We bought a house a couple of years back that had an outdated AMX system. We disconnected everything but I would like to understand what we actually have and how to get some of the components up and running again, particularly the room speakers, without the AMX interface. Here is the current situation: we disconnected the AMX system and took out all the touch screens in the house. Each bedroom and a few others (kitchen, office, living room) have ethernet outlets and ceiling speakers (and two speakers on the back deck). The house is wired with Cat 5e. We have a bunch of extra Panja amps (4), a Sony receiver, Lexicon controller and amp. Additional info: there is a Lutron system but now isn’t tied to any automation or app. The theater was disconnected from the AMX system, upgraded, and runs independently. The security was disconnected, upgraded, and runs through its own app. Any guidance on where to start, equipment I can reuse, equipment I should get, etc. to get the room speakers working and potentially link to an app would be great. I was wondering if we can use Sonos to get the speakers up and running, using the existing amps and receiver. Attached is a pic of one of the panels in the basement which could help.
@LauraCoder
This is the correct answer.
@LauraCoder
As someone with 7 Wiim Pros. They are fantastic for multi-room music. They also integrated very nicely with home assistant.
@LauraCoder
Thanks for the response. When you say ‘all that can go,’ are you suggesting that I can disconnect all those cables due to obsolescence? Also, how do I find where the speaker wires go?
Carlos said:
@LauraCoder
Thanks for the response. When you say ‘all that can go,’ are you suggesting that I can disconnect all those cables due to obsolescence? Also, how do I find where the speaker wires go?
This forum isn’t allowing me to post additional pictures of the equipment that I have. Regarding the wiim amps you recommended, what else would I need to attach to that in order to access music and create an interface where I can control the different rooms (there are 11 rooms with speakers)? Can I also group a couple of sets of speakers if I want a single source of music playing (e.g., combining master bedroom and master bath)? Also, can I use any of the existing Panja or Lexicon amps that I have which have 8 channels in each?
@LauraCoder
Let me know if this works. additional pics
@LauraCoder
Wow SirEDCaLot! Appreciate the well thought out (and humorous) detailed response. Can’t wait to pump some Metallica into the kids’ rooms! It is good to know that some of the existing components can be re-used however, 23 Wiim units definitely adds up, which I can slow role over time if we can get some of the priority rooms up and running. ‘I want to smack whoever set this up though, beautiful white screwless Claro wallplate, beautiful white decora 6-keystone plate, and they filled it with UGLY ALMOND KEYSTONE PLUGS!!’ I feel you on this and it is pretty random across rooms. Some have almond, some are white, and some even have a mix of both! ‘On the left side bottom, that’s the back of an AV Receiver. This is a device that handles video and audio for a TV or home theater. Those turquoise cables at the bottom are speaker outputs, you’ll have several for surround sound. It also has some HDMI for video in/out (it switches the video source to the TV). Above that looks like a DVD player. No idea what the white thing is or the thing above that. On top is a power conditioner of some sort.’ Amazing that you are able to identify all these items. Yes, this is the setup for the theater. The white thing is an old Playstation and the things above that are a URC system controller and power station. ‘On the right side near rack, at the bottom you have a stack of amplifiers. If I make it out right it’s PLB-AMP8, looks like 6 in total (seems like they had a few different casing designs)’ There seems to be 4 amps in total from the bottom up. The things above them look similar but are AMX components (I added additional pics to the link above) ‘Image 5± Now we look at the back of this. You’ll notice on each PLB-AMP8 there are 4 white rectangles, each containing two channels. That’s for stereo—every zone has a left and right which get amplified separately. The ‘in’ is a line level RCA input, the ‘out’ goes direct to the speakers.’ This is where I am getting a little confused. Each amp has 8 channels. Are you saying each channel is connected to 1 speaker (so each amp controls 4 pairs of speakers) or each speaker pair has a left and right, which take up two channels? I added a closer picture of the back. It seems like 1 turquoise wire splits into four components (green, red, white, and black wires) going into two channels. It seems that the two input wires connect directly into the AMX box above, which I would need to take out and connect to Wiim. I hope I understood that correctly and can will give in a shot in the coming month to test out a couple of units. I also think there is way less than 23 speaker pairs if only 4 amps (maybe 15 or so and some went to their entertainment systems so hoping we only need about a dozen). Fingers crossed! Again, appreciate all your help here and this is exactly the type of information I was seeking to get these speakers up and running!
