Possibly the best place to start is at the beginning, with a consideration of some of the supplements you should get from a contemporary Whole House Audio: the electronic center of present luxury home is the Low Voltage Distribution Panel – this is a centralized built-in enclosure usually created from formed steel which houses the ‘home runs’ of most of the TV|TV sets, telephone, and network cabling for the house. When we say ‘home run’, that means any range of cabling that begins in one single location and fans out from there – this is the recommended cabling method by contemporary standards, although not all cabling needs to be home run. Together with the cabling, this distribution panel will also include various termination equipment for each typekind of signal: RG6 cabling for TVs will terminate into an RF splitter and/or amplifier, phone cabling (customarily CAT5) will meet into a discrepancy of telephone blocks, and Ethernet cabling (again CAT5 or CAT5e) will go into a network switch or hub (in combination with the router or gateway device).
Whole House Audio Characteristics:
Audio/Video cabling is typically home run to a various central point, customarily within close proximity to the home’s main home theater system. This includes speaker cabling to as many various rooms as can be imagined, in combination with various control cabling (usually CAT5) for remotely controlling centralized A/V equipment. Most home systems are strictly for distributed into audio, but today’s top-of-the-line systems also provide distributed video – this allows, for instance, someone in one of the upstairs bedrooms to watch a DVD from the main system downstairs, and simultaneously listen to the audio from in-wall/in-ceiling speakers.
Of course the Home Theater system is key – the ideal systems will provide a projection or plasma display. If it’s a projected picture, the screen can either be fixed (perhaps behind a motorized curtain, like in big theaters) or one which automatically extends when the projector is switched on. Speakers can be any combination of built-in a wall, in-ceiling, or conventional cabinet-style speakers – this includes the latest in thundering subwoofers, which can also be hidden behind walls or ceilings – or under the floor. The sound processor should be able to decode a variety of signals, including AC3, DTS, and a few other less popular formats.
Remote controls have come a long way, and high-end systems should include what’s now called “positive control”: this type of system actually gets response from the various system components via a mesh of tiny wires for current sensing, signal sensing, etc. to determine the power status, then utilizes if/then/else logic for conditional control. Here’s one instance: you come into the theater room to watch a film, and simply press ‘Watch DVD’ on the remote control. This sends the signal to a processor, which identifies that someone left the tuner on and the TV off. It compensates for this by turning on the TV, switching the tuner input to ‘DVD’, and pressing ‘Play’ on the DVD player. It then dims the lighting by 90%. This is what’s considered a ’smart’ system, and can be found with various brands.
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