We are currently building a small house and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do multi zone audio through the Vera without spending thousands. The cheapest multi-zone audio amp I’ve come across is the channel vision P-1044 for about 300 dollars, with each keypad costing around $65.
However this doesn’t have any kind of RS232 or IP interface. My work-around was to use the IR control of the keypads by running a cable from something like the SQ Blaster+ to a discrete location in each room that would control the keypad. I could then control 4 sources in 4 zones (with volume) through the SQ Blaster App on the ipad/iphone.
In my situation wiring is no problem as it’s a new build, budget is my own concern. Anyone have an easier way to do this? Or know of a similarly priced multi-zone amp that can be controlled centrally? I’d be happy to do without the keypads in each room and just control it remotely.
I can’t really give you any input on your dilemma because I’m in the same boat but I would like to know where you found those prices. Everything I see out there is a lot more $. The key pads alone seem to be about 2x more than you quote.
Hometech.com has the keypad for $58 and the amp for $334, although it is showing as out of stock at the moment.
Is there any amp similar to this one (4 source, 4 zone) that you can connect speakers directly to and control using the Vera?
Try sonos. The 100 watt amp built in should support more than a few speakers, especially if you have a impedance matching volume control to each speaker. Or ran to a cheap monster power 6 speaker selector. Any android or iphone can serve as a controller.
Hi big, I’ve looked at Sonos but it just seems a little expensive. Do sonos have a multi-zone amp? I am thinking you would need at least one Sonos 3 per zone?
Comparing the Sonos option and the Channelvision looks like this for 4 zones:
4 Sonos Play:3 would cost $1200.
Can I play different songs or digital radio to different sonos devices? Can I play the same sync’d audio to multiple zones? Can I control the volume remotely?
Ok catman, if that is your real name, the channel vision option has been canned on the sage advice I have received here. But I have one more question. Why would I choose the $1200 sonos option over 4 Airport Express, 4 small amps and 4 in ceiling speakers? Which would cost around $600 dollars.
Clearly it’s not my real name
I’d suspect why you’d make the choice would depend on what you want from the install. I simply provided simple answers to the questions you posed.
One thing that I can tell you about the proposed airport express is it won’t play in sync (properly,at least that’s my experience) and it’ll much less elegant to control.
That is the only downside I can see, not being able to control the airplay speakers directly with scenes. However I can see some kind of combination of desktop software and airplay working. There is an application called airfoil which does have an api, so there is hope there. Thanks for the advice, I think I’m going to go down the airplay route.
Definitely a potential downside. It is possible to control Sonos via scenes in Vera, just not massively simple. I’ve only got basic play and pause functionality.
Yeah I was looking at that, there doesn’t seem to be any nicely integrated home audio solution with Vera. It’s a lot of things cobbled together that don’t have much flexibility. It would be great to be able to select a play list and play it to 1 or more zones, and also have vera choose to play an audio alert (maybe the oven has reached temperature, someone is at the door etc) and then go back to whatever was previously playing.
I’m compromising and choosing the itunes/apple remote option because it seems like I’m not losing much over the more expensive options.
Is Channelvision the same as ChannelPlus/Linear?
On the ChannelPlus MDS-6 unit that I have from 2003, other than muting/unmuting all zones from the master, there is no way to control the source / volume of the remote zones unless your at the remote keypads or running IR control back to the remote keypads.
and also have vera choose to play an audio alert (maybe the oven has reached temperature, someone is at the door etc) and then go back to whatever was previously playing
It does however have relay i/o's along with a door bell feature that reduces the volume level of all zones when triggered and plays two different chimes dependant on the input (Front doorbell or Rear doorbell)
Those connections could be wired to HRDS1's or the LFM-20's.
The channel vision can only be controlled through the keypads, so an elaborate system of IR blasters and metre’s of IR extender cables would do the job.
The airplay method using airport express and cheap amps seems like a decent, centrally controlled multi zone audio option. Although it doesn’t integrate with MCV in any way.
I’ve seen a demo of airplay working on a raspberry pi, this could be interesting if you could pass commands to it from MCV using a url or something and then get it to control the output/volume to speakers.
Or maybe MCV4 with Airplay?
I have a RPi with XBMC, apparently this has Airplay capability but I haven’t tried it out yet. Is there any interaction between MCV and XBMC?? To the search engine with me!
