Sonos with In Ceiling Speakers

[birdman325]

I have been reading about and interested in a Sonos system for quite some time, but never made the leap. I easily see the benefits of the Sonos system when connected to either a stereo or powered speakers, but I am in the process of building a new home and I am considering wiring for and installing in ceiling speakers in most rooms on the main floor and bedrooms on the second floor.
When Sonos is connected to powered speakers or a stereo in a particular room, I understand how you would control the music in each room through the controller, but if my speakers are in the ceiling and the speaker wire (I assume) all comes out to a central location, how would I connect a zone player to a particular room?
Does anyone have real world experience with using Sonos in a new build where the speakers are in ceiling and the wiring (presumably) comes down to a central location?
Just not sure how it would all work and interested in comments and suggestions.
TIA (thanx in advance)

[jgatie]

Originally Posted by birdman325

I have been reading about and interested in a Sonos system for quite some time, but never made the leap. I easily see the benefits of the Sonos system when connected to either a stereo or powered speakers, but I am in the process of building a new home and I am considering wiring for and installing in ceiling speakers in most rooms on the main floor and bedrooms on the second floor.
When Sonos is connected to powered speakers or a stereo in a particular room, I understand how you would control the music in each room through the controller, but if my speakers are in the ceiling and the speaker wire (I assume) all comes out to a central location, how would I connect a zone player to a particular room?
Does anyone have real world experience with using Sonos in a new build where the speakers are in ceiling and the wiring (presumably) comes down to a central location?
Just not sure how it would all work and interested in comments and suggestions.
TIA (thanx in advance)

There are many here who have a central configuration. You would need a powered ZP120 for individual zone (one ZP120 can power 2 sets of 8 Ohm speaker pairs), or an unpowered ZP90 for each zone plus a multi-channel amplifier to power the speakers.

The central location for the ZP's does hamper the mesh design of Sonosnet (i.e. each ZP talks to all the others, so being spread out around the house helps wireless coverage), but a few strategically placed ZoneBridges can cover for any wireless cold spots.

[Avee]

Hi Birdman,

Have a look at the promotional stuff on the Sonos website.

Sonos ZP120s have an integrated amp, and require no control at the unit itself. It is controlled via a wireless radio signal, a special version of a computer network via the controller.

On the controller you can pick and choose what zone or combination of linked zones you'd like to control. You don't need to be in that zone to control it, one controller can control the whole house.

You don't need to switch the Zoneplayers on or off, they are always on standby and only direct power to the included amplifier when needed.

The only thing to consider when putting all Zoneplayers in one location is the wireless range spans around that location. If you were to distribute your players around the house, the wireless coverage would span from those multiple locations and thus you would have a larger coverage area. When all players are in one central location, you could use Zonebridges though to extend the coverage for the handheld CR100 controller.

Coverage of the Desktop Controller (=pc application) and the iPhone controller depend on a regular wireless network. The CR100 communicates directly over the "Sonosnet" with the Zoneplayers, and tends to be more reliable for large homes.

[killian8]

You can use a combination of some of the above suggestions. If there are several rooms that would you would want the same music played in, you could combine a amp and one ZP90 to play music to that group of rooms. If it is a room where you might want different music (a kid's bedroom or playroom), you can connect a ZP120 to that set of in ceiling spreakers.

This is how I am setting up my house. My main living, dining room, kitchen on one ZP90. My master bedroom and bath to one ZP120 (four speakers). My outside speakers (four speakers) connected to one ZP120.

This configuration saves some money because I not placing a Zoneplayer for every room.

[birdman325]

Thanx for the input. Perhaps I am asking a more "technical" yet ignorant question. I understand how to connect a ZP to a powered speaker or stereo. I do not quite understand how I would connect a ZP to a speaker that is mounted in the ceiling. Would it be possible or preferable to arrange for the speaker wire to come out to a point in the wall in each room, or is it more conventional to have all of the speaker wire from all of the various in room speakers to all come out at a central location, perhaps in the basement or other room and I would group all my ZP in that one room, which I would have to do, if the speaker wires all come out to a single source.

[eonibm]

You can really do either and you have to decide for yourself. This may help:

If you centralize the ZPs:

- The larger your house, the greater the possibility that you may not enjoy the benefits of the mesh network that Sonos sets up and that the ZPs and controllers used to communicate. But this can be alleviated by putting in some Zonebridges where the signals are weak;
- Some of your speaker wire runs will be longer than if you localized the ZPs. You can do research (or test yourself) what length of speaker run starts to degrade the signal. A better gauge of speaker wire can help to alleviate any degradation in a long speaker run. Using stereo audio baluns with cat5e cable may also alleviate this. For many, even if it does degrade the signal slightly, that is not an issue as they do their serious listening in the living room where the speaker wire run is short; and
- if you sell the house or you decide to ditch Sonos (which you won't), a centralized speaker wire design will make it easier to replace the Sonos system with something else. If you run the speaker wire from the ceiling speaker past a proposed future wall-mounted volume control location (and note where that will be through measurements on a digital picture) and then to the centralized location, you can easily add volume controls in each room later and replace the centralized equipment with something else.

