Audio in new extension and home cinema / games room.

[Sevenman]

I need to make some decisions this week about the installation of cables into my new extension which involves:

• A new kitchen / dining room
• The old kitchen becoming a home cinema / games room
• Home cinema gear (5.1, Kef Eggs) moving out of the lounge into the games room

For the amount we listen to music (not that much) I don't need anything epic or a full smart home system, but I want to keep a 5.1 setup and the option to run music into 1 or 2 other rooms. It also needs to be unobtrusive. I have been through a big floorstander phase with some capable amps etc, but don't need that now.

My thoughts are:

• New kitchen / diner could have 2 x ceiling speakers to make use of the spare channels of a 7 channel amp. If I changed my 10 year old Denon amp for one of these , I think that does 2 rooms easily and will also talk to network drives to access music, which my older amp does not do (and not sold on my chromecast audio). There will be no TV in this room and I am not sure I need to run any network points etc. The games room is through the larger opening at the top, the lounge through the top left door.

• The games room (when the old kitchen is taken out) will contain the main TV, amp, HDD recorder, Blu-Ray player and any games consoles etc. For tidiness I plan to house these in modified kitchen units as shown below with an IR repeater to get signals in. The units should have the height / depth to take the amp (unlike many things I have looked at). If run hard it might need cooling / a door open, but I have 2 small children and it doesn't get used at significant volumes.

• The lounge retains a single TV mounted on the wall but nothing else (like the example below). I intend for the power, aerial and network ports to all be behind the TV so it has no cables / trunking running to it. That seems to make me reliant on TV sound as I am not sure how I could improve it. Maybe some ceiling speakers above the TV, but then I need to consider where the amp would sit and how to run that. If I have the home cinema kit next door, then I probably don't need to care too much about this audio. It also means I can't easily play recorded content on that TV, but since all the kit is next door, but maybe I don't need to.

The lounge will then have no audio if we want background music, and the amp doesn't have any spare channels to do extra rooms. I can probably live with that unless there is a simple solution.



I think my questions are:

1. Does this make sense?
2. Any recommendations for ceiling speakers?
3. Any recommendations for amps / other hardware that could make this easier?
4. Is the use of modified kitchen units to house the gear sensible?

Thanks for your advice.

[Angrybiker]

Celling speakers are just awful. Bad idea. They will sound terrible and also bleed sound to the rooms above. I'd go as far as to suggest that they are a bit Council.

If I were you, if you have a central NAS setup, I'd just go for whatever you want for TV (personally I prefer 2.1 and go nuts on quality); and get sonos or something better if you want for the other rooms. Then you can have different music in different rooms.

[Sevenman]

Having read much of the 'A bit council' thread, it is easy to fall into that classification...

No concerns about noise above, as the house is built into the slope of a hill much of the living space (including these rooms) is effectively on the first floor with attic above (makes cabling above rooms easier).

I would rather keep kitchen workspace clear of a Sonos unit, so am looking for something hidden hence the idea of speakers powered by spare amp channels.

My expectation isn't of tremendous audio quality, but I haven't heard many ceiling speakers for comparison. A friend's house made use of them throughout which sounded ok, but it was background music, rather than serious listening.

[tankplanker]

A decent multi zone amp will allow you to have different sources or the same source in multiple zones at the same time.

You don't list what your sources are, is it just the NAS, or do you use blu-rays/cds, or do you stream?

In wall speakers would be better than ceiling mounted speakers if you have the space to fit them. A few TVs have decent built in speakers, so if you can't mount in wall then I would concentrate on getting the TV with the best speakers you can get.

[Angrybiker]

Agreed, wall mount

[Sevenman]

tankplanker said:

A decent multi zone amp will allow you to have different sources or the same source in multiple zones at the same time.

You don't list what your sources are, is it just the NAS, or do you use blu-rays/cds, or do you stream?

In wall speakers would be better than ceiling mounted speakers if you have the space to fit them. A few TVs have decent built in speakers, so if you can't mount in wall then I would concentrate on getting the TV with the best speakers you can get.

The specification for that Denon amp indicated it would control 2 zones separately, managed through an App.

Sources - CDs mainly, but I want to move all music to a NAS at decent quality. Plus the Blu-Ray player / HDD recorder isn't a great audio source (not the quality via optical interconnect, but it always tried to turn the TV on with it and takes a long time to boot. Other sources may include games consoles.

No options for in-wall speakers without building walls out, and I want the room size.

Not much love for ceiling speaker so far...

