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Pipe music to kitchen

I want to pipe music from my living room system to my small kitchen. I do not need a separate source for the kitchen. I want sound that will be fun while working in the kitchen -- good mid-fi will be fine. Seeking good rhythm, mid-range clarity, and reasonably smooth response within realistically limited frequency range. Speakers will be mounted on-wall.

Space is a challenge -- don’t want to give up the All-Clad for stereo. I just need amplification and volume control. I’ve got an old Harman-Kardon PM640 integrated that would perform the job well, but are there any more compact options you can think of?

How about running the line-level signal from my living room preamp to the kitchen? Distance as the sparrow flies would be about 30’, but I’ll probably need to allow 45-50 feet of cabling. What kind and price-range of cabling should I be looking for?

There have been many appropriate speaker suggestions made in other threads, but feel free to suggest your favorite tiny speakers. I have a pair of Linn Sekrits available for use that sound great, but unfortunately, they’re too big.

What do you think about going mono with one speaker in this situation?

Thanks, Jayson
jayboard
albertporter's avatar
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albertporter
4,949 posts
 
Vandersteen's on wall speaker, the VSM-1 requires little space and although designed for HT use, would be great for your purpose.

I have a Vandersteen dialogue channel between a pair of Soundlab Ultimate Ones and continue to be amazed at it's ability to perform for HT application.

http://www.vandersteen.com/pages/vandersteen_home_theater.htm
sfar's avatar
sfar
1,756 posts
 
For a similar setup, I have a Yamaha MX-35 power amp connected to the second set of outputs on my McCormack preamp. The Yamaha is very small and unobtrusive, has two sets of speakers terminals and plenty of power to drive small pairs of dining room and kitchen speakers. The best feature, though, is that there are gain controls on the front of the amp, making it very easy to balance the volume of the auxiliary speakers to the mains in the living room and a speaker on-off switch on the front if you want to listen just to the main system.

It might be difficult to find that amp used but I think there were several similar Yamaha models. It could be that th only advantage over your Harmon Kardon integrated is the unobtrusive look of the Yamaha.

My experience with auxiliary kitchen and dining room speakers is that almost anything decent will do since very little critical listening gets done there and it's hard to hear over the slicing and dicing, anyway.
subaruguru
1,369 posts
 
I simply bought the Onkyo one-box wonder (CR305tx) CD receiver, a narrow, silver clone of an NAD L-40 like product.
Comes with two quite attractive all-wood veneer two-ways, and with its 3 levels of push-button bass boost sounds shockingly good wall-mounted! Introduced at $299 list last year, now only $199! My wife couldn't be happier, and is listening to Billy Joel as I type. Funny how we trade cables that cost more than entire systems, eh?
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