If you don't centralize the ZPs:

- your likelihood of having to put in a Zonebridge or another ZP is lessened as you will have better mesh network coverage;
- you have to know where you want to place the ZP in the local room and make sure you have an electrical outlet close by, unless you are not that concerned about the speaker wire (or electrical extension cord) being seen; and
- if you want to drive a number of different room speakers with one ZP then you have to make sure you have the room speaker wires run from the other rooms where the speakers are in to the particular room you have the ZP in. And when you re-arrange this (for example to create an independent zone in a room which previously used a shared ZP) then you'll have to place the additional ZP beside the existing ZP (as that's where the speaker wires were run to) or run new speaker wires if you want the ZP in the same room as the speakers. It just isn't as clean and modifiable an install as having everything in one central location.

I've wrestled with the two and have decided to centralize everything. Also, as I am going to have HDTV's around the house being fed from centralized cable boxes/PVR's, that makes it easy to just feed the cable box/PVR audio into the ZP for the particular room as they'll both be right there in the central equipment room. Also it makes it very easy to rearrange the configuration. (The video feed is being sent directly to the room HDTV and the audio could be sent there too, but then if I localized the ZPs in the room I'd have to make sure there was a ZP everywhere there was an HDTV, even if I didn't want an independent music zone there)

Hope this helps.

[deanda]

Originally Posted by eonibm

You can really do either and you have to decide for yourself. This may help:

If you centralize the ZPs:

- The larger your house, the greater the possibility that you may not enjoy the benefits of the mesh network that Sonos sets up and that the ZPs and controllers used to communicate. But this can be alleviated by putting in some Zonebridges where the signals are weak;
- Some of your speaker wire runs will be longer than if you localized the ZPs. You can do research (or test yourself) what length of speaker run starts to degrade the signal. A better gauge of speaker wire can help to alleviate any degradation in a long speaker run. Using stereo audio baluns with cat5e cable may also alleviate this. For many, even if it does degrade the signal slightly, that is not an issue as they do their serious listening in the living room where the speaker wire run is short; and
- if you sell the house or you decide to ditch Sonos (which you won't), a centralized speaker wire design will make it easier to replace the Sonos system with something else. If you run the speaker wire from the ceiling speaker past a proposed future wall-mounted volume control location (and note where that will be through measurements on a digital picture) and then to the centralized location, you can easily add volume controls in each room later and replace the centralized equipment with something else.

If you don't centralize the ZPs:

- your likelihood of having to put in a Zonebridge or another ZP is lessened as you will have better mesh network coverage;
- you have to know where you want to place the ZP in the local room and make sure you have an electrical outlet close by, unless you are not that concerned about the speaker wire (or electrical extension cord) being seen; and
- if you want to drive a number of different room speakers with one ZP then you have to make sure you have the room speaker wires run from the other rooms where the speakers are in to the particular room you have the ZP in. And when you re-arrange this (for example to create an independent zone in a room which previously used a shared ZP) then you'll have to place the additional ZP beside the existing ZP (as that's where the speaker wires were run to) or run new speaker wires if you want the ZP in the same room as the speakers. It just isn't as clean and modifiable an install as having everything in one central location.

I've wrestled with the two and have decided to centralize everything. Also, as I am going to have HDTV's around the house being fed from centralized cable boxes/PVR's, that makes it easy to just feed the cable box/PVR audio into the ZP for the particular room as they'll both be right there in the central equipment room. Also it makes it very easy to rearrange the configuration. (The video feed is being sent directly to the room HDTV and the audio could be sent there too, but then if I localized the ZPs in the room I'd have to make sure there was a ZP everywhere there was an HDTV, even if I didn't want an independent music zone there)

Hope this helps.

this is a great response -> I want to ask about in-wall volume and/or in-wall controller.

if you do a setup that is wired with in-wall speakers wires runnning to central closet, can you instal controls just for volume in the walls in each room OR can you actually install a controller in the wall ?

[ChiefK]

I'm not entirely sure why there is concern about coverage. Perhaps one could elaborate. If all zone players are centrally located why would one need coverage elsewhere? Mesh coverage shouldn't matter bc all would be hard wired. Maybe if there would be a couple zp90s somewhere else in the house that wouldn't be local but since we are talking new construction here why not just run Ethernet cable to zp90 locations? The only mesh issue that might occur later that I can tell might be use of an s5, maybe.

