New Home - Will my plan work for multi-room/whole house audio?

[Racerjim66]

Greetings:

Been reading some here, but this is my first post.

We are building a house and are planning for whole-house audio and a home theatre. We will have five rooms with passive speakers, one room with a 5.1 home theatre setup with an A/V receiver, and one room with a turntable connected to a vintage Kenwood receiver. I propose to use five Wiim Amps (or Pros), with four of the amps connected directly to the passive speakers, and the other amp connected to another set of passive speakers, but with the Kenwood using a "TAPE REC" output to connect to the line-in of one of the amps. All the amps will be connected to the wired network in the home. I understand I can group the amps so they all play the same source material.

Will this setup result in good, synchronized lag-free whole house audio when streaming (i.e., not using the A/V or the Kenwood as a source)?

Would I be able to play music from the turntable throughout the house (through the other amps/passive speakers) without a lag/sync issue?

Same question for the A/V receiver, if I play a two channel signal through the Amp using the Line Out on the receiver, will there be a lag/sync issue?

The ability to fill the house with sound from the various sets of speakers is important to us, so I want to make sure this is achievable with the setup I am proposing.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

Best,

Jim

 

[Mr Ee]

Welcome.

imo, the only way you're guaranteed to get all rooms synced is for all audio to go into a wiim and from there into other amps / speakers.
So for streaming, yes.
But if the TT goes into the Kenwood amp and its line out then goes into a (grouped) wiim then the Kenwood speakers will play the music fairly significantly before the other speakers attached to the other wiims.

If the TT (either via line out if it has one or phono preamp) goes into the wiim and from there into the Kenwood then you should be all good.

Also note that if you plan to plug a TV into one of the wiims then if that wiim is in a group then the audio will lag the video by quite a lot.

As noted elsewhere, a reduced group delay update is expected at some point, but I personally don't know if it will be reduced enough for the TV and TT into a non-wiim scenarios described above to be acceptable.

 

[Wiimaster]

Maybe this is worth watching:

 

[Racerjim66]

Thank you both. That was what I thought, but good to know they are developing a solution. I'll have a look at the video

Is this any different than how Sonos would work? From all I've read I would like to avoid Sonos.

Best,

Jim