also, how difficult is it to add/remove/maintain components with this setup? If I want to swap out D* receivers or swap televisions or bring over my Xbox 360 to take full advantage of the system, is this going to be a simple process or will it be akin to putting a super computer together piece by piece with instructions written in Arabic? Finally, having speakers within the walls themselves seems to me to not be inducive to upgrading or fixing if something goes wrong. I don't want to have to make a service call and pay a repair guy everytime I want to look at or change one of the speakers. Also the reason why this reads like I'm the one getting this done as opposed to my dad is because I will be the one maintaining and troubleshooting this thing.

The company that would be doing this work is called Cyclone Home Systems. Does anyone have any experience with getting this done in their place, and whether or not its worth this sort of investment as opposed to the old-fashioned separate components in respective rooms with respective remotes and such? My dad is not a tech guy, nor is he an audio/video phile, but he still appreciates good quality when it comes to sound and video (albeit not as well as I can.)

 

[Paul Wozniak]

You are right to be concerned. I see no reason for the installer to not be able to use D*. Maybe he has an "arrangement" with the cable company. I would look for another installer, and explain your needs thoroughly to him. System change or expansion should not be a problem in a properly set up system. Good installers will explain how everything works before they turn the system over to you.

 

[yourbeliefs]

What about stuff that's built into the walls? If they're pre-wiring and putting stuff inside the walls and something malfunctions or needs to be changed, do I need to hire a contractor everytime something comes up? I don't want something that is a convenient setup but extremely inconvenient when something goes wrong...

 

[yourbeliefs]

Attached is a copy of the work quote they gave us. Does this all look ok, or at least not like they're trying to rip us off? Also, I noticed (unless my reading comprehension is wrong) that they're using 16 gauge speaker wire. For long distances like the ones I imagine they'll have, don't you need like at least 12 gauge speaker wire for optimal performance? Finally, does anyone have any idea what the hell the $1,000+ for "Mini High Resolution HDTV Cable?" I'm assuming this would be a long HDMI cable, which if this is the case, I may have to point them to MonoPrice.com..

Please let me all know what you think, and if there's some good questions I can throw at this installer to see if he knows what he's talking about or if he's just another "salesman" so to speak.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

Attached is a copy of the work quote they gave us. Does this all look ok, or at least not like they're trying to rip us off? Also, I noticed (unless my reading comprehension is wrong) that they're using 16 gauge speaker wire. For long distances like the ones I imagine they'll have, don't you need like at least 12 gauge speaker wire for optimal performance? Finally, does anyone have any idea what the hell the $1,000+ for "Mini High Resolution HDTV Cable?" I'm assuming this would be a long HDMI cable, which if this is the case, I may have to point them to MonoPrice.com..

Please let me all know what you think, and if there's some good questions I can throw at this installer to see if he knows what he's talking about or if he's just another "salesman" so to speak.

I got a problem with the 16 gauge also. Might be fine with the Klipsch speakers, but what about down the road? I would rather have 12 gauge. The difference in cost of the wire can't be that much. Better to get the wiring done right the first time. Retrofitting will be more expensive. HDMI charge also seems out of line. The rest of the component prices seem to contractor standard. Sure is expensive just to pull wires. I would get another quote or two from competitors. It will help educate you more about what your doing at the very least. Don't be afraid to ask questions, if he don't have answers, you don't have the right guy. Wish I could be of more help, but I don't know what the industry prices are for this kind of labor, or where the wiring runs are going through.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I went to the condo the other day and got some photos of the family room where the 5.1 ch setup is going. I still have to meet up with the installer to go over things in more detail, but from looking at the setup I have a number of concerns about the setup and how good the sound will be. For one, the area around the television is very open and scattered. Now I'm not an audio expert, but it's my understanding that for a multi-channel system to work properly (i.e. not sound like crap), you need it to be in a contained area and you have to have the speakers aligned in a somewhat straight fashion. Unfortunately this family room is attached to the kitchen area and as you'll see by looking at the photos, the possibility of a good alignment seems impossible, unless we want to put surround sound speakers next to areas where people may be preparing food. In the pictures, any "open" will be areas such as the archways and the areas without any wood pillars (the area about 10-15ft back from the television will be open, as well as the 2nd floor area, allowing someone upstairs to look down and see the television.)

Does this setup look conducive of a decent audio experience? I want to know or have some idea BEFORE I meet with the installer so I can see if he knows what he's talking about or if he's just a product pusher.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

Open floor plans make living easy, and are very pleasing to the eye, but getting great sound is more often than not, very hard to do. Ask your installer what his experience with these types of floor plans has been. He may put you at ease. Understand that I mean that great sound is not unattainable, he may have a lot experience in this, and he probably will surprise you. The bad thing is that you won't know for sure until it's to late.

Ask him if he has another customer that had a similar floor plan, and maybe you can talk to that customer.

