Back into the whole-house-audio stuff.. I mentioned previously the need for something to handle 12 audio zones, and in those 12 zones a total of 38 speakers (19 stereo pairs). I have so far found three reasonable solutions, but would love to hear if anyone knows of something that I missed. The key requirement is to simply be able to play a number of sources in any combination of zones.. however the number of sources is pretty small, so 3 or 4 sources. There really isn’t a reason I would want 12 different things playing on all 12 different zones.

Solution 1: HTD (Home Theater Direct) – They sell a ‘Lync’ system that is exactly 12 zones, and if you buy more 12 channel amps as many speakers as those zones need. It has room controls (touch pads over Cat5+), supports voice assistant integration (alexa, etc), phone/app control, etc. The switching matrix by default has 5 inputs, but can support 12 additional ones… but really that isn’t needed as the practical use case is almost entirely listen to music or podcasts, both of which can stream off an Apple TV or the like. The pricing of the HTD stuff is very good, and they support end user installation and configuration.

Solution 2: Russound – Their MCA-88 system can support up to 36 zones, so 12 is doable, and they have the same streaming support, input support, and room controls. Their in room controller is a bit older tech looking, but the single biggest negative is the Russound stuff requires a dealer to install/config. I really really really dislike that as I don’t want to have to rely on someone else to do configuration changes, and I certainly don’t need the installation help.

Solution 3: Sonos – Sonos now sells either a dedicated ‘AMP’ module that is a sonos controller and amp mixed together, or just a standalone line-level output Sonos controller called ‘PORT’. I really don’t need a dedicated sonos controller for every speaker pair (and the cost would be pretty high at 19*$700). If I used the PORT modules as sources and drove those into a multi-channel amp system that would work, but I would still need 12 of the PORT modules for 12 zone, which is paying for independent functionality that isn’t needed. I could use a Sonos PORT as as ‘source’ in either of the above two systems if I wanted that functionality.

I’m leaning towards HTD.