New Construction - Through Home Audio and Large Room Challenges

[1782Farm]

Hi WiiMers,
I am building a new house and I want to help my builder and electrician to nail down my WiiM Ultra and other A/V requirements now, while the walls are open and without sheet rock on them. Here's my challenges as a newbie audiophile:

1.) 20' x 30' great room which has a cathdrale ceiling. I'd like to use a 50" Samsung The Frame QLED with their 48" soundbar 11.1 990D, sub, two passive surround speakers and a Denon 1800 AVR, Micca 8" in ceiling speakers and BluRay.

2.) Man Cave - Below the Great Room, also a large space open seating concept... with Denon 1800 AVR with 5.2 channel home theater set up.

3.) Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Kitchen - What will I need to install before the spray form insulation is installed? What Micca speakers for these rooms?

All tips and pointers would be much appreciated!
Phil

 

[hoohoohoo]

Hi WiiMers,
I am building a new house and I want to help my builder and electrician to nail down my WiiM Ultra and other A/V requirements now, while the walls are open and without sheet rock on them. Here's my challenges as a newbie audiophile:

Think ahead to what you might do in the future once you've digested the current house build. Depending on family size/ages, things will shift and grow as the family changes, so plan for some room flexibility. Wives have a funny way of re-arranging the furniture, just because...lol.

1.) 20' x 30' great room which has a cathdrale ceiling. I'd like to use a 50" Samsung The Frame QLED with their 48" soundbar 11.1 990D, sub, two passive surround speakers and a Denon 1800 AVR, Micca 8" in ceiling speakers and BluRay.

Planning ahead for the 20x30 space, you'll probably expand the TV size over time and add some floorstanders to replace the dinky soundbar. Cabinetry for the media gear can hide or highlight your media devices -- your choice. We have a main floor system that is entirely hidden except for floorstanders and a 65" TV. A WiiM Ultra (displayed) or WiiM Pro/Plus (hidden) should do.

2.) Man Cave - Below the Great Room, also a large space open seating concept... with Denon 1800 AVR with 5.2 channel home theater set up.

WiiM Ultra would slot in nicely.

3.) Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Kitchen - What will I need to install before the spray form insulation is installed? What Micca speakers for these rooms?

Do you plan to use local amps like the WiiM Amp / Amp Pro or run a zone off the Denons? What you do there will drive your wiring choices.

All tips and pointers would be much appreciated!
Phil

Do you plan to use wired Ethernet to all the rooms or wireless?

Do you have a NAS for music that you want to share to all locations? You may want to wire in some Ethernet to connect all the media devices on a single Ethernet. Ubiquiti has lots of great gear for wiring homes.

 

[1782Farm]

Great bunch of tips. Thank you!

I was thinking of using wired ethernet in the form of 6E fiber or coax. What is best practice?

How do I wire the most appropriate WiiM device for a specific room or hallway? How to integrate with a Denon 1800H? Would you know?

Thank you,
Phil

 

[d6jg]

Giving you a pointer by using my recent Kitchrn refurb as an example. Audio only. No TV.

Requirements.
She. Easy to use - used to using an Alexa Echo Show with “Alexa play ….”
Me. High quality audio from my LMS server with multi room synced to other rooms.

(LMS is irrelevant to the solution. It could be any high quality audio source)

Solution
In ceiling B&W speakers wired to a small dedicated cabinet.
WiiM Pro
Topping MX3

The Pro is set to be the dedicated speaker for an Echo Show.
The Topping has auto switch on over any digital input. The Pro is connected via Coax.
The auto switch on is crucial as the Pro & Topping are not generally accessible by shorter people.

This allows my wife to “Alexa play ….” As before but with better SQ.

If I want to play something I just grab my phone, select and hit play. Hires high quality SQ with synced multi room if I want.

Switching between her mode and mine is seamless.

I wouldn’t attempt to use an AVR in this kind of audio only scenario.

Edit
Absolutely no point in using Fibre cables. CAT6 is more than adequate. Audio streams are minuscule in data transfer terms.

 

[hoohoohoo]

Great bunch of tips. Thank you!

I was thinking of using wired ethernet in the form of 6E fiber or coax. What is best practice?

Cat6 should be fine. Fiber is usually done between floors to interconnect ethernet switches but far from necessary. Coax is going the way of the dodo unless you have some specific need like a cable run >330 feet or 100m.

Usually houses are built with a wiring closet with all the cable runs and internet coming back to the closet. I'd recommend getting a mini 19" rack with a keystone patch panel to terminate all your cable runs from the rooms. Then you can patch out to switches, routers, NAS, Internet, etc as needed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Keystone-Support-Rapink-Pass-Thru-Removable/dp/B09FZKHH2G/ref=asc_df_B09FZKHH2G/

How do I wire the most appropriate WiiM device for a specific room or hallway? How to integrate with a Denon 1800H? Would you know?

It depends on whether you want to leverage the Denon zones which require speaker wire runs from the Denon amp to the individual speakers. WiiM streamer would be a device attached via the Denon. Did you have something else in mind?

How to power a multi-room music system

Find the best options for powering speakers throughout your home

www.crutchfield.com

You probably want to get a copy of visio or some other drawing program like draw.io to map out your rooms, devices and interconnects. It will help your carpenter/ builder immensely and help you break the problem down to more manageable chunks.

Thank you,
Phil

 

[Mewlon]

Hi WiiMers,
I am building a new house and I want to help my builder and electrician to nail down my WiiM Ultra and other A/V requirements now, while the walls are open and without sheet rock on them. Here's my challenges as a newbie audiophile:

1.) 20' x 30' great room which has a cathdrale ceiling. I'd like to use a 50" Samsung The Frame QLED with their 48" soundbar 11.1 990D, sub, two passive surround speakers and a Denon 1800 AVR, Micca 8" in ceiling speakers and BluRay.

2.) Man Cave - Below the Great Room, also a large space open seating concept... with Denon 1800 AVR with 5.2 channel home theater set up.

3.) Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Kitchen - What will I need to install before the spray form insulation is installed? What Micca speakers for these rooms?

All tips and pointers would be much appreciated!
Phil

I recently moved into a house where I needed a complete rewire and I got the electrician to install cat 6 cable to living room and three bedrooms. All the wiring comes down from the loft. He chased out the walls as these were going to be replastered anyway. In those rooms where there's an ethernet socket I have a Netgear switching box so I don't run out of inputs. In future any of those rooms can now be used for whatever. So, I think it's just really about keeping your options open.

The electrician didn't charge me any extra for this so I was well pleased.

 

[1782Farm]

Great thanks to you all, for these expert tips. I will document your advice for the electrician as best as I can.
Phil