@LauraCoder
The link should be updated now with the additional pictures. https://imgur.com/a/Jg251Fu ‘You can (with limits) run multiple speakers off one channel, but they will all play the EXACT same thing. In stereo you have different audio signals going to left and right speaker, thus you need two channels.’ This makes sense but given we are using a single Wiim for each speaker set, would we be able to play a single source of music to multiple rooms? Say we have guests over and want to run the same music in the kitchen and outdoor patio, would that be possible in the app? Or, can we use a switch (which I believe is there now) to control everything and eliminate the need to purchase 15 or so Wiim units?
@LauraCoder
I appreciate everyone’s input in this thread, it’s helping a lot to understand what steps to take next.
You have a great situation on your hands, as others have pointed out. My house was built in 2002 and I was lucky enough to inherit similar setup. WiFi access points, and hard wired streaming set top boxes are all better with Ethernet connections. And I have dozens of Lutron switches, you should be able to reset them and take control with your own account. Feel free to DM me your phone number, I’d be happy to talk through possibilities with you on ways to repurpose what you have. And I’m not trying to sell you anything, I’m not in this industry, I just enjoy home automation. With a little knowledge, you can do this yourself.
@Stephen
Appreciate it. I will reach out later this week when I have some time. Not sure if can take control of the Lutron system as I have the original Homeworks system (house was built in '04) and no one wants to touch it due to liability of something going wrong. That is another upgrade we need to make eventually, but it’s not broken yet!
Wow—where to start… hard to tell what equipment you have with only a partial pic of the rack. Ideally what do you want to achieve? Whole home audio? Are there in-ceiling speakers everywhere?
Cora said:
Wow—where to start… hard to tell what equipment you have with only a partial pic of the rack. Ideally what do you want to achieve? Whole home audio? Are there in-ceiling speakers everywhere?
There are speakers in most rooms. Ultimately, I would like to get them activated and just wondering what the best way to do this would be (and if I can do this myself) and if I can leverage equipment I already have. Some sort of app access or way to make it easy to use would be ideal. Honestly, I have no idea what I am looking at with the panel in the picture, so thought I would start here.
@Carlos
The panel looks very well labelled to be honest, and pretty cleanly structured. Not sure I could really help, but you say you have ‘no idea’ so figured my basic understanding might be useful in case you’re really lost. The basic purpose for a panel like that is to route all the connections about. So the rows at the top are all labelled office/garage etc, and are wired to the connection panels in each room. The bottom panels are input/output, that you connect to the top to wire that room up. The idea is that you have an ethernet switch at the bottom which has your high-speed internet connection, then you connect that to one of the rooms at the top so that room socket now has internet access. Organising through the panel like this means everything is just cabled to the panel, so regrouping or providing different access to the room is much easier. Never dealt with speakers, but it’s the same principle, the coax input here per row should come out in the rooms labelled somehow. My first thought would be to test the system a bit and make sure the labels are right. Pick one room row, plug something to that outlet and something in the panel and check it connects. Each room will probably follow the same logic so the top rows will be pretty clear when you’ve done a couple. The bottom rows are just the inputs so you can swap out what’s there with something you want. Ethernet to every room is lovely, although a lot of things only do WiFi now ethernet is nearly always better and more reliable. Speakers I don’t know about— not sure how much you can do with that without needing a system you can control in each room as well
@Chloe
Thanks hennel. This is helpful as I didn’t even understand the relationship between the bottom and top of that panel. You mentioned that you don’t understand speakers but that is really the core of what I am looking to do. Not sure how the ceiling speakers are connected to this panel (and which color wires are what) and how to get them activated. I will post a few more pics which may help.
@Carlos
The relationship will be similar for the speakers. There seems to be a coax hub with input and output, and I’d assume the output lines from that hub go to a coax input on the rows above, which then go to the speakers in the labeled room. So in theory, plugging something in to that coax input will then direct it to the outputs of all the rooms. Although I think there is likely to be more to it then that as you presumably don’t want the same sound coming out of every room all the time so there must be something that lets you switch and group sources so you can direct the audio somehow. And there might be something special on what is the requirement for audio - I’ve never seen/used a coax cable so I’m not really sure what signal it can send.
Anyone hazard a guess what TFG paid for this system? I guess $20k.
That’s a FutureSmart panel. Classic!
dude you need to decide what you want… and on what scale a lot of this isn’t very functional anymore since hardwiring all things is no longer necessary unless you have a lot of people using up your bandwidth. without defining your end goals and use cases this is just a money pit
@Kelvin
That is exactly why I am trying to understand what the simplest route will be. I would love to clean up all those wires and keep what is most necessary. Ultimately, I would love to be able to play music in specific rooms through an app or through Alexa (e.g., Alexa, play xxx in the kitchen).