Thoughts?

Originally Posted by eonibm

You can really do either and you have to decide for yourself. This may help:

If you centralize the ZPs:

- The larger your house, the greater the possibility that you may not enjoy the benefits of the mesh network that Sonos sets up and that the ZPs and controllers used to communicate. But this can be alleviated by putting in some Zonebridges where the signals are weak;
- Some of your speaker wire runs will be longer than if you localized the ZPs. You can do research (or test yourself) what length of speaker run starts to degrade the signal. A better gauge of speaker wire can help to alleviate any degradation in a long speaker run. Using stereo audio baluns with cat5e cable may also alleviate this. For many, even if it does degrade the signal slightly, that is not an issue as they do their serious listening in the living room where the speaker wire run is short; and
- if you sell the house or you decide to ditch Sonos (which you won't), a centralized speaker wire design will make it easier to replace the Sonos system with something else. If you run the speaker wire from the ceiling speaker past a proposed future wall-mounted volume control location (and note where that will be through measurements on a digital picture) and then to the centralized location, you can easily add volume controls in each room later and replace the centralized equipment with something else.

If you don't centralize the ZPs:

- your likelihood of having to put in a Zonebridge or another ZP is lessened as you will have better mesh network coverage;
- you have to know where you want to place the ZP in the local room and make sure you have an electrical outlet close by, unless you are not that concerned about the speaker wire (or electrical extension cord) being seen; and
- if you want to drive a number of different room speakers with one ZP then you have to make sure you have the room speaker wires run from the other rooms where the speakers are in to the particular room you have the ZP in. And when you re-arrange this (for example to create an independent zone in a room which previously used a shared ZP) then you'll have to place the additional ZP beside the existing ZP (as that's where the speaker wires were run to) or run new speaker wires if you want the ZP in the same room as the speakers. It just isn't as clean and modifiable an install as having everything in one central location.

I've wrestled with the two and have decided to centralize everything. Also, as I am going to have HDTV's around the house being fed from centralized cable boxes/PVR's, that makes it easy to just feed the cable box/PVR audio into the ZP for the particular room as they'll both be right there in the central equipment room. Also it makes it very easy to rearrange the configuration. (The video feed is being sent directly to the room HDTV and the audio could be sent there too, but then if I localized the ZPs in the room I'd have to make sure there was a ZP everywhere there was an HDTV, even if I didn't want an independent music zone there)

Hope this helps.

[jgatie]

Originally Posted by birdman325

Thanx for the input. Perhaps I am asking a more "technical" yet ignorant question. I understand how to connect a ZP to a powered speaker or stereo. I do not quite understand how I would connect a ZP to a speaker that is mounted in the ceiling. Would it be possible or preferable to arrange for the speaker wire to come out to a point in the wall in each room, or is it more conventional to have all of the speaker wire from all of the various in room speakers to all come out at a central location, perhaps in the basement or other room and I would group all my ZP in that one room, which I would have to do, if the speaker wires all come out to a single source.

The traditional configuration for whole house audio is to wire all the speakers to a central closet or basement. But that is for traditional units that must be hardwired to a source. But with Sonos, the connection between the source and the amplifier or output unit is wireless. So if you are definitely going with Sonos, it would cost a lot less in wire and labor to simply wire the ceiling speakers down the wall to a plate with speaker teminals. Then wire the amplified output of a ZP120 to the terminals on the wall plate. This would also be a better usage of the Sonos mesh architecture.

[eonibm]

Originally Posted by jgatie

So if you are definitely going with Sonos, it would cost a lot less in wire and labor to simply wire the ceiling speakers down the wall to a plate with speaker teminals. Then wire the amplified output of a ZP120 to the terminals on the wall plate. This would also be a better usage of the Sonos mesh architecture.

Both Centralized or distributed Zoneplayers are acceptible configurations.

Speaker wire is cheap and it is very easy to run the wire yourself (just stay away from electrical cables, or cross them at 90 degree angles). The cost of extra wire for a centralized system is miniscule compared to the total cost of the system.

Also, as for the Sonos mesh architecture, if you do centralize the Zoneplayers then any weak areas can be rectified using local ZoneBridges which can either be plugged into an ethernet jack or left wireless.

A circumstance in which you might want to reconsider centralized Zoneplayers is where you have very long speaker runs (like, over 100") as that could, but not necessarily, degrade the audio signal. But that can be alleviated using thicker gauge wire (at least 14 gauge or perhaps 12 gauge, but make sure you make sure that 12 gauge can be installed in any wall boxes and will attach properly to your speakers, as they are thick wires) or stereo audio cat5e baluns. Also, even some degradation might be acceptible to you if you do your serious listening in an area that has a local Zoneplayer and the music in the other areas of your house are more for background music.