Hi Everyone,
I am looking for help designing a system that can power audio/tv throughout the house and run a modest home theatre setup. I would like to say upfront that I am not an audiophile and I have no background in HI-FI. While I love all kinds of music, my hearing is starting to go, so I am trying not to get lost in the intracies of the audiophile debates and get a decent sounding system at a good price.
Here is my current setup for both audio and TV pleasure: I have ripped my CD collection to my media server in FLAC format and I listen to them and Internet radio through a Slim Devices Squeezebox 3.0, a Sonic Super T-AMP and a pair of PSB alpha mini's. For TV/movies I have an older Sony 50" rear projection TV and Pioneer DV-563A DVD player with no HT components at all.
I am moving into a new house and am trying to create a system that can drive my whole house audio and home theater. I read all of the reviews and was thinking about the Outlaw 990/7125. Here is my first question, what is the differece between an SSP like the 990 and an A/V receiver like the Outlaw 1070? Which is better suited for my needs?
I have been looking at a whole house audio system and ceiling speakers over at Home Theatre Direct web page . Would either of the Outlaw setups work with their equipment? Also, does anyone have any experience with their equipment? Finally my last question, at least for this long post, While I would like to have a 5.1 or 7.1 system to watch movies, I am concerned about having free standing speakers in the middle of my living room. Can I use ceiling or in-wall speakers for the rear and side channels?
Thanks in advance for your help and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Best regards,

Mikel948

A surround sound processor and a surround receiver perform the same functions - a processor just removes the amps from a receiver, alleviating the design challenges of shielding/isolating the sensitive audio and video processing from the high current power supply and amps as well as allowing upgrades to the processing and video switching without requiring you to replace perfectly serviceable amps.

The 990/7125 would work fine with the in-wall Home Theater Direct speakers for either surrounds or for whole house stuff. You can use in-wall speakers for surrounds, or you can use wall-mounted speakers (here's an example from Axiom and a mix of Axiom and Paradigm in my room).

The 990's second zone could be a good fit for whole house stuff. There's a catch, though. If you have remote speakers in more than one or two rooms, you may need to look at something like this or this to provide amps for each pair of speakers. If you only have a room or two, you could use two channels of the 7125 to drive up to two pairs of speakers comfortably. I haven't tried to put a system like this together (my 990's second zone drives a single wireless speaker for music during yard work), but some others around here can probably offer better specifics on a whole house setup.

For me, and this is my opinion, that whole house can get very complicated and EXPENSIVE.

The low cost of electronics make it easier to just have seperate systems. The labor to wire a whole house and integrate it seemed very complex and I just have different systems in differnt parts of the house.

For example, the syetem in my Gym off my bedroom is a full surround and I have speakers in my bedroom and master bath. I won't watch movies in bedroom, but like to listen to music.

Outside the den system is two zone and it powers it to my hot tub area, kitchen, and veranda. I hooked up an integrated amp to fuel them.

The pool room has its own system. To walk a DVD upstairs is no big deal, and with dupicate CDs or the ipod its really quite easy. Cable has some nice music stations also for content.

Again, each zone would still need amplificatin and in wall wireing with controls. Besides, the house with young children can't be drowing them out.

Just my opinion. No doubt whole house systems are cool and it would really require an installer to both put it in, install the components (controllers too!)and program the servers needed.

I like doing my own stuff and find a whole house done correct is more money that I want to spend and really best left to a professional.

This seems to me the easiest way to do whole house audio. The amps are in the switches and the wire is all Cat5.

http://www.russound.com/pdf/brochures/A-BUS_brochure.pdf

Consider the Sonos system? It seems flexible and reasonably priced for what you get. Quite slick actually. You can have different stuff playing in several areas or sync areas to play the same thing. The remote controller is sweet and the whole system looks very clean. If I didn't have a computer in darn near every room anyway I'd definitely consider it.

Doh! Sorry. My bad. Sonos is audio only. My apologies. Great product though...