Updating an old house-wide audio system

[olimain]

My folks currently have a Bower & Wilkins Casa system wired throughout their house installed by the previous owners as an option when the house was built in the 90s. There's a keypad and two ceiling speakers in every room wired with shielded ethernet cable (RJ45 plugs at each end) which all come back to a central Casa Controller - a huge ugly thing and a 300 disc CD changer (huge, ugly and completely impractical).

I'd really like to change this into a Sonos arrangement, is it possible?

The keypads on the walls I realise will become defunct but my thoughts were:

Sonos Connect Amp - speaker output cables to the input of a 5-way speaker selector unit, the outputs of which go to the ceiling speakers in each room.

The questions I have are

1. Does this sound feasible/is there such thing as a RJ45 speaker selector unit?
2. If not I would assume I'd need to find out how the 8 strands of the network cable are wired to the speaker, cut the RJ45 connectors off and twist the appropriate 4 strands together to give me a + and -
3. Would there be a way of zoning these rooms with an Echo Dot? I'd assumed not without either having multiple Connect Amps unless a voice controlled Alexa speaker switch exists?
4. Is there a better way?

No doubt I'll have more questions but thanks in advance for any advice!

[chasingracecars]

Hello Olimain drop me a message (details on my profile.)

Happy to walk you through on the phone.

Tried to email you direct but it’s disabled.

[olimain]

Thanks, I've sent you a PM (and unlocked mine!)

[Jaybee1981]

Not familiar with the B&W but I did something similar with a Linn Knekt multiroom install in a previous apartment.

each room had speakers, wall controller, an amp per room (located in a cupboard) and a master device for CD, radio etc.
just ended up buying chromecast audios, connecting one to the input on each amp and had the amps reprogrammed to be locked onto that input and wall controllers to only control volume and on/off.

The master device was then retired.

Worked well, was very cheap and breathed new life into the install

[olimain]

Jaybee1981 said:

Not familiar with the B&W but I did something similar with a Linn Knekt multiroom install in a previous apartment.

each room had speakers, wall controller, an amp per room (located in a cupboard) and a master device for CD, radio etc.
just ended up buying chromecast audios, connecting one to the input on each amp and had the amps reprogrammed to be locked onto that input and wall controllers to only control volume and on/off.

The master device was then retired.

Worked well, was very cheap and breathed new life into the install

Thanks for the reply. Do you remember if you had RJ45 connectors? I've been looking to find out which wires would group/twist together to hopefully use them with a conventional amp but haven't had much luck so far. The B&W system has everything coming back to one big unit which I'd look to get rid of which would (I believe) render the wall panels useless which would be fine.

[megaphone]

If you want to use the CAT5 cable as speaker cable just use two pairs together, it doesn't matter which ones,

I'd go Brown and orange for +. Blue and green for -

Is each speaker wired back on an individual CAT5?

Also you 'may' be able to modify the existing speakers and bypass the built in amp. Will save getting new speakers, they are actually quite nice ceiling speakers, sound ok. Would need more info on speaker type to advise more.

Edited by megaphone on Tuesday 18th December 14:03

Edited by megaphone on Tuesday 18th December 14:09

Edited by megaphone on Tuesday 18th December 14:12

[olimain]

megaphone said:

If you want to use the CAT5 cable as speaker cable just use two pairs together, it doesn't matter which ones,

I'd go Brown and orange for +. Blue and green for -

Also you 'may' be able to modify the existing speakers and bypass the built in amp. Will save getting new speakers, they are actually quite nice ceiling speakers, sound ok.

Thanks, I'd be very interested to hear more if you know how?

I believe these are the speakers: http://bwgroupsupport.com/downloads/manuals/bw/ACM...
And this is the system: http://bwgroupsupport.com/downloads/manuals/bw/CAS...

[megaphone]

Bit difficult to tell, looks like they have a single 30w amp on them, so maybe you can get to the output of the amp and bypass it, depends if there is a passive crossover present that you can get to, would really need to see a picture of the back of a speaker.

[olimain]

I'll take the back off one and post a photo! Thank you.

[megaphone]

I found these on the net. Looks like you may be able to remove the amplifier off the back of the speaker and run it as a standard low impedance speaker. It really depends on how the crossover is fitted for the tweeter, hopefully there is a standard passive crossover under the amp.

[smn159]

I think that I'd be inclined to bypass the lot and put a play 1 (or a couple of play 1's) in each room. There's a version which has Alexa included, or add some Echo Dot's.

[olimain]

Dad wants his record player set up though so I need something with line in!

[smn159]

Ah OK... in which case I think you just need a single connect near the record player - you can then set it up to broadcast to Play 1's (or any other Sonos units) elsewhere.

[VEX]

A quick google and these look like they use standard ABus technology and wiring so they should be easy to upgrade to Sonos.

As for Alexa control, I think I have something that could control the audio feed to each room in terms of on/off but sharing the single Sonos box.

Let me have and think/play.

V.

[olimain]

VEX said:

A quick google and these look like they use standard ABus technology and wiring so they should be easy to upgrade to Sonos.

As for Alexa control, I think I have something that could control the audio feed to each room in terms of on/off but sharing the single Sonos box.

Let me have and think/play.

V.

Thank you, I'd be very interested.