[tankplanker]

Unless you have stty internet and can't upgrade it I would consider moving to streaming as the quality is the same as CD, its far more flexible, and far easier to manage content going forward.I used to rip everything, and I still have many Gbs of FLACs sitting on one of my NASes, but I never use it since I switched to streaming a few years ago. If you haven't already ripped the content I would think twice about doing so.

[Sevenman]

That means moving with the times... And I have not yet ripped much of my CD collection.

I am still traumatised that the new car doesn't have a CD player. I am putting some music on an SD card at the moment to see if that works.

[Maxf]

tankplanker said:

Unless you have stty internet and can't upgrade it I would consider moving to streaming as the quality is the same as CD, its far more flexible, and far easier to manage content going forward.I used to rip everything, and I still have many Gbs of FLACs sitting on one of my NASes, but I never use it since I switched to streaming a few years ago. If you haven't already ripped the content I would think twice about doing so.

Surely it depends where you are streaming from - spotify isnt CD quality but Tidal is? It also depends what you're listening on.

I stream to my sonos no problem - it's more background music. If I want to actually sit and listen to music, it's still FLAC from a NAS.

[tankplanker]

Maxf said:

Surely it depends where you are streaming from - spotify isnt CD quality but Tidal is? It also depends what you're listening on.

I stream to my sonos no problem - it's more background music. If I want to actually sit and listen to music, it's still FLAC from a NAS.

True, although Spotify's lossless option should be out any day now, its been in beta testing for ages. Apple should be able to match it pretty quickly as they already have much of their library available to purchase as lossless already, I'd expect them to move once Spotify announce the full release of theirs.

Both Tidal and Qobuz do CD quality or better. In theory Tidal has a decent number of albums at better than CD quality with its masters selection as those are MQA, but I've seen mixed feedback on MQA so your mileage may vary. I haven't tried Qobuz so I don't know how much stuff is better than CD quality.

Something like a Sonos I would be happy enough with Spotify's paid option as I really doubt anybody would pass a blind listening test on Sonos for 320 mp3s or 256 aacs vs. FLAC. For any decent separates system I'd want lossless.

I really can't be arsed managing my music collection anymore, its far more work than using a streaming service and I get to try out far more music than I would if I had to buy records. I guess if you have a reasonably static collection of albums that you listen to then that effort (and ongoing cost of streaming) is just a one time only thing so my point becomes moot.

[R8Steve]

In my opinion the easiest solution would be to run the Denon and Kef eggs in the games room and use the second zone to run ceiling speakers in the kitchen.

In the lounge just get a soundbar to give the tv a boost while keeping things neat and you can stream spotify, etc to most soundbars if you're looking for background music.

I can recommend this as i have exactly that setup, same equipment and everything

[Maxf]

tankplanker said:

r
I really can't be arsed managing my music collection anymore, its far more work than using a streaming service and I get to try out far more music than I would if I had to buy records. I guess if you have a reasonably static collection of albums that you listen to then that effort (and ongoing cost of streaming) is just a one time only thing so my point becomes moot.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I quite like 'owning' a particular version of an album though - but in most cases truly lossless streaming would be fine for me. I posted in another thread about buying a turntable - I think this is the way I'll end up going... spotify lossless for most listening and the 2nd pressing Japanese 1973 release of a rare b-side when I want to geek out with a glass of wine on a friday night after a crappy week.

[Sevenman]

R8Steve said:

In my opinion the easiest solution would be to run the Denon and Kef eggs in the games room and use the second zone to run ceiling speakers in the kitchen.

In the lounge just get a soundbar to give the tv a boost while keeping things neat and you can stream spotify, etc to most soundbars if you're looking for background music.

I can recommend this as i have exactly that setup, same equipment and everything

Something like this could work in the lounge. Fitted neatly under the TV.

Hadn't really considered them before. Thanks for the advice.

[hyphen]

Sevenman said:

No options for in-wall speakers without building walls out, and I want the room size.

On walls? You can get some slim depth ones.

[aberdeeneuan]

So, I have ceiling speakers in our kitchen, bathrooms and the loft conversion. Am not a bit council ;-)

All are Monitor Audio, CT180 in the kitchen, and 160 in the bathrooms. You can drive them pretty loud (certainly the 180) off a Sonos Connect amp, and I've no complaints. For background music while cooking, etc, they work really well, aren't in the way and just work.

For serious listening, you want something else. However it's worth a listen first if you can, kitchens are not an optimal room for music anyway. There were some B&W ceiling ones I looked at that sounded amazing but total overkill for the usage I have.