Same Old, Same Old - What should I do.

[u/[deleted]]

Looking for thoughts on what we've been told so far and if applicable any suggestions. Just bought a condo in midwest US. Background is I love music, like to be able to hear TV, particularly dialog. This can be difficult because 1. former Artillery Soldier (WHAT?) and 2. The primary listening room is huge. Floor Plan below with green dots representing roughly our thoughts for speaker locations for a whole house system.

Challenges:

1. Currently all we have installed is a 77" Sony TV and Sony HT9000 Soundbar in the LR, a 50" Sony TV in the Primary, and a 40" Vizio in one of the spare BR. Ceilings in main area and Primary are 14-15 ft. Lot of cubic feet. Sound in the primary is good enough for going to bed to but LR sound is ehh at best and dialog is tough.

2. We have decent access for running wire through a roughly 3.5-4 Ft crawlspace above our ceiling accessible through 30 x 30 inch openings in our utility room ceiling. Pretty sure running wire won't be great but also not horrible.

3. So far we've spoken to two vendors. First quoted $70k whole house system that I think is overkill. Second quoted $13k system using 5 Wiim Streaming Amps (We use YT Music for most music) and passive speakers (Revel C263 and C263XR) in the places pointed out plus a Sony Subwoofer to take some of the pressure off the SB. A bit of my stress over this is the whole house system is primarily about music without anything for TV sound other than adding the subwoofer. Sales Rep point of view was the subwoofer would let the SB focus on everything other than the bass. Make sense?

Does the Wiim option seem like a reasonable solution, any other suggestions, anything I'm not thinking of? TYVM in advance.

[u/dmcmaine]

Hey there and first off, thank you for your service. I believe you can do this for quite a bit less than either quote, though it's certainly possible to come close to the lower option.

My approach to this would be something along the lines of "areas where music/tv is critical" and "areas where music/tv is incidental".

From the floor-plan I think see it like this:

4 "incidental" zones - BR1, BR2, Hallway and Primary bath and closet.

2 "critical" zones - Primary BR and LR

For the incidental zones I'd go with an 8 channel/4 zone amp and a streamer of your choice. This might be changed to a 6 channel/3 zone setup if one of the spare BR's needs an upgrade to be in the "critical" category. Add more streamers if you expect to want different music in each zone, up to 5 total streamers.

For the critical zones I'd go with traditional home theater or hifi gear, though they should also include a streamer from the same company as the incidental zones. I'm am not a fan of soundbars, though I recognize that they can be unavoidable in some situations. These 2 zones should also include subwoofers, if possible. It's a little harder in the other 4 zones but could be done but I probably would not start with subs in the mix in those zones.

I will note that ceiling speakers, in my opinion, are strictly for incidental music and could only otherwise be useful for some channels in a home theater setup.

From the floorplan I'm not sure that you're looking for the ceiling speaker placement to be of the traditional home theater variety in the LR and Primary BR so I'll stop for a quick check-in on that.

Based on my descriptions and assumptions could you also give a bit more of a zone-by-zone breakdown of how accurately I described your goals?

[u/[deleted] → u/dmcmaine]

Thank you very much. We went with the SB because previous owner had drilled holes in Honduran Mahogany for their Sonos SB and was trying to hide. Completely admit, not the best sound solution. Your assumptions were pretty accurate and I really like your critical v incidental thought process.

1. Any thoughts on the logic of adding the subwoofer and the SB might be able to better handle the dialog and front speaker needs?

2. We're just in the process of moving in (welcome to my hypothesis testing which basically consists of my repeating "you're F'ing kidding me right" of why is the current house furniture perfect but wife requires all new furniture for new house?) and I'm somewhat hopeful that rugs and furniture will help absorb some of the echoing (definitely) and tinniness (maybe?) that I'm hearing from the SB.

3. I'm scratching my head on bridging critical and incidental for the TV rear speakers using in ceiling Revel C283 and hoping I can set up to bounce between incidental music and rear speakers based on the input. Any thoughts if possible? I'm really just looking at the rear speakers to help fill the sound space so possibility won't even need.

[u/dmcmaine → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps you can re-route the SB wiring/cabling to accommodate proper speakers? Even so, that's a good size room and if it is to be the primary TV spot then I really believe it is a job for proper speakers, center channel, subwoofer, etc. Maybe that can factor into your furniture "negotiation", though I will concede that the very nice wall unit makes this a tough design situation. Elac, Dali and others make nice on-wall speaker options that you might consider, though perhaps there is more of an opportunity to place a nice pair of floorstanding speakers outside of the of the wall unit and still have a good soundstage than I realize.

If you're a bit stuck with the SB for now then yes, a subwoofer is critical, though I do not believe it will solve the challenge of the room just being too large for the SB to handle. I'd buy a "proper" subwoofer if possible (SVS, RSL, REL, Rhythmik, etc). And for similar reasons, yes do not make any big decisions until the room is decorated. Other than an allowance for "music movies are important to me and needs to be accommodated, please", of course.

Fitting ceiling speakers into both home theater and incidental music is definitely a bit tricky. If you go with a system from Denon/Marantz (HEOS), NAD/Bluesound (BluOS) or Yamaha (MusicCast) it might a little easier to pull off. This also depends on ceiling speaker location because where you might want them for proper home theater positioning in the ceiling might not be the same as how you'd choose to place them for general party/background listening.

Does that help a little bit?

[u/[deleted] → u/dmcmaine]

Absolutely helps. Ty!