Shadowfax
Well-known member
- Thread Author
- #1
Audio Video Owners with no clue - or How I spent half my vacation
I have long time great friends who have always tried to have music in thier houses and have at most times, had all in cieling speakers wired in and some setup to run them all. In their latest adventure, they just bought a house that was completely wired as a Smart House when built by original owner. There is a control rack in the basement closet that looks like a regular Server room or IT rack with all the Networking and Audio Video wiring. See pic below.
The house has speakers all over, and the previous owner left them wired to a multi channel Son-Amp. There are 2 TVs in the basement man cave, one over the bar and one on opposite wall that can have 5.1 sound from in-wall/cieling speakers all wired with Sub in a closet. So there are also 2 Xfinity Cable Boxes in the rack for each TV.
My task was to add a new HT Receiver, Sonos Network Streamer for Pandora, a 5-Disk CDP, and a Blu-Ray Player to this configuration and then program it all into a Harmony RF Remote.
The first Receiver we picked up at Best Buy was a newer Denon and after attempting to hook everything up realized that there was not enough Analog Inputs since it is now assumed people don't use CDPs or other Analog gear anymore. So we took that back and got a older model Yamaha which was loaded with the needed inputs.
I spent the better part of 2 days wiring this all up and programing the remote almost to perfection. I had to leave a little bit of tweaking for my next trip. I had trouble getting the Harmony to turn on/off one of the TVs so the Xfinity remote was needed just for that.
The CDP was connected thru the Sonos Streamer so that could also be controlled along with Pandora from their iPhones. The HT got connected via Zone 2 so you could watch a 5.1 Movie and have Pandora or CDs playing throughout the rest of the house.
I also spent about 10 hours ridding PCs of all kinds of Malware and other harmful crap along with alll the HT stuff above. But, even after giving several tutorials and writing hald of the info down, I did get a Tech Support call after my friends were away for a week and upon returning home could not get anything working since their kid played around and had everything out of sync. I spent another hour on the phone walking him thru all the settings and proper useage for each activity.
Now just after I got all the stuff working, we spent a night attheir Yaht Club for a 50th Anniversary Beatles Bash where we met some other wealthy clueless friends of our good friends. Seems so many people buy all kinds of stuff but have no clue what they have or how to use it. These people we met had an issue getting the sound from their TV/Cable Box to play thru an HT Receiver into a Sound Bar and Sub. They had the Cable people in, Geek Squad for hours, several other clueless friends including the one they deemed the smart on, who could not get it. His solution was to run the Red/Green/Blue Video Cables from the Cable box to HT. Duh'Oh, they wondered why it didn't work.
So here is the funny part of the story. I tried using HDMI from Cable Box to Marantz but without remote and some On Screen Programming, I could not get HDMI to work as I expected. So I decided the easieat way to do this was with plain Left-Right RCA interconnect from Audio Out on Cable Box to an input on the Marantz but did not see an available pair in the pile of crap he had. I asked if he had any and he says "I think I might in the other room, let me check. He comes back with the right thing, but I noticed a whole bunch of corrosion on the plugs, like they were in a drawer with a leaking battery or something.
I said, Hmm, not sure about this, I think they need to be cleaned. As quickly as I said that, the guy grabs them from me and runs to the kitchen, where I could not see. After a minute, I walked from the living room to the kitchen where I found him washing the interconnects under water with soap. YOW! I said, without being condescending or rude, "I'm not so sure they will be the best choice for this". So I put them aside and kept looking when I found a brand new el cheapo set of cables in the back of the cabinet.
Meanwhile, for the 20 or so minutes I was playing around, my wife sat in the room with the guy who just kept saying that I would never get it since they paid hundreds of dollars and had 4 or 5 people/companies try to fix it. My wife just looked at him and said "Just wait a few minutes, he will fix it for you". Just as he was going thry it again that I won't get it, I plugged them in and switched the input as sound filled the room. The guy could not believe it.
I just could not believe that he was going to attempt to use ICs after washing them with soap and water and not letting them somehow dry completely. At least I got a good parking spot, beach tags, and use of his shower for my troubles so it was a win-win situation.
