I have a question about how to set up a multi-zone. I am moving into a new apartment such that my roommates and I will be able to have a dedicated HT room (I am way excited about this; the room is perfect) in addition to the living room. I was wondering what would be the best way to run the multi zone from my receiver. The receiver will be on the 2nd floor and the other living room is on the 1st with about 50' of run between then (since I rent I can't just drill through the floor). Now from everything I have been able to grock about RCA type cables is that length of run just isn't going to sound remotely good. Plus my limited budget will limit me to basic Rat Shack quality line. Is there anything I could do to salvage the signal quality over that distance?

Joshorr,
I would want to know a little more of what your Multi-Zone system needs are. When you say Multi-Zone, that would mean that the other roomor rooms will listen to another source than what the home theater is listening to. or a Multi-Room system would say that the whole house would be listening to the same source. Would you need seperate volume control capeabilities in each additional room? Are you using the Outlaw reciever? or does your HT have a Multi-Room output?? I work for Niles Audio corp. which we are a Multi-Zone/Room company. And you could call us directly with any Distributed audio questions, and I hope Scott is OK with this but 1-800-BUY-HIFI, any of us here in Tech Support will be happy to assist. This goes for any other Outlaws out there, Outlaw to Outlaw !!!!

The goal of me doing this is just to use the multi-zone feature on my receiver that I have long since thought to be useless. All I want to do is run a signal via a ~50' RCA cable to the sound card inputs of one of my roommates' computers which has that Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 system that doesn't sound all that bad. I am just looking for opinions as to whether this is feasible or not.

Ahhh, 50' is not out of line to run Audio Cables, and I would bet that you won't need any kind of Dist amp either. Use 2/RG-6's, that is pretty much the most readily availible wire types and will work just fine !!

Peace !!!

Oh yeh, use the Record out off the receiver...It is a fixed level and the audio level will be adjusted Via his sound Card...

If I may suggest:

Since you rent, and all other things considered, you might be better off using a wireless stereo-audio (with or without video) sender (RF transmitter/receiver).

The fidelity would be at least as good as with 50' of cables, and a LOT neater without cables stretching around the rooms, along the hallway, and down the steps.

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Larry Fine
www.fineelectricco.com
My system

I actually use 45' cables between my front amps and my 1050. I bought them from Markertek. They use Canare cable and connectors and they sold them to me for very close to what it would have cost me to make them myself.

As far as the wireless audio distribution. I tried that about 2 1/2 years ago and was very dissatisfied with it. Perhaps the technology has improved but my experience was decidedly negative. It was not even to the level of entry mid-fi in my estimation.

YMMV.