 

[jayn_j]

I ewcho what Paul says, but you really won't know until you hook it up and try. I had a somewhat similar open layout in my last house. The difference was that I had 17' ceilings for the family room, going down to a traditional 8' ceiling in the kitchen. I was able to build surrounds into the columns and with some tactical fabric treatments, get something reasonable.

I would be just as concerned about the corner treatment for the TV placement. It is going to be very difficult to get speakers to work properly when they really need to be on 4 different walls. I expect that this will be a bigger problem than the open floorplan.

 

[bhelms]

I was about to make essentially that same recommendation as Paul did, that you and your father go see/hear an installed system that's as close as possible to the one the installer is recommending. If the installer balks at providing references, that should be a clue! Make it a condition of the sale. You wouldn't buy a car you haven't actually test-driven vs. just looked at in a brochure, etc...

My guess is that your father would be satisfied with a more completely installed/configured system than you or I would be, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. I speak from experience (at a much lesser level). I know my mother was much more concerned about how speakers "looked" (or rather didn't, being installed in walls) than how they sounded. Future expandability or connectivity of perhpherals was a complete non-concern. Convenience was the biggest issue, and having one complete, integrated system with a single remote was the selling point for my folks, technology be damned.

But IMHO, a completely built-in system is a setback. It won't be able to "grow" with you as newer technologies and equipment become available, and along with that the desire to upgrade. But you could still provide a centralized location for the rack equipment and wiring to all the satellite locations to facilitate the installation later. Provide plenty of room so swap-outs and ventillation aren't issues, and plenty of redundant and "future-proof" wiring. One way to accomplish the latter is to run 1.5" or larger conduit to satellite locations so any future necessitated "wire" can be pulled later, like fiber optic cables.

 

[freezy]

floor pots, Floor trusses and access panels in basement ceiling. You can fish any upgrade you want with ease

 

[yourbeliefs]

Well I just met with the installer. He seemed nice and knowledgeable about his stuff. My dad basically forced that the contract be signed so that they could start on their stuff while all the walls were open. Here's some notes:

For the 5.1 ch setup on the family room, he's going to put the front speakers above the television in those three spaces above the television, or in the next "row" up. The surround speakers are going to be ceiling speakers in the areas in the photos I provided. I asked him about how the sound quality would be, and he claimed that I shouldn't be concerned and that many of his installations are via ceiling speakers.

He claimed that 16 gauge speaker wire was more than adequate for our needs, and that he only runs uses 14 gauge if there's more than 100' being run. He claimed that 12 gauge was overkill and was too expensive and another electrician there claimed that it would be unnecessary as well, saying that it carried too much power or something.

The "Mini High Res HDTV Cable" is apparently 3 cat-5 cables that carry component video and audio stuff in them, giving us 1080i video. He says it can be easily upgraded to HDMI down the road. He says that he doesn't feel that HDMI is stable enough over distances of 40' at this point. Considering my dad doesn't even own a Blu Ray player and only has 1 1080p compatible tv (Well technically 2 but on 23" whats the point?) I don't think this is that big of an issue.

For the 2nd audio zone (Bedroom, Office, Outdoors) there will be separate audio controls in each of the rooms. The receiver will have a standard set output level, and each room can control their level of volume individually. Also, there will be Cat-5 set up in each of these rooms so that more advanced controls can be more easily installed down the road if need be.

The in-wall speakers apparently have some easy "clamp" system or something. Long story short yes they are easy to remove and replace.

For all the televisions that won't be using HDTV immediately, they're running an RG-6 "Loop" that is apparently compatible with both Satellite and Cable TV, where there will be the "jack" installed in each room that can be hooked up directly to a television or receiver.

As far as using our own stuff versus theirs, they seemed less than receptive when it came to equipment, but I forgot to ask about using our own wiring stuff from monoprice or something. I really don't want to get into a pissing match with these guys about those types of costs, not to mention its not MY project but rather my dad's, and he has zero patience with stuff like this. Unless I can justify a MAJOR price savings upwards of $1,000, my dad will want to go with the simplier, "go with the installers' stuff" route.

The contract is signed and the pre-wiring will start probably before the end of the week. Is there anything else I should bring up or really question before they start? This is all going to be done in phases, so the pre-wiring will come first, then probably running some other wires and such later, and then last will be the installation of all the electronic equipment.

 

[Paul Wozniak]

Sounds like most of your questions have been answered. I got to admit I hadn't thought about ceiling speakers. That should be a good solution.

 

[jayn_j]

I've never heard a system with ceiling mounted surrounds that impressed me. They never seem to have clear definition and usually only provide ambience.

That said, I also think this is probably OK for your father, given what you have said about the other concerns. He will likely be satisfied, and it will probably work ok with those close mounted fronts. Reasonable sound, just not blow em away HT.

As for the 16 ga, it is probably OK. The issue comes into play 15 years from now when the wires start to oxidize and internal resistance goes up. However, I've only seen it be a problem with 18-22 ga wires. You probably have sufficient margins considering the 5-10W he is likeely to push through the system.

