Whole house install

[Badspacewizard]

Good morning, sorry for the long post in advance.I am currently working on a large property that requires audio in the majority of the house. The customer has said he wants to use this system. I have never come across Wiim so am asking the experts which products would be best to use.
Requirements are as follows
Kitchen/ snug,6 x speakers in ceiling in kitchen. Possibly using old av amp for surround sound in the snug.
Games room 2 speakers
Kitchen,snug and games room the cables will all go back to the snug tv area. This area will also have garden speakers.

Lounge 2 x speakers own amp in this room?
Gym 2 x speakers own amp in this room ?
Utility room 2 speakers connected to gym amp?
Hope this makes sense and look forward to all ideas and comments
TIA.

 

[Minty]

I don’t think I can offer much help with your query.

Do you know what they are likely to be listening on this system? For instance Apple Music? This will assist those about to give you some suggestions.

 

[Badspacewizard]

I don’t think I can offer much help with your query.

Do you know what they are likely to be listening on this system? For instance Apple Music? This will assist those about to give you some suggestions.

Honestly not sure. I assume the kitchen area will be Tv plus music streaming of some sort. I will ask customer for more info.

 

[Wiimer]

Good morning, sorry for the long post in advance.I am currently working on a large property that requires audio in the majority of the house. The customer has said he wants to use this system. I have never come across Wiim so am asking the experts which products would be best to use.
Requirements are as follows
Kitchen/ snug,6 x speakers in ceiling in kitchen. Possibly using old av amp for surround sound in the snug.
Games room 2 speakers
Kitchen,snug and games room the cables will all go back to the snug tv area. This area will also have garden speakers.

Lounge 2 x speakers own amp in this room?
Gym 2 x speakers own amp in this room ?
Utility room 2 speakers connected to gym amp?
Hope this makes sense and look forward to all ideas and comments
TIA.

Hi,

This is a suggestion from someone who is not an expert.

Kitchen/snug: Connect six speakers to the AVR and connect the WiiM Pro to the AVR's input terminals. This allows you to play various streaming music through the AVR while maintaining your surround sound system.
(Personally, I would recommend adding separate front speakers to surround sound system.)

Games room: If possible, I think it would be best to rewire the speaker cables and place the WiiM Amp in the games room. However, please note WiiM devices have an average 40ms audio delay. Connecting game consoles' audio outputs directly to the Vibelink Amp avoids this delay. If you wish to listen to music in the games room, you can add a WiiM Pro.

Install one WiiM Amp in each of the other areas.
(This assumes all speakers throughout the house are passive speakers.)

WiiM pro: 1 unit (can be changed to WiiM Mini, Pro plus, Ultra)
WiiM Amp: 3 units (can be changed to WiiM Amp Pro, Amp Ultra)
WiiM Amp or Vibelink Amp + WiiM pro : 1 unit

When using Airplay, please select either WiiM Mini, Pro, Pro plus, or Amp.

 

[Wiimer]

I'm not sure how the ceiling speakers are positioned, but do you absolutely need to use ceiling speakers in the games room?

If it's not essential, I think you could also consider installing separate speakers.

The games console is placed in the games room, isn't it?

 

[Badspacewizard]

Sorry for the confusion. Games room is not that sort of games room, more dart pool etc. may have a console but it’s not necessary for it to be run trough the speakers.

 

[drober30]

Kitchen/ snug,6 x speakers in ceiling in kitchen - It's not clear where the speakers are located but guessing you have two speakers in kitchen and four in snug. The room which has two pairs of speakers, if they are rated at 8 ohm, you can connect both pair to a single Wiim Amp/Amp Pro/Amp Ultra.

Every other room/pair of speakers gets their own Wiim Amp/Amp Pro/Wiim Amp Ultra.

This provides whole house audio that can be grouped or controlled individually using the Wiim Home App.

Note: Wiim Amp is the only one that has AirPlay 2 if thats an important feature.

Beyond that, and if your client really is into music, possibly has his own collection of digital music or subscribes to Qobuz or Tidal, look into incorporating Roon, which all three of those Wiim Amps are Roon Ready devices.