I can't even go on vacation without doing Tech Support half the time
![IMG_5921_zps9999f8f3.jpg](http://[URL="http://s1249.photobucket.com/user/Hyfi61/media/IMG_5921_zps9999f8f3.jpg.html"][IMG]http://i1249.photobucket.com/albums/hh507/Hyfi61/IMG_5921_zps9999f8f3.jpg)
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I have long time great friends who have always tried to have music in thier houses and have at most times, had all in cieling speakers wired in and some setup to run them all. In their latest adventure, they just bought a house that was completely wired as a Smart House when built by original owner. There is a control rack in the basement closet that looks like a regular Server room or IT rack with all the Networking and Audio Video wiring. See pic below.
The house has speakers all over, and the previous owner left them wired to a multi channel Son-Amp. There are 2 TVs in the basement man cave, one over the bar and one on opposite wall that can have 5.1 sound from in-wall/cieling speakers all wired with Sub in a closet. So there are also 2 Xfinity Cable Boxes in the rack for each TV.
My task was to add a new HT Receiver, Sonos Network Streamer for Pandora, a 5-Disk CDP, and a Blu-Ray Player to this configuration and then program it all into a Harmony RF Remote.
The first Receiver we picked up at Best Buy was a newer Denon and after attempting to hook everything up realized that there was not enough Analog Inputs since it is now assumed people don't use CDPs or other Analog gear anymore. So we took that back and got a older model Yamaha which was loaded with the needed inputs.
I spent the better part of 2 days wiring this all up and programing the remote almost to perfection. I had to leave a little bit of tweaking for my next trip. I had trouble getting the Harmony to turn on/off one of the TVs so the Xfinity remote was needed just for that.
The CDP was connected thru the Sonos Streamer so that could also be controlled along with Pandora from their iPhones. The HT got connected via Zone 2 so you could watch a 5.1 Movie and have Pandora or CDs playing throughout the rest of the house.
I also spent about 10 hours ridding PCs of all kinds of Malware and other harmful crap along with alll the HT stuff above. But, even after giving several tutorials and writing hald of the info down, I did get a Tech Support call after my friends were away for a week and upon returning home could not get anything working since their kid played around and had everything out of sync. I spent another hour on the phone walking him thru all the settings and proper useage for each activity.
Now just after I got all the stuff working, we spent a night attheir Yaht Club for a 50th Anniversary Beatles Bash where we met some other wealthy clueless friends of our good friends. Seems so many people buy all kinds of stuff but have no clue what they have or how to use it. These people we met had an issue getting the sound from their TV/Cable Box to play thru an HT Receiver into a Sound Bar and Sub. They had the Cable people in, Geek Squad for hours, several other clueless friends including the one they deemed the smart on, who could not get it. His solution was to run the Red/Green/Blue Video Cables from the Cable box to HT. Duh'Oh, they wondered why it didn't work.
So here is the funny part of the story. I tried using HDMI from Cable Box to Marantz but without remote and some On Screen Programming, I could not get HDMI to work as I expected. So I decided the easieat way to do this was with plain Left-Right RCA interconnect from Audio Out on Cable Box to an input on the Marantz but did not see an available pair in the pile of crap he had. I asked if he had any and he says "I think I might in the other room, let me check. He comes back with the right thing, but I noticed a whole bunch of corrosion on the plugs, like they were in a drawer with a leaking battery or something.
I said, Hmm, not sure about this, I think they need to be cleaned. As quickly as I said that, the guy grabs them from me and runs to the kitchen, where I could not see. After a minute, I walked from the living room to the kitchen where I found him washing the interconnects under water with soap. YOW! I said, without being condescending or rude, "I'm not so sure they will be the best choice for this". So I put them aside and kept looking when I found a brand new el cheapo set of cables in the back of the cabinet.
Meanwhile, for the 20 or so minutes I was playing around, my wife sat in the room with the guy who just kept saying that I would never get it since they paid hundreds of dollars and had 4 or 5 people/companies try to fix it. My wife just looked at him and said "Just wait a few minutes, he will fix it for you". Just as he was going thry it again that I won't get it, I plugged them in and switched the input as sound filled the room. The guy could not believe it.
I just could not believe that he was going to attempt to use ICs after washing them with soap and water and not letting them somehow dry completely. At least I got a good parking spot, beach tags, and use of his shower for my troubles so it was a win-win situation.
I can't even go on vacation without doing Tech Support half the time