The comment that 12 ga is overkill is probably correct, but the higher current claim is total BS and would say that the electrician doesn't really understand Ohm's law.

 

[yourbeliefs]

I've never heard a system with ceiling mounted surrounds that impressed me. They never seem to have clear definition and usually only provide ambience.

That said, I also think this is probably OK for your father, given what you have said about the other concerns. He will likely be satisfied, and it will probably work ok with those close mounted fronts. Reasonable sound, just not blow em away HT.

As for the 16 ga, it is probably OK. The issue comes into play 15 years from now when the wires start to oxidize and internal resistance goes up. However, I've only seen it be a problem with 18-22 ga wires. You probably have sufficient margins considering the 5-10W he is likeely to push through the system.

The comment that 12 ga is overkill is probably correct, but the higher current claim is total BS and would say that the electrician doesn't really understand Ohm's law.

Also the installer made the point that the next step or coming upgrade is going to be wireless, so it doesn't make much sense to "futureproof" the internal wiring when odds are by the time that we want a big upgrade, wireless will be pretty standard. My biggest concern is the RG-6 "loop" being able to work both with Cable/U-Verse/Sat/FiOS, because I want an easy swap either way. I'll be addressing that in the D* Technical forum though.

 

[Inno]

I've never heard a system with ceiling mounted surrounds that impressed me. They never seem to have clear definition and usually only provide ambience.

That said, I also think this is probably OK for your father, given what you have said about the other concerns. He will likely be satisfied, and it will probably work ok with those close mounted fronts. Reasonable sound, just not blow em away HT.

As for the 16 ga, it is probably OK. The issue comes into play 15 years from now when the wires start to oxidize and internal resistance goes up. However, I've only seen it be a problem with 18-22 ga wires. You probably have sufficient margins considering the 5-10W he is likeely to push through the system.

The comment that 12 ga is overkill is probably correct, but the higher current claim is total BS and would say that the electrician doesn't really understand Ohm's law.

I agree about ceiling mounted surrounds. My house came with them installed in the home theater room and I'm not happy with them. They are decent quality (Paradigm) but they just disappear.

Regarding the 12 ga, yeah, that is overkill I think. And what the electrician said about it "carrying more power" is complete BS. If it were given more power it would actually be safer. But in the real world and given that your Dad probably won't be listening to anything at ear damaging levels outside of maybe the main HT area, 16 or 14 would be sufficient. If any of the runs are over 100' the installer should be looking at a 70V PA type system anyway. I'm guessing that there won't be any runs that long.

As far as being "future proof", there have been many improvements with wireless over the years but I still would not bank on there being a wireless solution that comes even close to a wired one. I have yet to see proof. If in doubt, I'd run extra RG-6 and extra ethernet cabling to a few key locations. There are a lot of things that you can use the ethernet cable for and many adapters/converters which utilize CAT5. Odds are that whatever you want to plan for in the future doesn't even exist yet so it's kind of a mute point. I've tried to "future plan" in my last 2 houses and always seemed to come up just short.

Personally I like the idea of multi zone but the reality of it is that it gets overly complicated really quickly!
I have completely separate systems in my upstairs living room and downstairs in the HT and I wouldn't do it any other way. Having said that, putting all the gear out of the way somewhere where it is easy to access is a good thing, then use IR repeaters to direct your remote signals to the equipment. Neat and clean! Then the lights etc. on the gear won't distract from the movie watching experience.
What's also nice about this is that if it's put in a good location you won't have to crawl around on the floor to put in a movie etc. Like I did here http://www.satelliteguys.us/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/716/cat/500/ppuser/52955 in my last house. It goes through the wall in the living room into the closet of the bedroom on the opposite side of the wall. There is a glass door that slides to the right on rails and disappears into the wall. It's neat and tidy, out of the way, no big mess of wires (everything runs under the house to the TV and speakers) and it's very easy to put in a DVD etc.
Now if only my new house were more to my liking!

 

[freezy]

I ran 14 guage in my dads house with 3way ceiling speakers that are rubber mounted and insulated to reduce noise upstairs. He has a sectional that almost fills the sunken TV/family room area. Rear channel is about 4 feet behind and front speakers are 6 feet in front of most of the TV viewers. Delay is tuned for that sweet-spot. The 6ft of the sectional in front of the sweet-spot and one recliner chair don't sound that bad. Center channel is right over the tv in the built-in bookshelf/fireplace/tv center. I have a Denon AVR-1803 running the whole thing with Karaoke too. I'm trying to talk him into a sub but he hates mine so I doubt that will fly (it scares the bi-jeezus out of him)

It works fine. Don't be afaid to turn it up or turn down the front to balance output. Surround is not supposed to be the same as multi channel audio. It is an effect.

Most people confuse stereo with surround, "why aren't the back speakers making any noise now?"

The denon can do 6channel stereo too + sub