Once you start adding an AVR into your chain, the client would need to power that on manually and switch inputs before controlling with the Wiim Home App.

 

[s3igell]

Note that WiiM is only recently starting to develop/deploy any support for Multi-Channel Audio (and only Input via HDMI-ARC). Multi-Channel Audio is NOT Passed-Through any WiiM, but rather Decoded at the WiiM with HDMI-ARC Connection, and then Individual Channels are routed to other WiiMs. If Customer wants traditional Multi-Channel support (and support for more modern formats such as DTS:X and ATMOS) then best to plan usage through a traditional AVR.

 

[Patagonia]

Not sure what you are doing on the house, but if its contruction/renovations for me the most important part would be to leave all spaces properly wired including data (fiber or lan) and speakers (ceiling and amp/speakers) etc…

 

[HighNRG]

It might be better in any case when the professional who wants to install something and get paid for that should either know how it works or at least ask assistance from another, should I say real?, professional instead of asking in a hobby forum.

 

[slartibartfast]

Kitchen/ snug,6 x speakers in ceiling in kitchen - It's not clear where the speakers are located but guessing you have two speakers in kitchen and four in snug. The room which has two pairs of speakers, if they are rated at 8 ohm, you can connect both pair to a single Wiim Amp/Amp Pro/Amp Ultra.

Every other room/pair of speakers gets their own Wiim Amp/Amp Pro/Wiim Amp Ultra.

This provides whole house audio that can be grouped or controlled individually using the Wiim Home App.

Note: Wiim Amp is the only one that has AirPlay 2 if thats an important feature.

Beyond that, and if your client really is into music, possibly has his own collection of digital music or subscribes to Qobuz or Tidal, look into incorporating Roon, which all three of those Wiim Amps are Roon Ready devices.

Once you start adding an AVR into your chain, the client would need to power that on manually and switch inputs before controlling with the Wiim Home App.

Why Roon? WiiM's are Lyrion ready as well

 

[hoggdav1]

What other brands have you installed? I'm not an installer, but generally you should only be pitching a couple of options to your client(s):

1. 2 channel amp with app control (Wiim Amp, Sonos Amp, etc.). Purchase 1 amp per zone of two speakers. Pricey, but straight forward. Creating a group of 3 zones of amplifiers for the kitchen to play them all simultaneously. Since this is the Wiim forum, let's use their products:

Base Wiim: $299 x 7 amps = $2093 + Speakers, Cable + Installation

2. Multi-zone audio amplifier with audio streaming devices connected. I personally use this option in my setup. Based on your post you have 14 total speakers and a total of 5 different zones of audio. You would need to find a single amp that supports at least this many channels or connect two smaller multi-channel amps together. You should be looking at options like this.

Let's assume you are going to use Wiim Pros as your streaming devices. I like these over the Wiim Minis for whole home audio since the Wiim pro will have a trigger out option to wake the amplifier zone from hibernation.

Kitchen zone: RCA to BUS in. Set the corresponding channel inputs to BUS In
All other zones: RCA input, and make sure each zone is set to Line In

1 Russound D1650 multi-channel amp (or whatever you want to use): $1099
5 Wiim Pros @ $149 = $745
Total = $1844 + Speakers, Cable + Installation

Final thoughts:
All control will be done via a phone or tablet. If they are wanting something will wall controls and Wiim, they are looking at a Control4 setup which is $$$$.

Best of luck.

 

[Minty]

Honestly not sure. I assume the kitchen area will be Tv plus music streaming of some sort. I will ask customer for more info.

Not everybody likes to use multiple apps or wants to use their mobile or tablet to stream audio throughout the home. Another consideration is flexibility of adding some new device which may come along tomorrow to one or more streaming devices and have these available to listen to as well.

I use Alexa and it's great being able to give a voice command to stream my music or radio etc. No need to use an app if I don’t want to.

In my experience enthusiasts are happy to mix 'n' match to get a result, where the general consumer prefers a simpler approach.