Distributed Audio

Have you ever wanted to listen to a radio station, or your favorite song in another room in your home? When entertaining guests, would the mood be enhanced by playing background music? Does each family member have his or her own musical tastes and music collection?

Using the Control4 system, 4Home Control will give you the freedom to play different music throughout your home at the same time. The system allows you to index and sort your MP3 collection. Using the on-screen display you can play albums sorted by album name, genre or artist simply by selecting cover-art. You can listen to radio stations simply by clicking its logo. Each family member can then listen to their own favorite audio wherever they happen to be.

We will take the Home Controller that may reside in the home theater, and can extend its capabilities with peripheral products. There are three additional products that are used in this situation – a powered multi-channel amplifier (for a pre-wire situation), a Speaker Point (for retro-fit environments), and a color touch screen or LCD keypad (both can be pre-wired or retro-fit).

Speaker Point or Multi-room Amplification

The Control4 Speaker Point makes delivering audio throughout the home easy and cost effective. This truly easy-to-use device with its integrated digital amplifier, instantly delivers music to any room from any connected music source in the house. Its small design and wireless capability allows Speaker Point units to be discreetly located throughout the house. And its simple installation and configuration makes setting up and using the Speaker Point a breeze.

The Speaker Points always get their power from a local 120V supply. Since they have a built-in amplifier you can attach the room speakers directly. In addition, attaching a local audio source allows you to stream that audio to other destinations or amplify it over the local room speakers.

A Control4 multi-channel amplifier can deliver 8 zones of even more power to speakers that have been pre-wired in a more traditional distributed audio design.

Benefits of Distributed Audio

• Mobility: Home owners will warm to being able to control the audio from the comfort of their bed, chair or even while walking around the house by using the wireless remote control with LCD display.
• Retrofittable: Don't have the ability to pull CAT5 cables? Not a problem. Both the Speaker Point and Mini Touch come in wireless versions. All you need is a local power source and a wireless router and you're up and running.
• Scalable Streaming: Each Home Controller can support multiple different MP3 streams throughout the house. If you need more, just keep adding more Controllers.
• Visually Impressive: The Mini Touch Screen also provides album-art and track listings. With an AM/FM tuner you can also add radio station logos. Music, plus control of other things like lights or temperature.
• Choice of control interface: You can get live track listings on both the wireless remote or the in-wall Mini Touch. Why force yourself to select music tracks through antiquated keypads that provide no feedback?
• Amplification and Distribution: The Speaker Point has a built in amplifier and line level inputs and outputs. This means you can amplify local audio sources them through connected speakers or stream them to other rooms in the house.

How to connect devices for Multi-Room Audio

In this example, we connect the Home Controller to a network switch, effectively giving it access to a Local Area Network (LAN).

Down the left we use CAT5 cable to connect a Mini Touch Screen to the network. The Mini Touch can playback music stored on a USB hard drive through external speakers using an amplifier.

The Mini Touch has a full color touch screen, rotary jog-dial and RCA line-level audio outputs. In a wired environment, the Mini Touch can receive power directly from the CAT5 cable. If the touch panel is connected wirelessly, it then relies on a local 120V connection.

Down the right we use the Wi-Fi features of our Network Router to stream the music to our Wireless Mini Touch. This is perfect for situations where CAT5 is difficult to install.

At the bottom of the page we have another device called a Speaker Point. You can select and playback music on local devices or on the USB Hard Drive by issuing commands from the System Remote Control to the Speaker Point. The remote is a wireless remote control and features a LCD screen. You do not need one for every audio zone. One remote can control multiple audio zones, but it is generally not as convenient as having interfaces available around the house.

The Speaker Points get their power from a local 120V supply. Since they have a built-in amplifier you can attach the room speakers directly. In addition, attaching a local audio source allows you to stream that audio to other destinations or amplify it over the local room speakers.