Speaker location advice

[Wexfordman]

Hi,

I am looking for a bit of advice re installing speakers for sonos. The house has been prewired for multiroom audio, but not very well imho, so want to get some advice.

The main area, is the kitchen/living room, which is open plan. It is an L shap room, but of equal proportions on each leg, two square areas so to speak, rough drawing in the attatched file.



There are 4 speaker positions, 2 pairs in each of the areas, currently just speaker wire hanging down from the ceiling awaiting speakers. I plan to put just 1 sonos zone in the entire area, so was wondering what the best approach would be. 4 speakers is probably a bad idea, so was going to reduce it to 2, and require the location of the speaker cables. The left hand side of the room is the kitchen, the right hand side the living area, and the tv will be located in the bottom right if that makes sense.

If I was to rewire to allow for just 2 speakers, woudl this be the best option, and would it be adequate ? I was also thinking of rewiring for some small corner mounted speakers rather than ceiling mounts.

Any adivce appreciated, particularly with regards speaker type and location.

The second point, is in soem of the other rooms, also with speaker cable wired to ceiling points. Its a two story house with concrete ceilings, so on the bottom floor, there is a false ceiling, with just over 3 inches depth to allow me mount the speakers, so I will need to go for some shallow ceiling speakers.

Any help/adivce appreciated.

Regards,
Eamon

[toscal]

If you want to keep the 4 speakers then why not use a Sonos ZP100, this has an amplified output and a line out as well. Then connect an amplifier to the line out and then to your second set of speakers. Have a look at this

http://www.sonelco.com/pdfs-producto/ingles/P8121in.pdf

As regards to corner mounted or ceiling or wall mounted. I think its down to personal choice. Some of my clients prefer Bose, some like KEF others like B&W and some just go with what I recommend or can realistically afford.

[TimH]

Eamon,

What's the approx length of your long & short walls?
My lounge is a similar shape but we have a part-dividing wall which separates the tv area from the longer room on the left. I'm still tossing up what to do here too and the options I see are to blitz it and have a lot of smaller/lower powered speakers, or have fewer larger ones in key places.

I'd ended up planning for the former, with speakers as per your blue ones, then 4 in the other area, one pair across the room on the centreline between the blue speakers, and another pair further "up" and again on an East-West centreline halfway up the shorter wall on the right. Hard to explain in words...

SWMBO complained at the potential ceiling acne so I started to look at the plastered-in speakers (e.g. http://hiddenwires.co.uk/resourcesar...051202-01.html) particularly as we were going to have the artex removed from the ceiling anyway. From the specs, these don't give a great deal of bass so would probably need a sub elsewhere in the room.

And that's where I've got to!
Perhaps not much practical help, but you're not alone
I'll post again when I install some.

Cheers,

Tim.