How do I design a home audio system?

I've done two of them myself. I'm not sure you could get it done for 1000 dollars. That won't cover the cost of speakers, wires, and volume controls. You may want to consider doing less rooms at once if budget is a big issue. I'm in the middle of doing 8 rooms plus one outside set. Not including the outside set, or labor, it cost me 1565 before tax. That was with me putting a single, dual voice coil, speaker in the room. Pairs will be more expensive.

Most any reciever will work. But there are a couple things to keep in mind. First, make sure that all volume controls are impedance matched. Otherwise, you will kill the reciever in no time. Second, it's not a bad idea to use an impedance matched speaker selector to run all the speakers to and then run that to the receiver. Keep in mind, that if you want to run mulitple speakers at once, you will probably need quite a bit of current. That is where the reciever choice comes into play. It may be a good idea to run a separate amplifier to the outside speakers, as these will tend to be played louder than the others just because of location.

1000?

Doubt it.

8 rooms, think yer gonna spend at least 100 per speaker, any less and yer getting some pretty hokey stuff

so that is 800. Not to mention another 200 of Out-door speakers, so yer already at a grand. If you plan on having a Pair of speakers in each room for stereo sound, yer looking at 1,600-2000

The cableing will set you back probably 200-300 if you go with Monster wire, maybe 150-200 if you go with Home Depot Lamp cord.

If you have 2 speakers in a each of 8 rooms and a pair of outdoor speakers, yer looking at 18 channels of amplification, that is gonna cost a grip too. Probably several grand.

You could probably find something that has speakert selectors and cut down on the amps, but that will limit yer capabilitys and im not sure who makes stuff like that.

Also, you will want controls right? in the rooms? I would estimate 100 bucks a pop for some basic wall mounted controls per room.

All in all, yer looking at about 4-5 grand to do that many rooms.

You COULD probably get an intercom system with an am/fm radio for under a grand, but i dont know if you could do 8 rooms.

This is a pretty big request, if you want to do this i would reccommend having plenty of money.

Some of these multi zone/multi room systems reach upwards of 150,000. the cheaper ones are about 6-10k.

It is a pretty sophisiticated system, not something simple like a cheap little Bose Wave Radio.

The installation charges would be very high as well, unless you can run all the wiring yourself.

better hire some painters or get some paint afterwards too. They will have to knock holes in the walls to do something like this.

Good luck!:)

Less crappy Slappy hit it right on the head. I do some work for a custom installer, including typing the occasional proposal, and your going to need at least $400 per room for a impedence match volume control and a pair of crappy speakercraft in-walls. You could get away with using a two zone receiver, like the ones from denon, but your going to have to add a few high current amps and a impedence matching speaker selector box. There's a company that makes a volume control with a built in amp (12 watts/ch?) that you could use. That way you would only have to run low level to the VC's (volume controls). However, in larger rooms, and outside, 12 watts aint gonna cut it. I think the amplified VC's run about $250 each. Anyway you look at it your going to spend around $6K to do 8 rooms/2 zones. What about IR repeaters to control the source from different rooms. What I would recomment, is that if you don't know what your doing, hire a professional. With labor and equipment you'll be lucky to spend under $10k this route but at least you will know it works. Better than spending a few grand and then having to call a pro to fix your mess. That's if they will even attempt to fix it.

Less crappy Slappy - I've seen whole house audio projects that were well over a Million. The crappy systems usually are in the $40K-$60K range. We did one house that was so big the TV delivery guys thought it was a hotel and drove around for an hour looking for the house. Finally they called on the cell and said that all they could find was a big hotel up on top of a hill. "Dude, that's not a hotel, that's the house...." That's a 42000 sq/ft house not including the 17 car garrage on 27 acres with a manmade private lake for fishing and water sports. We did another house were they spent a half mil just to add one room to the house for the home theater. When you add in the equipment, it was north of a million.

What kind of in-wall wiring would you guys recommend?

I've spent mucho bucks trying all types of wires for my main rig, but I was wondering what I could use to run through the walls into my Slappy Crapper.

Will the stuff AudioAdvisor work?

I may use outdoor speakers because they'll be more resistant to Crapper Stink.