Will this work for multi-room audio or will it be a disaster?

April 30, 2013 7:32 PM

Can I use my Pioneer VSX-1022-K receiver to deliver music to six rooms?

We remodeled our apartment and installed speakers in 6 rooms.

I purchased* a Pioneer VSX-1022-K receiver. I don't care about surround sound for TV, I want to get music into every speaker. Can I get this to work simply by patching speaker cables into 7 of the 8 outputs in the back of the receiver? Or can/will something horrible happen to receiver and/or speakers?

I am not, at this point, trying to implement software controlled zones or anything other than getting same audio to play across all speakers with per room volume controlled by wall switches.
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If I need new/additional gear I'd love some advice. I have a this amplifier but damn, it's a beast and am not sure (a) it's the right tool for the job or (b) how to use it.


*Bought on the advice of my electrician. I got it because it had Pandora baked in, could support a (future media server), has a smartphone app, and supports AirPlay, which is a key use case for me.

posted by donovan to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Best answer: The VSX-1022-K really only supports two rooms. Pioneer's top of the line receivers only support three, and it'd be surprising to see six rooms in a consumer receiver at that price. Sure, the VSX-1022-K has a number of outputs, but they're only enabled during surround sound decoding (ie, DVD, Blu-ray or digital television) for specific, usually non-musical purposes: low frequencies to the subwoofer, a center channel, effect sounds to the rear speakers, etc. Nothing terrible will happen, but you won't end up getting music out of most of the speakers.

The Pyle amplifier you linked to only supports four sets of stereo speakers. It's a beast all right, but it's designed for a max of 4 rooms with stereo speakers, not 6.

You'll want to look specifically for a distribution amp that advertises 6 stereo zones and 12 channels, something like this on the low end.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 8:33 PM on April 30, 2013

It's unlikely you could turn all of those surround outputs into individual stereo outputs, but the receiver's manual would tell you for sure. If you plan on driving all 6(?) pairs of speakers at the same time then you might need that big amp to provide enough wattage, then you would use something like this to split the signal off to all your speaker pairs. I have one doing the same thing (though I'm only up to 3 rooms myself) and like all of monoprice's gear it's much higher quality then the price would lead you to believe.
posted by bizwank at 8:34 PM on April 30, 2013

Response by poster: Super helpful I EAT TAPAS. Would you have a recommendation for a range of amps? Know (anyone?) a preferred configuration?

Now that it looks like I need to invest more than expected I'm very interested in 'best practices' and so on to build a highly flexible and powerful home audio system.

If this includes "hire someone to figure it out" I'm open to that bit would love advice on how to avoid dealing with asshats that know nothing (except a little more than i do). Had horrible experience with inherited "home technology consultant" and am more techie than the average bear, but know diddly about audio systems.
posted by donovan at 8:49 PM on April 30, 2013

Best answer: FYI, this Dayton Audio MA1240a is the exact same amp that I EAT TAPAS linked, but under a different name and quite a bit cheaper.
posted by bizwank at 8:50 PM on April 30, 2013

Not having any experience with that reciever, I read page 33 of the manual listed at your link.

You won't connect this to a TV, but you want to use the 7:1 surround speaker output to wire speakers in 6 different rooms. There does not seem to be a way to hear a full signal in each room since there is, at best, only stereo mode for the front speaker outputs and only 2 zones, A/B . One room would only hear the left channel, another only the right, etc. 'Stereo ALC' mode is a bit unclear, but you can test it. Maybe if there was a 'mono' output you could do it.

On preview, you should follow Bizwank's advice.

Like 'mono', your multi-room system hard-wired back to a central source is kind of old-school now. The airplay function & ethernet port of your receiver are there to implement wireless remote speakers like these or this. They may not suit audiophiles, though.
posted by TDIpod at 8:59 PM on April 30, 2013

I hope this is on topic: if you want music in six rooms, consider a Sonos system. It's great for playing MP3 music and Internet radio. The downside is it's not cheap, you need a $500 amplified ZonePlayer 120 per pair of speakers (in a pinch, you can wire two pairs to one player and it sounds OK). The advantage is you can play different music in each room or the same music in several rooms in perfect synchronization. Also it's a really great music library system.
posted by Nelson at 7:14 AM on May 1, 2013

He could also get just the Connect unit for $350 and plug it's output into his amp/splitter and have the same music in every room. Not as cool as multi-zone but way more affordable.
posted by bizwank at 2:03 PM on May 1, 2013

Look in to used rotel stuff. A lot of places i've worked at, and several large houses i've seen used their big 8-12-14 or even more channel stuff in both retail stores and home theaters. It'll be a dedicated power amp, and you'll have to track down your own pre amp for it since it won't even have volume controls. But this isn't that huge of a deal.

I regularly see big rotel amps like this even at thrift stores, but most definitely on craigslist/ebay. There's probably other brands out there, but those are high quality and seem to be under $500 regularly. It's also a respected hifi/audiophile brand to some extent.
posted by emptythought at 5:25 PM on May 1, 2013